Book Reviews: May 2008 Archives

Familiar Spirits is Alison Lurie's 2001 memoir of two men with whom she was friends for nearly 40 years– celebrated poet James Merrill, and his partner David Jackson. According to Lurie, the young Jackson was as talented as the unpublished Merrill. As the years wear on, however, Merrill attains fame and the highest of literary honors while Jackson's novels are regularly rejected by publishers. Frustrated, Jackson retreats, ceasing his literary aspirations beyond the Ouija-board collaborations which result in Merrill's The Changing Light at Sandover. As he slowly and then suddenly becomes a shell of his former self, Jackson seeks solace in impersonal sex and substances of abuse, earning Merrill's complaint: "...He doesn't realize, he doesn't think– he doesn't use his mind anymore. And you know, if you don't, it's like any muscle, it atrophies." Merrill, for his part, later falls in love with Peter Hooten, rendered by Lurie as a shallow clone of Merrill's younger self, selfishly intent on keeping Merrill from Jackson and the friends they share.

I was struck by much in this account– the utter destruction sown amongst a once-loving couple, the decades-long sacrifice of Merrill's creative energies to the Ouija board, Lurie's acute descriptions of the fabrics and colors of clothing worn by her subjects– and especially by the candor whereby Lurie paints a portrait that is both love letter and character assassination. Her tale is tender like a bruise, displays great affection and yawning disappointment, is as complicated as only old friends can be. One has the clear sense that the heartbreak of "Jimmy and David" was not only their own, but was felt by many. In the end, Lurie questions whether Merrill's estimable body of work is worth the price he and those close to him paid in life. This is the harshest of critiques, plausible and relevant only because of the obvious quality of Lurie's friendship, and the more damning therefore.