Review by Choice Review
This brief, matter-of-fact biography and literary study of Caroline Gordon (1895-1981), the wife of Allen Tate, discusses her Kentucky childhood; the extended family she attempted as an adult to re-create; her education at Bethany College, West Virginia; her series of male mentors--her father, Tate, Professor Gay at Bethany College, and Ford Madox Ford; the debts and the roving and hospitable Tate life-style; her writing problems; and her difficulty balancing her work with home and maternal responsibilities. Makowsky sketches the Tates' friendship with, among others, Robert Lowell, Katherine Anne Porter, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, Maxwell Perkins, and William Faulkner. The author of nine novels and two short-story collections, Gordon was distressed that her reputation sank as her husband's rose; however, she was to become an outstanding teacher of fiction writing. If Gordon and Tate seem ever so slightly off-stage, this is nonetheless an admirable attempt to place a noted writer back into literary history. Contains notes, index, photos, and preface, but no bibliography. Useful for literature and women's studies libraries. Ann Waldron's Close Connections (CH, Feb '88) virtually omits Gordon's work but is much richer and more detailed on her life and her friends. The chapter on Gordon in Three Catholic Writers of the Modern South by Robert H. Brinkmeyer Jr. (CH, Nov '85) focuses on her novels. -J. Overmyer, The Ohio State University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
