Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family's Feuds [Hardcover]

This book is not just about the poet, it has a far wider range than that. It is about Emily Dickinson, her family and what happened to her work after she died. Emily lived next door to her brother, Austin, and her beloved sister in law, Sue. However, when Austin had an affair with Mabel Todd, it tore his family apart. Emily became a myth, in some ways, and her poetry used in a war of revenge between the 'Sue' camp and the 'Mabel' camp. This is a fascinating book, although some of the conclusions the author comes to are not completely substantiated. However, it is a very interesting read and I recommend it highly. As Emily is best known as a recluse, it was interesting to read some actual reasons why she might have lived like that, although I was not necessarily convinced completely by the authors arguments.

Ok, a short review.
The first half of this book is an intelligent, almost academic, study of Dickinson's life and poetry. The second half is a Heat magazine ready expose of the sexual shenanigans of her brother and his lover. This is followed by an account of the repercussions of this affair for Emily's legacy.
Brilliant!

A captivating, fascinating, meticulously researched, and revealing book. But almost as revealing of its author's predilections as of her subject. Of course, there is comparatively little in this long and involved book on the personal life of Emily herself. The book becomes a biography of those around Emily.

From time to time one has the suspicion that the author hangs far too heavy a weight on too slender a thread. This trend is most tedious when it is the result of some critical theory or `analysis' that Gordon indulges on a text or phrase in letter or verse, or some extrapolation of a detail of an event that seems to be wrested out of its natural place or significance.

She seems not to care that her biases for or against various protagonists are wholly undisguised and laboured almost to the point of monotony.

The book's peculiar thesis, its `revelation' - that Emily's reclusiveness was due to `illness' and the illness was epilepsy - is, despite the author's insistence, wholly unconvincing. One wonders why literary critics so often do not listen to the words of the writers they target!

None of the evidence presented for this notion seems to stand up. For example, the idea that Emily absconded in order not to reveal herself as an epileptic or in an epileptic seizure to her visitors does not fit the facts: the fact that she would share the company of visitors when she felt like doing so and the fact that if she did not feel like doing so she would not. If she didn't like the look of a caller she would stay away. If the caller was one whose company she enjoyed she would quickly put herself in their presence.

Again, the idea that the entire family conspired to conceal the nature of the `illness' seems to fit uneasily with the `revelation' Gordon makes that Emily actually records the condition by name and nature as `fitting' (in poem number 1317). But there seems no reason to believe that this poem tells us any more about Emily's `illness' than poem 121, 307, 1540 or any of the numerous other poems in which this little word appears. This is a particularly exasperating instance of the author's imaginative `exegesis' of texts.

Poem 1317 (the one that refers to `fitting') seems to anticipate an expected and hitherto unknown experience. The idea presented is strongly suggestive of an expectation of news of the death of a friend, long feared, now come; the expectation of such news (the poem seems to suggest) maybe harder to endure than the news itself; the choice of terms and capitalization in the last stanza would be typical of the way ED would refer to death: `The Trying on the Utmost/The Morning it is New...'. In these circumstances `a Dismay' and `a Despair' are `Fitting' responses, but the expectation that `it is Due' may be `harder' to endure that the actual occurrence of the event: the `knowing it is Here'. This poem was written in 1874, the year her father died (on the morning of June 16). Its horizon does not fit the circumstances of her father's death but its subject may. (Compare the obvious death theme in poems 1314 and 1315.)

In this connection - of Emily's suggested 'epilepsy' - Gordon makes much of glycerine. It appears that there in no evidence to suppose glycerine had ever been considered an active ingredient in any medicinal treatment for epilepsy. The very idea seems bizarre! The use of glycerine in a medical concoction was and is, almost without exception, is to act as a carrier or vehicle for the active ingredient/s. Be that as it may; conclusively, Emily herself regarded her glycerine-containing medication as a sovereign remedy for a cough!

Emily Dickinson's reclusiveness was her freedom - 'The soul selects her own society/then shuts the door'.