Familiar Spirits: A Memoir of James Merrill and David Jackson

by Alison Lurie

Alison Lurie , one of America's greatest novelists, has written a loving memoir of world-famous poet James Merrill and his longtime partner David Jackson. Drawing on her forty-year friendship with Merrill and Jackson, Lurie reveals the couple's deep involvement with ghosts, gods, and spirits, with whom they communicated through a Ouija board. Among the results of their intense twenty-year preoccupation with the occult is the brilliant book-length poem "The Changing Light at Sandover", which Merrill called his "chronicles of love and loss." Recalling Merrill and Jackson's life together in New York, Athens, and Key West, Familiar Spirits is a poignant memoir infused with great affection and generous amounts of Lurie's signature wit.

Genres: Biography, Memoir, LGBT, Poetry, Nonfiction, Gay

192 pages, Paperback

First published February 19, 2001

About the author

Alison Stewart Lurie was an American novelist and academic. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her 1984 novel Foreign Affairs. Although better known as a novelist, she wrote many non-fiction books and articles, particularly on children's literature and the semiotics of dress.

Reviews

[Openthepurple · Rating 4 out of 5]

A memoir is not a truth telling, it is more an impression. A friend writing a memoir is another layer of impression. Alison Lurie's writing is easy and comfortable. She definitely writes from her point of view and gives the reader a lot of things to contemplate. The intertwining of JM's(the scribe) and DJ's(the hand) creative musings centered around the spirit world had so many aspects. At times I felt she was being very careful of how she chose her positions. She shares that she thought she had concealed her doubts and fears regarding the Ouija board spirits but in "The Book of Ephraim" JM speaks of her suppressed critical reaction as 'Alison's shrewd/Silence'(pg 120-1). Her observations of JM & DJ relationship over a lifetime was very compelling.


Here are some of my favorite lines:
Pg 2 'Bad luck, not lack of talent, ambition, or effort was responsible for this. The world of fame is narrow: it chooses and celebrates only a few. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of gifted people remain unchosen, unknown.' (Only thousands? I think we have all been dissed!)

pg 6 'Though only 24 he was clearly already an intellectual and an aesthete. He appeared to have read everything and, worse, to be surprised at our ignorance.' (Made me laugh out loud)

pg 8 JM in interview:
Manners for me are the touch of nature,... Someone who does not take them seriously is making a serious mistake...
The real triumph of manners in Proust is the extreme courtesy toward the reader, the voice explaining at once formally and intimately.

pg 53 Ouija is a YESYES Board - French(oui)/German(ja)

Pg 95 Early on, Jimmy calls the messages "A strangeness that was us, and was not." Later the spirits themselves put the same observation more subtly, saying, "WE ARE U YOU ARE WE EACH OTHERS DREAM."

pg 97 When two sophisticated, extremely intelligent people devote over 25 years to recording messages from imaginary beings, you have to ask, What was in it for them? ...JM writes in Sandover:
Ephraim's revelations-we had them
For comfort, thrills and chills, "material."

pg 101 Only just now, copying these lines, did I notice that Auden does not suggest that the 'work' is thrilling for DJ. If this was a disguised message from David to Jimmy, he didn't seem to receive it.

Pg 107 One sign of this was that the messages from the spirits, like David's own writings, were in prose rather than poetry. If you believe, as I do, that his subconscious mainly guided the cup, more than half of the text...was composed by him, and only later reshaped by Jimmy.

Pg 122 To criticize any creative enterprise in its early stages can be destructive...questioning the messages from the Ouija board, I became...a prudish, judgmental friend who could not be trusted with their innermost secrets.

Pg 136 ...I wonder if the trilogy shouldn't have been signed with both our names---or simply "by DJ, as told to JM'?
But when Sandover appeared the following year, the only name on the title page was his own.

[Andrew H · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Cynical" keeps cropping up in reviews of this book. It really is not that, however. Lurie writes with real feeling as she relates her friendship with the poet, James Merrill, and his partner, David Jackson.
Merrill's reputation has waned in recent decades, though J.D. McClatchy was certain that The Changing Light at Sandover (1976-82) was one of the the main epic poems in American literature.
What Lurie describes is a menage a trois made from Merrill, Jackson, and the ouija board -- a spirit world that swelled the epic poem with its many metaphysical views. The spirit world has influenced some significant poets in the C20: Yeats, Breton, Pessoa, and Duncan, to cite a few. But Merrill's epic infuses them with everyday reality with total dedication: his spiritual guide being the one and only W.H.Auden! In Familiar Spirits, Lurie examines how a complex gay relationship used another reality to order human life and thereby give it depth and meaning.

[Keith Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good to read if only to go back and look at Merrill's poems again. And to think again about "Changing Light at Sandhover" and all that Ouija board stuff. And she makes a strong point about the effect of this assault on the ineffable, how it becomes another example of artistic self-destruction. On the very last page, she asks, "How much should one risk for art?" And she definitely implies that Merrill and Jackson risked too much.

There is an unspoken irony here that Lurie might not even realize, and that is that Merrill is already on his way to being forgotten. I'm not sure I've heard anyone under 60 even mention him in years. Certainly the young writers aren't reading him, not even the young gay writers. Perhaps he'll have his moment in the sun again, and then Lurie's book might end up being useful in its small way.

[Marie-Therese · Rating 2 out of 5]

Extremely slight and not very interesting. This would have made a decent long article in a literary journal but there is just not enough depth here for a book of this length. Disappointing.

[Imogen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this was nice, but I read it mostly in the woods by myself having panic attacks about how much I fucking hate myself, so it's hard to say for sure. I mean, I really love Alison Lurie's books about the lives of children's authors, so I kind of was leaning toward liking it before I even started it. And I am totally stoked to read what the lives of a gay couple in the fifties and sixties (and on) looked like from a friend's perspective. But at the same time, that only gets you so deep, y'know? So... yeah.

Also, since this thing deals so much with ouija board spirits, I had the creepiest dream one night after reading it.

Okay so first I was driving a car, and I did a bad job trying to pass another car. I clipped 'em and they rolled, killing everyone inside. They all died and I saw their dead faces as the cops took the car away. Then they started haunting me, like, eyeballless ghosts turning around in the subway and stuff. Pretty creepy. Then I was in somebody's bedroom and the lights were out and he was sleeping and this girl's ghost rose up out of his bed like 'my mother and I are so thirsty down here in hell' so I poured a glass of water into the bed for them but THEN my girlfriend in the dream (who was not my girlfriend in real life) started giving birth to all these terrifying, long spindly-boned monsters all the time, with like splitting skin and long yellow teeth and disgusting little tufts of hair in weird places on their bodies. They were everywhere and then I woke up alone in the woods.

Well, not really alone, the woods were full of queers. But there were no other queers in my tent.

Um, my two weeks away from the internet have been kind of intense; how have you been?

[Julene · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book about the life of poet James Merrill and his partner David Jackson through the eyes of their friend Alison Lurie. She became their friend by a slim margin of association, they knew her and invited her to have tea, her brutish husband was trying to pull her away and suddenly she saw him through their eyes. It was the antidote that brought me into this book for I've never read James Merrill. She was in their life, they were her supports on her writing journey, so we get to view their tragic love story through her eyes. And indeed it is a sad story. At the end they each spiraled out, James into the arms of a man not good for him, also he somehow contracted HIV. Jack into the world of drugs and abusive relationships. They did much good in the world for poetry and literature. It is a sad book and eventually I hope to read more of James Merrill's poetry.

[Jett · Rating 3 out of 5]

An easy, quick read, and quite revealing about the relationship between the poet James Merrill and David Jackson, as well as Merrill's process of writing his epic poem The Changing Light at Sandover. This might not be particularly interesting to people who aren't already interested in Merrill, and there are some cringeworthy moments when Lurie is perhaps too open about her negative feelings towards some people close to Merrill. However, the book is also an understated meditation on the problem Yeats articulated about the choice between perfection of the life or of the art. This memoir shows how writing a poem both sustained and ultimately helped destroy a long-term relationship, and is interesting if only for that.

[Garry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing little memoir of a gay couple by a longtime, straight friend. An emphasis on poetry, the supernatural, the life of struggling literary want - to - be's, and good detail on modern gay relationships.

[Ivy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly moving and partly pointless. Recalls a moment when poets mattered and a love that might not have mattered so much had Lurie not taken the time to recall it. Although Lurie's writing is good, Merrill's poetry, amply quoted, is the true star.

[kathe · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not really into this genre but it looked promising. Unfortunately, the first chapters were the best of this read. The author's tone changed dramatically once we enter the esoteric (which is also not my cup of tea). The ending was also a bit patronizing ...

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short memoir of Alison Lurie's friendship with the poet James Merrill and his long-time partner David Jackson. This friendship bloomed around 1950 in Connecticut, where Lurie was a faculty wife and struggling writer, and Merrill a visiting lecturer. One feels that the friendship was partially based on their shared love of literature, but perhaps also on the harassed young mother's admiration for, and envy of, the aesthetic, uncluttered lifestyle of these two handsome, talented and financially independent (indeed, wealthy) young men. The friendship was maintained during the two decades that Merrill and Jackson spent the winters in Athens, and then benefited again from proximity when the 3 found themselves with summer homes in Key West.

The focus of the memoir is the decades-long engagement of Merrill and Jackson with the ouija board. Merrill incorporated the spirit messages in his looong epic poem "The Changing Light at Sandover", with mixed success. Lurie takes a rather dim view of this and attempts to analyze the reason why the couple returned to the ouija board time and time again. What started as a pastime might have become a sort of addiction. Addiction to the lavish praise the spirits (including the famous poet Auden and a Greek socialite) bestowed on them, as exceptionally spiritually refined beings, worthy of receiving cosmic teachings? Did it eventually become a creative exercise, gathering more materials for the Sandover poems? And, as the relationship between Merrill and Jackson, a gifted but less successful artist, deteriorated, was it a way to maintain their bond via ghostly intermediates?

Lurie clearly did not like this aspect of her friends' lives, and at some point the spirits retaliate by describing her previous life as that of a narrow-minded Victorian spinster, who was killed by the natives she was trying to convert. Hardly complimentary! There are, indeed, sparks of cattiness in the book -which made it all the more fun to read.

All good things must come to an end, and the last decade or so of Merrill and Jackson's lives was not particularly pleasant. Jackson became an alcoholic with a taste for rough trade, and Merrill's friends could not wholly applaud his relationship with a much-younger actor who seemed to become increasingly possessive and imitative of the famous poet. Merrill died of AIDS in 1995, and David Jackson was still living, a shell of his former energetic, capable self, as of the book's publication date.

[Nicola Pierce · Rating 4 out of 5]

The cover intrigued me - I love the photograph of these two gorgeous men and have an interest in the supernatural so I bought it. Now, I knew that James Merrill was an American poet, had never heard of David Jackson, and I love Alison Lurie novels. My one gripe with this book is that I felt it could and should have been much longer and I would have liked to know more about Lurie's life too. I enjoyed the titbits that she supplied in between the story of Merrill and his long-term partner Jackson. I wonder if it was a longer manuscript and she had to cut it back for the publisher. She built up the story from the beginning, that some catastrophe would befall these men because of their addiction to the Ouija board and the spirit world, but because the book was so short I did feel just a little bit robbed. However, I finished it yesterday, in two sitting, and it has stayed with me this morning. I wish I was still reading it - it's another reason I wished the book was longer, I absolutely wanted to know a lot, lot more about these two fascinating men.

[Lorri Steinbacher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Felt promising and Lurie's prose is wonderful, but I just couldn't get into the Ouija board/amateur psychology aspect of the book.

[Eden Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the JetBlackDragonfly book blog at www.edenthompson.ca/blog

I didn't know who the subjects of this memoir were—David Jackson and James Merrill—nor the author, Alison Lurie. It was a little like being a guest at a dinner party: nice to meet everyone, hear some old stories, but I don't know anyone and will never see them again.

James Merrill was a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet whose father was a founder of Merrill Lynch. Witty and elegant, he had enough money to devote his time to writing and travel, living all over the world. David Jackson was his partner for over 40 years. More rough and tumble, handier with dealing with 'real life' issues, he was also a writer. They did a lot of entertaining, mingling with the art crowd, including Truman Capote, Peggy Guggenheim, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of this biography, Alison Lurie.

Familiar Spirits is a memoir of their life together, especially their interest in spirits. From 1955 until 1982, James and David practiced contacting spirits through a Ouija board and writing down the messages. James was the 'scribe' who took the notes, and David was the 'hand' through whom the spirits spoke. They had the idea to follow the poets Blake and Dante and compose a long, serious poem dealing with philosophical issues. They contacted a spirit guide named Ephraim who, among others, dictated the information, which James then edited into the final product "The Book Of Ephraim" in 1976, followed by the sequels "Mirabell" (1978) and "Scripts For The Pageant" (1980) — all compiled later under the title "The Changing Light At Sandover" in 1982.
The writing and observations were well-received, but their relationship went through many changes. They each had outside lovers during the relationship, and by the end of the poem, the relationship was mostly over.
And there is the question of who wrote the work, how much influence was the hand of the scribe in directing the answers or editing the text. If David was the vessel, did the writing come from his subconscious, and when James was editing, how much of it was his revision? In the end, only James' name appeared on the book.

Well-written and interesting to view their lives through a close friend. Although they lead separate lives in the end, I found it most interesting how they maintained same-sex partnerships for four decades at a time when that wasn't open or common.

[Carrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is actually quite interesting when Lurie talks about obsession and the making of art. Her outline of the four types of spirit communication and how interesting those communications are likely to be to a wider audience was wonderful. It's less interesting when she tries to chronicle Merrill's and Jackson's lives and relationship because there's so much she admits she doesn't know or about which she is only speculating. Also, every few pages she says something extremely catty about one or both men. I do appreciate that she looks at Jackson's role in the writing, a subject that deserves serious discussion.

[Jeffrey · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am not convinced that Lurie really understands literature - she so often misses the boat in her children's literature critiques and her inability to see beyond her own narrow scope in terms of the occult mars any real value this book particular might have - not a satisfying memoir because Lurie fails to give us a real sense of either Merrill or Jackson. It's a mean-spirited little book and sometimes I have to wonder if Lurie has any idea how ridiculous she sounds - as Merrill is struggling with AIDS, she comments that in '95, gay were were getting better - such ignorance is really appalling but I suppose not surprising in a book that is more venom than verve

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

An honest portrayal of a relationship, by an outsider, looking in. I felt sad about how things ended between Merrill and Jackson, but happy that Lurie didn't seem to sugar coat it.

Also, it's a tribute to Jackson, who was integral in his partner's writing. Good to see his contribution recognized.

Read it! You'll experience envy and sorrow. It's fun!

[Leftjab · Rating 3 out of 5]

Engrossing memoir, though I was probably looking for a more straight forward biography of Merrill. Fast-paced and never less than interesting, could have been twice as long. Ends with a series of questions that are ultimately unanswerable, though I would have liked to see Lurie try in the context of Merrill & Jackson's relationship/lives. Ultimately very sad.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had never heard of poet James Merrill until a friend recommended the book for the paranormal aspect. I ended up not really digging that angle, as much as the story of his and David Jackson's relationship, as seen from beginning to end by the author, a straight female friend.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

so much better than something else she wrote. p.s. i like cute male authors!!!! content = form = mikey likey.

[Harley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned that James Merrill was great and David Jackson bitter about a few things. A very enjoyable story!

[Nina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Provocative exploration of the relationship between Merrill and Jackson, writers with talent and promise. Their interest in the occult eventually destroyed them.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lurie is a little bitchy, but the information transmitted is very important

[Stuart Vyse · Rating 3 out of 5]

For those who are interested in Merrill's relationship with David Jackson and other lovers and in the role of the Ouija board in his poetry and life, this is a revealing brief memoir.

[Steph (loves water) · Rating 3 out of 5]

An odd little memoir; I'm not sure how to rate it, if I think it's a bunch of BS or totally brilliant. Since it's Alison Lurie, I'm inclined to go with totally brilliant.

[Annie · Rating 2 out of 5]

disturbing memoir of Merrill's and Jackson's obsession with the ouija board to engender the poem, Sandover. Lurie suggests possible reasons, but how much does one risk for art?

[Barbara · Rating 2 out of 5]

The obsession with the Ouija board was very strange.