Fallen Beauty (30 page)

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

In addition to the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay, I read many books, journals, and letters from and about my subject. My favorite biographies are Daniel Mark Epstein’s
What Lips My Lips Have Kissed
,
which reads like a love letter to Millay, and the incomparable Nancy Milford’s
Savage Beauty
. The books listed below are a sampling of helpful sources about the period and the poet.

Barnet, Andrea.
All-Night Party: The Women of Bohemian Greenwich Village and Harlem, 1913–1930.
North Carolina: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2004.

Brittin, Norman A.
Edna St. Vincent Millay.
Revised edition. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982.

Epstein, Daniel Mark.
What Lips My Lips Have Kissed: The Loves and Love Poems of Edna St. Vincent Millay.
New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2001.

Gurko, Miriam.
Restless Spirit: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay.
New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1962.

Hudovernik, Robert.
Jazz Age Beauties: The Lost Collection of Ziegfeld Photographer Alfred Cheney Johnston.
New York: Universe Publishing, 2006.

Leese, Elizabeth.
Costume Design in the Movies: An Illustrated Guide to the Work of 157 Great Designers.
New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1991.

Milford, Nancy.
Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay.
New York: Random House, 2001.

Olson, Stanley.
Elinor Wylie: A Biography.
New York: The Dial Press/James Wade, 1979.

Stonehill, Judith.
Greenwich Village: A Guide to America’s Legendary Left Bank.
New York: Universe Publishing, 2002.

Wilson, Edmund.
The Shores of Light: A Literary Chronicle of the Twenties and Thirties.
New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, Inc., 1952.

Wolczanski, Gail Blass.
Images of America: Around the Village of Chatham.
Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2009.

FALLEN BEAUTY

ERIKA ROBUCK

A CONVERSATION WITH ERIKA ROBUCK

Q. What inspired you to make Edna St. Vincent Millay the subject of your third literary-themed novel?

A. My studies of the Fitzgeralds for my novel
Call Me Zelda
led me to Millay. Two of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Princeton friends, Edmund “Bunny” Wilson and John Peale Bishop, worshipped Millay, and their adoration of her reminded me of my interest in her poetry, which I first read in college. Wilson’s moving obituary for Millay in his essay collection
Shores of Light
inspired me to learn more about the poet who had such an “intoxicating effect on people.” It didn’t take long for Millay to cast her spell on me.

Q. A poet, a seamstress, and a sculptor—there’s something poetic about that combination. How did you come up with it?

A. My visit to Millay’s home Steepletop, a seven-hundred-acre estate in the Berkshires, inspired the characters in my story. When I first saw photographs of the pastoral place, I imagined what an ideal retreat it must have been for Millay, where she could compose her poetry in peace. On my visit, however, I realized this was not necessarily so.

First, Steepletop is very remote. Traveling the winding mountain roads bordered with forests reminded me of the opening of Stephen King’s
The Shining
. Once I arrived, I was struck by two things: First, it was almost blindingly bright, and, second, the terrible buzzing of bees could be heard everywhere. When I entered the house, the blank-eyed gaze of the large black bust of Sappho in Millay’s parlor made me uncomfortable, and I was further disturbed to stand in the foyer at the bottom of the staircase, where Millay had fallen to her death.

When I walked upstairs into Millay’s rooms, I was interested to see elaborate robes hanging in her bathroom, and to learn about her dramatic reading tour wardrobes. I was reminded of the poetry collection for which she won the Pulitzer,
The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems
, about an impoverished mother who magically weaves her son’s fancy clothing on a harp until she dies.

All of these research ingredients blended in my imagination to form and connect my poet, seamstress, and sculptor.

Q. Millay’s desire to plumb the heights and depths that life could offer, all in service to her poetry, makes her a fascinating figure. Why do you think we are drawn to her, and people like her? Do we secretly wish we had the courage to go where she dares to go? And as a writer yourself, how do you reconcile the need to feed your creative muse while remaining a responsible, “highly functioning” grown-up?

A. Women like Millay, who live so fiercely on the edge of what mainstream society might consider scandalous, are captivating in any time period. What I found most interesting about Millay and her husband was their belief that her experiences in life, love, lust, and pain were part of her vocation, and, therefore, worthy of being taken as far as she was willing to go. I’m sure we all have secret thoughts and fantasies that we either let loose or rein in, depending on how impulsive we are, how ingrained our moral beliefs are, or any number of other factors, but those who flout convention make fascinating characters.

So far my imagination has been able to supply all of my edgy material, much to my husband’s relief.

Q. In the last few months, I’ve comes across several mentions of Millay. Caroline Kennedy has quoted Millay’s “First Fig” in interviews and suspense writer Sophie Hannah has called Millay one of her five favorite writers. Are we poised for a Millay renaissance?

A. I’m intrigued by the idea of Millay’s second renaissance, since it was her poem “Renascence,” selected for an annual poetry anthology when she was just twenty years old, that initially made her a celebrity.

In Millay’s own time, she sold out thousand-seat auditoriums on reading tours. Her adoring fans sent her endless correspondence about her poetry. Her collections were continuously being reprinted, and she was one of the first women to win the Pulitzer Prize. At her peak, Millay’s writings made her approximately thirty thousand dollars a year, which would be nearly half a million dollars in the present day. Our time is rich with captivating women artists, musicians, and writers, and Millay is worthy to stand with the best of them.

I believe our culture is poised not only for a Millay renaissance, but also for a poetry renaissance. As our attention span constricts in response to the gadgets we use, poetry could supply a new consciousness with deep meaning in short form.

Q. Through the character of Laura Kelley,
Fallen Beauty
explores what it meant to be a “fallen woman” in the 1930s, but in some ways, Edna St. Vincent Millay might also be considered a fallen woman. Would you share some of what you hoped to convey in this regard?

A. I wanted to show how making judgments about people injects poison into communities, how frequently all is not what it seems, and how those who outspokenly oppose something that they see as corrosive are often battling aspects of the very behavior they denounce.

Through the women in particular in
Fallen Beauty
, I wanted to explore how we seek fulfillment, what it means to be an “ideal” woman (if there is such a thing), how our desires can either help to build us up or destroy us, and how we can remake our lives after we fall.

Q. You mentioned once that car accidents were a hallmark of novels set in the twenties and thirties, which came as a surprise to me. Can you explain?

A. The use of the automobile accident, or the vehicle as a symbol of violence for dramatic effect, is typical of works set in the twenties and thirties, when driving became more prevalent and cars were associated with certain freedoms. F. Scott Fitzgerald uses a car accident in
This Side of Paradise
and at the climax of
The Great Gatsby
. In
Appointment at Samarra
by John O’Hara, the car becomes a device for suicide. In 1936, Millay was in a car accident with Eugen in the driver’s seat, in which she was flung out of the vehicle and into a ravine. Afterward, she suffered permanent problems with her back, which led her to abuse prescription drugs. A car accident seemed a fitting device for illustrating the trouble that becomes the catalyst for events in
Fallen Beauty
.

Q. Edna St. Vincent Millay seems to have been especially close to her mother. Can you tell us more about Edna’s upbringing and family dynamics? Were her two sisters at all like her? And does she have any descendants through her sisters?

A. After her scandalous divorce from her husband in 1900 for gambling, Cora Millay raised her three daughters alone, often leaving the girls for long periods to work as a practical nurse. Cora insisted on the education and betterment of her girls in spite of their poverty, and she was their greatest champion and supporter. They worshipped her, and Vincent was said to enjoy her times of illness because Cora would stay home to take care of her.

Vincent’s sisters, Norma and Kathleen, were artists in their own rights. Norma was an actress in the theater and Kathleen was a writer, though she existed in Vincent’s shadow. Neither had any children.

Biographers have noted the extreme closeness of the women, saying that they often lived and socialized together, wrote poetry for one another, and crafted strange, almost adoring letters to one another. I found Vincent’s “love letters” to her mother both charming and unsettling.

Q. The three novels we’ve worked on together all explore the idea of redemption in one way or another. Is that a deliberate choice, or a theme that cropped up without your being aware of it?

A. I believe it was F. Scott Fitzgerald who said that writers have only one story to tell, so I suppose redemption is my story. My mission with Ernest Hemingway, Zelda Fitzgerald, and now Edna St. Vincent Millay is to show their humanity through their fascinating lives in order to honor them and remind readers of their work. I like to read novels that offer redemption in spite of hardship, so it’s only natural that I employ similar themes in my own fiction.

Q. You’ve now explored in your novels Ernest Hemingway, Zelda Fitzgerald, and Edna St. Vincent Millay—all of whom were contemporaries of one another. From your current perspective, are there any commonalities you see in their lives and work, or any conclusions we can draw—however tentatively—about their relevance for our own time?

A. Commonalities I’ve discovered are the way they used real people in their fiction, often without regard for the feelings of those being exploited, though all three approached this differently. Hemingway fictionalized his experiences after he’d had them. Zelda wrote autobiographically, often exposing her own personality flaws and insecurities. Millay was in love with love more than she was with the people who received her brand of love, and she used those heightened emotions to inspire her poetry. In each instance, the writings seem corrosive to those involved, though the work is often brilliant.

As a writer, I’m interested in understanding the creative mind, and just what is necessary to make great art. I find that question relevant to any time. Stories are what help us make sense of and empathize with one another. Perhaps by studying the lives of others, we can learn from their mistakes. Millay often wrote about nature and the cycle of the seasons in her poetry, and she used nature’s lessons to comfort and instruct herself in love. History has cycles, and examining the past helps us to anticipate the future.

Q. Are you ready to share the subject of your next novel?

A. The subject of my next novel is a very private gentleman from a long time ago who often felt isolated in spite of being surrounded by his loving family and accomplished contemporaries. I will not yet reveal his name, but I will say that through him, I will explore loneliness and, most certainly, redemption.

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. What was your overall reaction to reading
Fallen Beauty
?

2. How are both Edna St. Vincent Millay and Laura Kelley “fallen women”? How does each rebuild her life after her fall?

3. Discuss the changing dynamics between Laura and Edna over the course of the novel. How do they hurt and help each other? By the end, how would you define their relationship?

4. Discuss the many kinds of isolation in the novel. How much of it is self-imposed, and why do some characters choose isolation? How does community act to reinforce or counteract that isolation?

5. Laura is keeping her lover’s identity secret. Discuss the secrets that other people in town are keeping. Do Edna and Eugen keep any secrets?

6. Compare Laura’s relationship with her unidentified lover and Edna’s relationship with George Dillon.

7. What role does the statue of the Virgin play in the novel? Why do you think Erika Robuck included it?

8. Erika Robuck has said that
Fallen Beauty
is based on themes from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
The Scarlet Letter
. What do you think she means?

9. Talk about the various mothers in the book, and what we know about the choices they made. What kind of mother might Edna have made? What direction might Laura’s life have taken if she wasn’t a mother? Based on what the novel reveals about Cora, how do you think she helped shape Edna’s life?

10. Do you think, like Edna, that artists should seek to live fully in order to have profound experiences to inspire their art? What price might an artist pay in doing so? What price does Millay pay? What about Laura?

11. Attitudes about out-of-wedlock births have changed dramatically since the 1930s, when this novel takes place. Do you have stories to share, perhaps from your own family, about women whose lives were affected by a pregnancy outside of marriage? How different is your own attitude to those held in the thirties?

12. At the end of the novel, Edna calls Laura a “cruel beauty.” What do you think she means? How is Edna herself a cruel beauty?

13. What do you think you’ll remember about this novel long after you finish reading it?