Book: James Merrill: Life and Art

YaleNews features works recently or soon to be published by members of the University community. Descriptions are based on material provided by the publishers. Authors of new books may forward publishers’ book descriptions to us by email.

YaleNews features works recently or soon to be published by members of the University community. Descriptions are based on material provided by the publishers. Authors of new books may forward publishers’ book descriptions to us by email.

James Merrill: Life and Art

Langdon Hammer, professor of English and chair of the Department of English

(Knopf)

This book is the first biography of the poet James Merrill (1926-1995). Merrill was born to privilege and high expectations as the son of Charles Merrill, the cofounder of the brokerage firm Merrill Lynch, and Hellen Ingram, a muse, ally, and antagonist throughout her son’s life. Wounded by his parents’ divorce, he was the child of a broken home. This is the story of a young man escaping, yet also reenacting, the energies and obsessions of those powerful parents. It is the story of a gay man inventing his identity against the grain of American society during the eras of the closet, gay liberation, and AIDS. 

After college at Amherst and a period of adventure in Europe, Merrill returned to the New York art world of the 1950s and began publishing poems, plays, and novels. In 1953, he fell in love with an aspiring writer, David Jackson. They made their life together in Connecticut and later in Greece and Key West. Among their interests was interacting with a Ouija board, which became a source of poetic inspiration for Merrill, culminating in his prizewinning work “The Changing Light at Sandover.”

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