Monday, January 23, 2017

Taylor Caldwell and her Writing




I had pulled the Jess Stearn book, The Search for a Soul: Taylor Caldwell's Psychic Lives, (1973) from my book shelf a bit ago, as I had done a FB post about author, Taylor Caldwell.  In Stearn's book, I had to smile and appreciate this, especially as a native Californian.  In a discussion with Caldwell, he asked her if she wanted to be hypnotized. She answered, "If anybody can manage it."  He said, "If they can’t do it in California, it can't be done anywhere."  She replied, "And why California, pray?"  With laughter, he said, "The atmosphere is so electric out there that even the people think they're spirits."
Taylor Caldwell's writing intrigues me. I'll always remember a TV interview she did back in the late 1950s, in which she spoke of not knowing where her ideas came from and that she felt as if she was doing "automatic" typing, as if a "Presence" (what she called it) guided her fingers. She often claimed that she had no idea how the facts within her books came to her. It was especially evident in her book, Dear and Glorious Physician, Later in a book by Jess Stearn, she talked of the "Presence," who communicated with her. She was also known to be psychic. That TV interview, which I watched with my Dad, has always stuck with me--it fascinated me then, and now. Part of the reason may be that I've always believed in past lives, and contact with the other side, and having some psychic ability myself, makes it easier to understand.


  ~Linda