With the publication of her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers, all of twenty-three, became a literary sensation. With its profound sense of moral isolation and its compassionate glimpses into its characters' inner lives, the novel is considered McCullers' finest work, and an enduring masterpiece. At its center is the deaf-mute John Singer, who beco With the publication of her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers, all of twenty-three, became a literary sensation.

This chapter uses the tomboy characters from Carson McCullers' novels The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and The Member of the Wedding to help gain a more complete conceptualization of what it means to be a tomboy. The primary focus of these conceptualizations is based around issues of age.

With its profound sense of moral isolation and its compassionate glimpses into its characters' inner lives, the novel is considered McCullers' finest work, and an enduring masterpiece. At its center is the deaf-mute John Singer, who becomes the confidant for various types of misfits in a Georgia mill town during the 1930s. Each one yearns for escape from small-town life. When Singer's mute companion goes insane, Singer moves into the Kelly house, where Mick Kelly, the book's heroine (loosely based on McCullers), finds solace in her music. Brilliantly attuned to the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition, and with a deft sense for racial tensions in the South, McCullers spins a haunting, unforgettable story that gives voice to the rejected, the forgotten, and the mistreated--and, through Mick Kelly, to the quiet, intensely personal search for beauty. I knew nothing about this book at all. Well, except for the title, I’d definitely heard the title before – but I would have bet money the book was written by a man and that it was bad romance novel, at least, that would have been my best guess.

Instead, this is now perhaps one of my all-time favourite American novels. It can be compared without the least blush of embarrassment with Steinbeck at his best and Harper Lee out killing mocking birds – and there are many, many points of comparison betw I knew nothing about this book at all. Well, except for the title, I’d definitely heard the title before – but I would have bet money the book was written by a man and that it was bad romance novel, at least, that would have been my best guess. Instead, this is now perhaps one of my all-time favourite American novels. It can be compared without the least blush of embarrassment with Steinbeck at his best and Harper Lee out killing mocking birds – and there are many, many points of comparison between all three writers. This one has completely captivated me – and in ways I had not expected to be captivated. My very dear friend Nell and I were chatting one day about Calvino’s idea of the books one might write and how these ought to fit into an imaginary bookcase – the short version of his idea being, what books would you like your own book to be beside on an imaginary bookshelf?

Anyway, in the very next email from Nell there appeared a list of books – one of which was this one. I went to the library to see if I could find it, and then to some second hand bookshops around and about – but with no luck. Well, six months or so later and now I’ve read it.

And god I can’t begin to tell you how glad I am. The title is actually the perfect title for this book, but that is only true after you have read it – it is actually a remarkably bad title for the book before you have read it. I would not be surprised if 999 readers in a thousand would think that this would be a story about unrequited love.

That this might just be a melancholy story about a protagonist, let’s call him Mr Sadsack, who has spent his life looking for the perfect partner, but she is terribly allusive and although he sometimes despairs that he will ever find her no one reading this imaginary novel called ‘The Heart is a Lonely Hunter’ doubts that in the end our nice wee man will finally end up with his perfect partner. Although the title might make you think the book is about this sort of thing, it is about nothing like this at all.

I guess I could say that the book has grand themes about ‘what is wrong with The South’ – and that might make you form images in your mind of the inhuman treatment of black Americans in the southern states of America and the struggle to end segregation and a terrible legal system based on discrimination. And although you would be closer to the truth, it would still not be quite the book you might expect it to be. And if I said that it has themes concerning the subjugation of labour and how the economic system is sustained by creating the conditions by which the working classes are convinced of their fundamental inferiority so they do nothing to remove their fetters – and that the heart that seeks freedom is also a lonely hunter – all this would be true too, to a point, and not true beyond that point. There are parts of this book that made me think about Chomsky’s political writings and how dreadfully long the truth has been known about oppression and exploitation and how dreadfully long it has been clear what needs to be done. And that this too is the part of the American tradition that is spoken of, if at all, only in whispers; for don’t you know they’re talking about a revolution in whispers?

And if I said this book is about coming of age and the loss of innocence and how becoming an adult is actually a kind of death which we might long for, but where more is lost than it seems we could possibly dare to lose. If I said that the young woman in this who throughout the novel moves from being a child to becoming an adult (even without some of the possible horrible things that could have happened to her not actually eventuating) and yet she still basically loses everything by growing up – that would be mostly true too. And if I said that the book is about selfishness and how a moment’s decision or thoughtlessness can have horrible and irrevocable consequences – well, you might think you’ve read this book many times before – but again, I think you would be wrong.

Or I could say that this is a book about how we fundamentally misunderstand others – for doesn’t everyone misunderstand (project onto) John Singer, the deaf-mute who is more or less central to the story, whatever it is they need him to be? And isn’t Singer guilty of exactly the same human frailty with his own friend Antonapoulos? I thought it was terribly clever of her to have Singer bring Antonapoulos a projector – I thought she was nearly god-like as a writer at that point. What this book is really is a warning – not a warning that I might have written if I was to write a book like this – but a dark and terrible warning all the same.

Much darker and much more terrible than I think I would be capable of writing. No, I couldn’t write a book like this, and knowing that fills me with the deepest of regrets. Because this is also a much more optimistic book than I think I would be capable of writing too.

McCullers was 23 when she wrote this book – god, the thought of it fills me with awe. There are times when I would almost be prepared to believe that some people really do have older souls than the rest of us. It is as incomprehensible that a 23 year old could write this book as it is to believe that a woman of only 22 years could have written Pride and Prejudice.

And the warning? Well, that you can be absolutely right in what you believe, you can be standing on the side of righteousness and hold the truth shining in the palm of your hand and be doing everything in your power to improve the lot of your people – and you can still be only half human. You can walk in the ways of the great project of your time, you can know and you can spend your life seeking to show the ‘don’t knows’ so they too become part of the enlightened – and still you can be a damaged half a man. We are barely human without our dreams, but even when our dreams are not selfish and are directed at the greatest, the most noble of aspirations, we are still human, all too human.

The scene with the two old men, the one black and the other white, arguing through the night until dawn about the best way to liberate those who are oppressed and unaware is achingly sad. Because it is blindingly obvious to anyone with eyes that neither of these men could ever ‘mobilise the masses’.

Their dreams are as just and pure and true as they are barren and impotent and without substance. They shimmer and flap and torment them both – and thus is the human condition. Of all the characters I think perhaps Doctor Copeland is the most poignant. He effectively loses his own children because they do not live up to his dreams for them, his need for them to fight for his ideals.

This really is a key theme of the book, that dreams not only have the power to make us human, but can then over-power us and make us something other than human too. With the book being written at a time when Hitler was screaming at crowds of men standing with arms raised in salute this 23 year old woman had a much clearer vision of what was wrong with the world than I have ever been able to achieve. And she tells of this vision in the only way it can be told - in whispers. This really is a remarkable book – like nothing I imagined it to be and so much more than I could ever have hoped. She went there, didn't she.

As I read this novel, I could tell McCullers was setting the stage for something truly horrible to happen. And horrible things did happen. But they were never as bad as I thought they would be. Oh yes, she waited until the very end to rip my heart from my chest, throw it on the floor, stomp on it with her pumps and then throw it into the ocean to be eaten by sharks.

How does someone write a book this rich and wise and honest at 23? How does a young girl write s She went there, didn't she. As I read this novel, I could tell McCullers was setting the stage for something truly horrible to happen. And horrible things did happen. But they were never as bad as I thought they would be. Oh yes, she waited until the very end to rip my heart from my chest, throw it on the floor, stomp on it with her pumps and then throw it into the ocean to be eaten by sharks. How does someone write a book this rich and wise and honest at 23?

How does a young girl write such darkness, such tragedy? Like Flannery O'Connor, she suffered from illness from a young age. Maybe that is where her darkness came from? As you can probably glean from the title, all of the characters in this novel are haunted by the ghost of loneliness. Mick is a young girl on the brink of womanhood. Like many teenage girls, she feels isolated and misunderstood, but finds solace in two things: the company of a deaf mute boarder in her family home and her true passion, music.

Let me share a passage with you describing Mick's experience of hearing Beethoven's 3rd symphony for the first time: How did it come? For a minute the opening balanced from one side to the other.

Like a walk or a march. Like God strutting in the night.

The outside of her was suddenly froze and only that first part of the music was hot inside her heart. She could not even hear what sounded after, but she sat there waiting and froze, with her fists tight.

After awhile the music came again, harder and loud. It didn't have anything to do with God. This was her, Mick Kelly, walking in the daytime and by herself at night. In the hot sun and in the dark with all her plans and feelings.This music was her - the real plain her. I can't emphasize enough how much that passage resonated with me. The theme of loneliness, of isolation carries through each of the characters we meet as McCullers weaves her magical tale. John Singer is a deaf mute who has only one person in the world he calls a friend; a fellow deaf mute.

When his friend goes mad and is institutionalized, Singer no longer has his best friend by his side, he feels lost. Yet all of the folks in this small town are drawn to him. It's as if his deafness gives him a wisdom and understanding that others are sorely missing. Ironically, it's as if for the first time in their lives they feel the are being truly heard.

Copeland is a black physician in the south. He feels isolated from his family because they don't want to follow in his footsteps; his ambition has driven away his wife and children. He feels isolated because he's a black man in a predominately white town. The only white person he feels he can trust is Mr. Jake Blount is a drunk and a drifter. His rage and inability to relate to others exacerbates his feelings of loneliness.

Yet the presence of Mr. Singer soothes him. Biff Brannon is a cafe owner; people come in and out of his restaurant all day, yet he is alone. He and his wife have drifted apart even though they live in the same home; he has no children and no real friends, except for Mr. As I made my way through this journey, I hoped and hoped that things would turn out alright for these broken individuals. But things don't always turn out okay, and what you're left with is the harsh reality of life.

We all experience tragedy. We are, all of us, lonely hunters. ROCK AND ROLL It turns out that Miss McCullers did most of her great writing - most of her entire writing - before she was 30. Rock and roll! After 30 she was too busy having ghastly illnesses and marrying the same guy three or four times, and dodging invitations to a suicide pact from the guy she married all those times. So when she was 22 - I ask you!

- she wrote this first novel which is a stone American classic. I had heretofore thought that absorbing a ton of influences and developing a uniq ROCK AND ROLL It turns out that Miss McCullers did most of her great writing - most of her entire writing - before she was 30. Rock and roll! After 30 she was too busy having ghastly illnesses and marrying the same guy three or four times, and dodging invitations to a suicide pact from the guy she married all those times. So when she was 22 - I ask you!

- she wrote this first novel which is a stone American classic. I had heretofore thought that absorbing a ton of influences and developing a unique voice all by the age of 22 had only been done by Lennon/McCartney, Bob Dylan and Aubrey Beardsley, but Miss McCullers performs this remarkable feat too. Her surefootedness and precision are fantastic.

I'm so much in awe that I feel sick to my stomach. METAPHORS FOR GOD WHICH IS A METAPHOR ALREADY Onto the book itself. The inexorable gravitational pull of the metaphor in all our verbal dealings is something I have mentioned before, so that even someone like Raymond Carver's ironed-flat tell-it-like-it-is bargain-basement prose still spins in stories like So Much Water So Close to Home or A Small Good Thing brilliant metaphorical explorations of the various uncomfortable truths he shoves our way (the ignored corpse, the tasteless birthday cake). Perhaps we no longer love overly obvious metaphors (Little Red Riding Hood) - then again, perhaps we do (The Titanic). But they're very useful when you try to talk about God - in fact it's impossible to talk about God non-metaphorically insofar as God is Himself a metaphor. Fictionmakers love God metaphors - last year we had Ron Currie's disappointing 'God is Dead', a few years back we had the smart Jim Carey movie 'The Truman Show', further back we have other movies like 'Whistle Down the Wind' and 'Theorem'. In 'The Heart is a Lonely Hunter' John Singer, the deaf mute, the blank slate, the man who everyone talks to but who talks to nobody, stands for God.

People pour out their dreams, fears & hopes onto him and he scribbles the odd bland sentence in reply and they think he understands all and knows all. In fact - and here's Miss McCullers' audacious vicious twist - John Singer is himself completely obsessed with another deaf mute who he thinks of as almost Godlike but who in fact is a fat greedy imbecile confined to a mental asylum.

If we follow the metaphor along, not too fancifully I think, we find that Antonapoulos the idiot therefore represents the human race, with which God/Singer is fatally, poignantly, uselessly obsessed - Antonapoulos will never get well and was a sad mistake to begin with - so what does that say about the rest of us chickens? BRIEF ACTS OF APPALLING VIOLENCE Miss McCullers doesn't belabour this central conceit too much and she also throws in a ton of local knowledge but without smacking you upside the head every time like Annie Proulx does. And although this is a slow old read at times, a lot of doing nothing punctuated by brief acts of appalling violence (is this what the American South is like?), her sad sweet song of humanity is as beautiful a tune as I've heard all year. The heart is a lonely hunter and it can break in many different ways.

Mine broke several times while reading this stunning document of American life. What a rich and multifaceted story, and what a perfect complement to other giants of American storytelling of that era.

Just in the beginning, I saw traces of Steinbeck, most notably of his and, in the small town talk and the slightly comical marital scenes. But the tone quickly grew darker, and when African American life The heart is a lonely hunter and it can break in many different ways. Mine broke several times while reading this stunning document of American life. What a rich and multifaceted story, and what a perfect complement to other giants of American storytelling of that era. Just in the beginning, I saw traces of Steinbeck, most notably of his and, in the small town talk and the slightly comical marital scenes. But the tone quickly grew darker, and when African American life was introduced and put into contrast with the poor white characters, deeply rooted issues of racism, prejudice, exploitation and segregation took over.

I thought I would claim one of the most heartbreaking scenes to be the naive prayer of an old coloured person, whose hope in Jesus reflects the evil of racist society and its dominating gods perfectly: “I say to Him, “Jesus Christ, us is all sad coloured peoples.” And then he will place His holy hand upon our heads and straightway us will be white as cotton.” My heart broke for that desperate old person, whose religion is tainted by the hopeless situation of white supremacy, both in the spiritual and physical world. But it turned out to be a minor issue in the complex community of lonely hearts. My heart broke for the man who tries to change the lives of coloured people in his neighbourhood, exchanging belief in Jesus for belief in Marxism, and seeing the dogma of socialism as the natural conclusion of the teachings of Jesus.

He reminded me of the confused characters in, who get rid of their aggressive religion only to create another anti-creed, while mirroring their previous behaviour exactly. They have been trained to accept an authoritarian dogma even if they drop their supernatural faith in gods. Religious at heart, they have to follow a strong leader. There is no freedom of thought. But even though the socialist idea contains respect and hope for a better future for African Americans as well as for the poor masses of workers in general, that concept of life is bound to fail as well in a world that worships and perpetuates white power and corporate domination of capital.

My heart broke when a disillusioned socialist explains the brainwashing that takes place within society to make exploited victims of corporate thinking believe in “American freedom” while rattling their chains. “But it has taken a hell of a lot of lies to keep them from knowing”, he summarises.

But still he chooses to fight his African American counterpart instead of joining forces for real change. Each one according to his own lonely heart and creed. Trying to obtain justice in such a society can only lead to violence and continued abuse, as a heartbroken father experiences first hand when he tries to enter a white court to demand justice for his son, crippled for life in a prison. My heart broke when I read about the gratuitous violence against the young coloured men, and their lifelong suffering as a result. They have no voice to cry out for justice, and their fate is that of an in Ellison’s definition: they can’t be seen because nobody wants to see them. BLACK LIVES MATTER, one feels like yelling, taking a knee for change after a long history of abuse.

But we all know what power answers when one tries to make one’s voice heard. Money and exclusive club behaviour speak louder than justice.

My heart broke because of the inhumane suffering of poor children in a society that doesn’t care about healthcare, education and safety. Where children are allowed to recklessly carry weapons at the age of 7, there will be accidents that destroy several families. There is no statistical research needed to prove that general availability of guns has a negative effect on innocent people. When a child hurts another child with a firearm, both end up victims of an absurd interpretation of the “rights of man” to protect themselves. My heart broke for the young girl who dreams of becoming a pianist, but whose fate it is to live and suffer a poor girl’s life. Nella Larsen’s comes to mind - a life spent dreaming, without ever actually having a chance to follow one’s heart. My heart broke for the deaf mute man around whom the other characters circle like the spokes in a wheel.

People in his surroundings treat him like a god because his muteness allows them to give him the qualities they wish him to have. I bow to Carson McCullers for that perfect definition of a god: mute and therefore adaptable to our personal, private imagination! Only the mute’s obese and egocentric fellow mute friend can’t find anything godlike in him, of course, and he suffers as a result. The heart is a strange hunter as well. Some hearts are too broken to be mended, after all.

My heart broke because the contrast between fascism and democracy is as vividly tangible to me in our present times as it was to the characters in 1940, witnessing the rise of Hitler in Europe. When a young Jewish boy explains to his own horror that he was a fascist before he knew what Hitler did to Jews, it echoes what lures young impressionable people to accept and worship the power of a populist narcissist: “You know all the pictures of the people our age in Europe marching and singing songs and keeping step together. I used to think that was wonderful. All of them pledged to each other and with one leader. All of them with the same ideals and marching in step together.” The wish for unity in sameness is strong in religious and ideological communities around the world at all times, but occasionally it takes control of a whole generation, as in the 1930s. The scary revelation, to the boy himself, is the fact that it works so well.

He concludes that there is no time for personal ambition as long as fascism reigns in Germany. It is democracy against dictatorship, and all other issues are paling beside the great struggle of the time. My heart broke because it is true, but at the same time it is not. All the other characters still fight their own fights against racism, sexism, poverty and prejudice.

Life is too complicated for us to grasp, even when we are living it in a small town in America, powerless and helplessly alone with our pounding hearts. The heart is a lonely hunter, but we can share our heartfelt stories and hopefully develop some compassion for the hearts of others, learning to treat them with care and respect. For they keep pounding even when they are broken. It just hurts as hell. “Tread softly because you tread on my dreams!”.

I simply cannot get this book out of my head. Like most everyone else I am astounded that Carson McCullers was only 23 years old when she wrote this. Such wisdom and insight from someone so young is truly remarkable. And there are so many great reviews out there, I just could not stop reading them. A great many of them, as one might expect discuss the greater themes of this book and there can be no doubt that I too fell to pondering these many things as I thought about the world today.

I m I simply cannot get this book out of my head. Like most everyone else I am astounded that Carson McCullers was only 23 years old when she wrote this. Such wisdom and insight from someone so young is truly remarkable. And there are so many great reviews out there, I just could not stop reading them. A great many of them, as one might expect discuss the greater themes of this book and there can be no doubt that I too fell to pondering these many things as I thought about the world today. I mean just think about it: Racial inequality and discrimination Economic division of the classes Subjugation and objectification of women and minorities Social Injustice War Still I would like to talk for just a minute or two about another constant thread within this story and perhaps the best way to begin is to tell you about something that happened to me. Way too many years ago when I was still in the early stages of my career I got a promotion, one that I had worked hard to be considered for.

It was an important advancement for me. No longer was I only responsible for my own contribution but also for the output of others. As much as I wanted the opportunity to lead, once I actually got it, I was a nervous wreck. I’m sure my new boss sensed just how jangled I was and called me aside to have a little pow wow in his office. It was a good meeting and he quickly reviewed some of the tools that he believed would help me achieve my objectives, but mostly he stressed that he wanted me to focus on one skill that his observations told him I already possessed.

The skill of which he spoke was listening. He went on to add that far too many people forgot how to do it.

That people got so wrapped up in determining just how they were going to respond to someone or a given situation that they actually stopped hearing what was being said to them. If you want to succeed he said do not fall into this trap. Listen carefully and not just with your ears he said, but employ all of your faculties. If you can do this he assured me, everything else would fall into place. Well that particular job really did not work out so well for me and I soon moved on to a new opportunity with a different firm, but I never forgot that first pep talk.

Over the years that came and went I thought about it frequently and reminded myself often to focus more on what others had to say than on my own words. And not just professionally either, but at home and in other social situations. Wise words, that despite floundering on more than one occasion, have served me well these many years. It is also what our five main characters in this novel yearn for. Someone to listen to them.

For Mick, Jake, Biff and Dr. Copeland, that person was John Singer. Despite the fact that he was deaf and mute they all believed that he understood them and for Mick he even provided a way for her to listen to her beloved music. John Singer however, had lost his only audience when they took Antonapoulos away and even though he was never really sure how much of what he signed Antonapoulos actually understood, it did not matter. He too needed to be heard. There are so many layers to this story but through them all lay this need to be heard and to be understood. How ominous is it that I find myself reflecting on the art of listening just one week before Donald Trump becomes the President of the most powerful democratic nation in the world.

Is timeless, profound and a thing of rare beauty. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCuller's Portrait of the Faces Behind the Masks was chosen as a group read by for January, 2017. This is the third time McCuller's novel has been selected as a group read by 'The Trail,' making it the most read novel by members of the group which was founded in February, 2012. Thanks to a former goodreads friend, I've learned I am only gently mad. It was a relief to discover that. Because my self-ana The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCuller's Portrait of the Faces Behind the Masks was chosen as a group read by for January, 2017. This is the third time McCuller's novel has been selected as a group read by 'The Trail,' making it the most read novel by members of the group which was founded in February, 2012.

Thanks to a former goodreads friend, I've learned I am only gently mad. It was a relief to discover that. Because my self-analysis has been that I'm excessively obsessive when it comes to the love of books. After having taken his recommendation to read by, my soul is somewhat rested. However, there remains the fact I have, excuse me, had four copies of. I absolve myself for the first, it was a Bantam paperback picked up at the now defunct college bookstore, Malones. That paperback cost me lunch that day, even though at the time Krystal Hamburgers were only 25 cents apiece.

For those not familiar with Krystals, they are much akin to White Castle. They are little, square, and served on a steamed bun, grilled onions,smashed down onto the little thin patty, and given a squirt of cheap yellow mustard. There are still days when I've got to have a Krystal.

But they're not a quarter any more. My First Copy The paperback was read and re-read. Somewhere through the years, it vanished, perhaps the victim of a garage sale during a period I call my former life--BD, i.e. Before divorce.

I hope it least went for the cost of a Krystal, but I doubt it. Lonely Hunter was not the first McCullers I read. Professor O.B. Emerson, Professor Emeritus, Department of English, The University of Alabama introduced me to Ms. McCullers through. That one cost me a sack of Krystals, too. That's all right.

From my current waist line, it doesn't appear I missed too many meals. Emerson was a little banty rooster of a man, coal black hair, brilliantined to a shine that reflected the fluorescent lights of the class room. He considered McCullers essential to his curriculum in his Southern Literature course. From my first exposure to McCullers, I was hooked. The little man with the loud colored bow ties, outfitted in seersucker suits and a sporty straw hat made me a convert for life. After graduation, Professor Emerson and I would converse via telephone from time to time.

He was gleeful to learn that had been made into a movie for television in 1974. I heard him click on his set and the ice cubes rattle in his Wild Turkey, his bourbon of choice.

In my mind, I could see him with his books shelved floor to ceiling, all arranged, not alphabetically, but by coordinating colors of dust jackets. It was an aesthetic matter.

I didn't understand it, and I took art. He was less impressed with the big screen adaptation of in 1974. Both were novels by Hartselle, Alabama author. Professor Emerson was a big Huie fan. He shared one thing in common with Huie.

Both had received death threats from the Klan and had crosses burned in their yards--Huie, because of his novel, Emerson because he had Justice Thurgood Marshall over for dinner one night. It was Professor Emerson's proudest moment in life. He gloried in telling the tale. Since Professor Emerson introduced me to Carson McCullers, this review is for him. He died while I was out of town, some years ago. I missed his memorial service.

I don't even know where he is buried. But I owe him much, because he imprinted me with a love of Southern literature. In some ways, I picture his life as one of loneliness, not unlike the characters you frequently encounter in the works of McCullers. But, I digress. I was supposed to be telling you about The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. I'm getting there. We Southerners are prone to digression.

It's a manner of story telling in these parts. My next copy of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is the edition pictured. The jacket features one of my favorite photographs of McCullers. My Second Copy The second copy was justified by love. Love justifies a lot.

I just gave that edition away out of love for two of whom I call my honorary children, William and Nancy Roane. William is the director of a short film called 'Old Photograph.'

It should premiere this spring. I play a hard shell Baptist type preacher in charge of a home for wayward girls.

The screenplay was a collaboration between William and his younger sister, Nancy. I think they are two of the most brilliant and engaging kids I've met. He's going through the Fulbright rounds, a senior at Oberlin, and she's in her first year at Oberlin.

Nancy is a natural writer. Her story, 'Everyone knew Ruby,' has been published. I've read it. Everyone only thought they knew Ruby.

They found out they didn't when she committed suicide. It is William's next film project.

I asked if either of them had read McCullers. The central theme in Nancy's story echoes that in McCuller's The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. While celebrating Christmas and New Year's with them at a lunch, a few days ago, I presented them with my copy, inscribed with two quotes from the novel. “The most fatal thing a man can do is try to stand alone.” The other was, “All we can do is go around telling the truth.” Then I encouraged the Roane siblings to give the Coen Brothers a run for their money.

I think they can. My third copy of Hunter is a beautiful slip-cased reproduction of the first edition from the former First Editions Library. I understand that Easton bought the company and that as copies in the series are sold, they will not be reprinted.

Find this one, if you can. It's just a beautiful book to hold in your hands. The Third Copy Finally, I had to have the complete McCullers. I highly recommend The Fourth Volume of McCullers on my Library Shelf Although biographical influence is often scorned as a means to literary criticism, I don't think it is possible to fully explore some works without some knowledge of the life of the author. That's definitely true of Hunter. Was born February 19, 1917, in Columbus, Georgia, the daughter of Lamar and Marguerite Waters Smith. Her birth name was Lula Carson Smith.

She dropped the Lula around 1930. Her life was relatively short. Having a bout of rheumatic fever during her high school years affected her health until her death caused by a cerebral hemorrhage on September 29, 1967.

Her life was spent in fits of creativity marred by acute episodes of depression. A good portion of her life was spent in a wheel chair.

It does not come as a surprise, when you become familiar with McCuller's life that her literary works were filled with the unloved, the outcasts, and misfits. Nor is it any surprise that her works revolve around desperate attempts to form loving relationships and those relationships in which the lover's pursuit is one that remains unrequited. Carson began taking piano lessons at an early age.

Her original plan was to become a concert pianist. You can find this experience as the basis for her story, Wunderkind. McCullers was a wunderkind until struck with rheumatic fever at the age of fifteen. She gamely continued through school to graduate at age seventeen.

She intended to go to Juliard. She never made it there. She began taking creative writing classes at Columbia while working menial jobs. While in New York she met Reese McCullers whom she fell in love with too quickly and they married. Divorced once.

Married twice. He was an alcoholic, prone to depression and ultimately committed suicide, wanting Carson to die with him. She refused, although she had attempted to commit suicide on an earlier occasion, alone. Shortly after their first marriage, the McCullers traveled to Charlotte, North Carolina, where Reese found work.

There, McCullers wrote Hunter. It was published in 1940. McCullers was twenty-three.

She was a literary wunderkind. The book was an instant best seller, hitting the top of the market in sales. Critical reception was mixed. McCuller's title comes from in her poem 'The Lonely Hunter,' found in. MacLeod wrote: 'O never a green leaf whispers, where the green-gold branches swing: O never a song I hear now, where one was wont to sing.

Here in the heart of Summer, sweet is life to me still, But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill.' The setting is a small mill town in Georgia.

McCuller's initially entitled the novel, 'The Mute,' as the central character is John Singer, a deaf mute, who can truly only communicate with his room mate, a Greek named Spiros Anastopolous. They have been companions for ten years, Singer working as a silver engraver in a jewelry store, and Anastopolous working in his cousin's fruit stand. John and Spiros can communicate through signing. However, Spiros becomes sick, a changed man, engaging in irrational behavior. His cousin commits him to an insane asylum.

Singer is left alone, unable to communicate with anyone. With his companion gone, Singer moves into the Kelly family's boarding house.

Mick is a gawky adolescent, unable to recognize the changes occurring in her body, unable to recognize what adolescents haven't yet done, the initiation into sex. She wants to be a musician, she wants to play the piano. Essentially she wants anything that she doesn't believe she can achieve until she begins to compose her own songs. It is with Mick that McCullers addresses the universal awkwardness of the coming of age. Singer no longer makes his meals in his apartment. Now, he takes his meals at Biff's New York Cafe. Biff's wife Alice dies and he is now alone.

Jake Blount is a customer at Biff's. He is a labor organizer, an agitator. He is a Marxist.

Blount drinks to excess. After meeting Singer, he speaks to him at length, incapable of understanding that Singer can't talk back.

After becoming too drunk to navigate his way home, Singer walks him back to his room for company and to give Blount a place to stay for the night. Copeland is a black physician, disappointed that his children have not become educated but have been satisfied to take the menial jobs available to blacks in the South at that time. He is angry at whites, with the exception of John Singer who had once offered him the kindness of lighting his cigarette.

Singer is the only white man who has ever shown him courtesy of any kind. The novel shifts from point of view, character by character.

But Singer is always the central figure in McCuller's novel. Biff, Jake, Copeland, and Mick, all begin to regularly come to Singer's room where they confide their deepest feelings to him. Each feels that he understands what they say and feel. But he does not, nor is he able to communicate his longing for his former companion. Each of the characters who rotate through Singer's room wear a mask, rarely disclosing what they feel to anyone. It is only to Singer that they reveal their true feelings.

Who can Singer tell? Singer is almost the priest in the confessional. While each of the four have found their confidant, Singer grows more alone as he visits Spiros in the asylum, only to find that his friend has become more seriously ill with each visit. Spiros' death will be Singer's unraveling. Oddly, as Singer unravels, the confessing quartet begin to turn to others and bring them into their lives. Biff turns to his wife's sister, Lucille.

Blount and Copeland find a common cause in discussing issues of race, politics, and class struggle. Mick and a young Jewish boy, Harry Minowitz, find first love after a swim in a nearby pond. [None understand that after Singer learns his friend Spiros has died in the asylum why Singer would ever commit suicide by shooting himself in the chest. Each thought they knew him so well and that he knew each of them. ] In, wrote, 'Perhaps the best conversationalist is the man who helps others to talk.'

John Singer did that very well. In the years since its debut, Hunter has steadily grown in stature for what is now recognized as its brilliance. The novel is number seventeen on The Modern Library's list of 100 greatest novels of the twentieth century. Time Magazine listed it on its 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005., in reviewing McCuller's first novel wrote: 'Out of the tradition of Gertrude Stein's experiments in style and the clipped, stout prose of Sherwood Anderson and Ernest Hemingway comes Carson McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

With the depression as a murky backdrop, this first novel depicts the bleak landscape of the American consciousness below the Mason-Dixon line. Miss McCullers' picture of loneliness, death, accident, insanity, fear, mob violence and terror is perhaps the most desolate that has so far come from the South.

Her quality of despair is unique and individual; and it seems to me more natural and authentic than that of Faulkner. Her groping characters live in a world more completely lost than any Sherwood Anderson ever dreamed of.

7loader V1 3 By Orbit30 Corporation. And she recounts incidents of death and attitudes of stoicism in sentences whose neutrality makes Hemingway's terse prose seem warm and partisan by comparison.' So, Professor Emerson, this review is dedicated to you. I don't have any Wild Turkey, but forgive me as I lift this shot of Gentleman Jack in my toast to you. Yet, as McCullers said,“There was neither beginning nor end to this sorrow.

Nor understanding. How can the dead be truly dead when they still live in the souls of those who are left behind?” Amen. EDIT: This novel was selected as a group read for the goodreads group 'On the Southern Literary Trail' for April, 2012. It is shared for the benefit of the group, and, hopefully to draw interest to a novel that deserves to be read. Mike Sullivan, Founder and Moderator References 1. The Carson McCullers Project 2. The Lonely Hunter from by 4.

A Review of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Richard Wright 5. A Timeline of the Life of Carson McCullers.

Let's get this out of the way. Garima, Dolors and Aubrey's gorgeously written tributes to the spirit of this American classic have pretty much made the task of composing additional paeans unnecessary. So my review is only going to be a shoddily-disguised justification for upgrading an initial 4-star rating to a deserving 5-star one. No I didn't choose to accord that previously withheld star bowing to a monster named 'peer pressure'. The actual worth of a work of literature can be measured by the Let's get this out of the way.

Garima, Dolors and Aubrey's gorgeously written tributes to the spirit of this American classic have pretty much made the task of composing additional paeans unnecessary. So my review is only going to be a shoddily-disguised justification for upgrading an initial 4-star rating to a deserving 5-star one. No I didn't choose to accord that previously withheld star bowing to a monster named 'peer pressure'.

The actual worth of a work of literature can be measured by the power it wields over a reader once the last page has been turned. And this is exactly that kind of narrative which refuses to let go even after you have managed to extricate yourself from its emotional chokehold. I had believed the specter of oppressive gloom to be well and truly exorcized once I closed the book a few days ago, comfortable in the certainty that other pending items on the to-read list will monopolize my attention soon. And yet that didn't happen.

As much as I appreciated falling under the spell of Shirley Jackson's dark and disqueting 'Hill House' or revelled in Erica Jong's tongue-in-cheek brazenness, a sort of inexplicable wistfulness came over me last night. I longed for the tedium of that nameless, ramshackle town in the deep south and that familiar all-consuming sense of doom shared by its inhabitants.

I craved once again to listen to the conflicted inner voices of the forlorn quartet who sought to purge the spiritual turmoil brewing within them through the companionable silence of a kindred spirit. 'She wondered what kind of music he heard in his mind that his ears couldn't hear. And what kind of things he would say if he could talk. Nobody knew that either.' The hauntingly plaintive notes of their emotional desolation reach me no more; the dirge has played itself over after all. But their untameable restlessness has seeped into my being unknowingly.

I resent this inability to wrench myself away from the world of Mick Kelly, Biff Brannon, Jake Blount, Doctor Copeland and John Singer. I cherish it at the same time. And I want to live in exile in the company of these solitary outcasts, perpetually engaged in the futile quest of disentangling the mess of existence.

There are layers upon layers to this book that reveal themselves once the post-reading rumination phase begins. At the time of its publication, the deep south was carving out an existence around a kind of fragile status quo almost in the same manner as South Africa under Apartheid was. My mind still fresh from MLK's autobiography, thus, Doctor Copeland's unwavering faith in a 'strong, true purpose' appeared as a kind of foreshadowing of the rise of a Martin Luther King a decade and a half later, a veritable leader fated to help instill a fierce sense of self-esteem in the members of a disinherited community and consequently save an entire nation from a dangerous identity crisis. McCullers's depiction of race relations is imbued with a kind of subliminal prophetic certainty that the already tottering edifice of discrimination and injustice cannot possibly stand for long. 'For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.' - Virginia Woolf And the above quote from is the final and most definitive reason for awarding this enduring classic 5 stars.

It's not just McCullers's voice which rings out in mournful solidarity with the disaffection and thwarted aspirations of the central characters in this novel. Rather it's the imperfectly harmonized chorus of voices of an entire generation belting out a sombre refrain and asking for release, for freedom from countless indignities, for the assurance of a life worth living. '.in a swift radiance of illumination he saw a glimpse of human struggle and of valor. Of the endless fluid passage of humanity through endless time. And of those who labor and of those who-one word-love.

His soul expanded. But for a moment only. For in him he felt a warning, a shaft of terror.

Between two worlds he was suspended.' The lonely hunters may have bid me farewell already but they have shared with me their wisdom and courage and taught me the language of their despair and feeble hope. Herefrom I draw my solace. Artistically formed constellations hold the promise of beauty and solidarity but Loneliness is that single star I once spotted on a dark moonless night. It shows the right way, they said. That caused a profound sadness in me for reasons unknown. What did he understand?

Where was he headed? What did he want? There are definitions galore for life and each one of them carries the trace of bittersweet truth which is har Artistically formed constellations hold the promise of beauty and solidarity but Loneliness is that single star I once spotted on a dark moonless night. It shows the right way, they said. That caused a profound sadness in me for reasons unknown. What did he understand?

Where was he headed? What did he want? There are definitions galore for life and each one of them carries the trace of bittersweet truth which is hard to embrace and harder to relinquish when the hunt for some meaning in the sea of vagueness is the last resort in front of us. With every new book I read, I try to gather the fragile pieces of such eternal verities which ends up in taking me two steps ahead and one step backward en route to solving a nameless, cosmic riddle. May be I imagine it all and one day I’ll find myself at the starting point with all the curiosities and confusions intact but till such eventuality occur, I take solace in the stories of all those hunters who were lonely in their expedition; in the stories of all those who knew.

A cross between an exquisite dream and a harrowing nightmare, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter starts off like a simple tale celebrating the humdrum of everyday life, but as the pages of this novel treads the path of a new home, a different alley, a faraway Southern town and lives of four different characters, it excavates the treasure chest of voices buried in the reclusive hearts of those who were born and silenced during an inopportune time. The people dreamed and fought and slept as much as ever. And by habit they shortened their thoughts so that they would not wander out into the darkness beyond tomorrow. And yet this darkness brings out the moments of epiphany for youthful Mick Kelly. Music is her elixir of survival but she can’t hold it in her hands for an indefinite time.

Darkness brings Dr. Copeland face to face with his relentless disappointments. His struggle against injustice, indifference and submissiveness is in a dire need for a guardian angel. Darkness evokes the horrific illusions for Jake Blount. He surrenders himself to work and alcohol to change the vision of a dreaded future and try to retain the scattered shreds of hope residing in his beloved books by Marx and Veblen. Darkness opens the tacit eyes of Biff Brannon who is able to see and observe more clearly the fogged image of confessional souls coming and going through his ever welcoming diner door. There was no noise or conversation, for each person seemed to be alone.

The mutual distrust between the men who were just awakened and those who were ending a long night gave everyone a feeling of estrangement. This rampant distrust and loneliness makes other enter through a different but familiar door. The door leading to John Singer’s room. He becomes the pacifier to shun that ominous feeling of estrangement. A deaf-mute who is assumed to be there for everyone.

His silence offer the much awaited consolation for the desperate sounds. He’s a supposed messiah of happy times and a listener of the forlorn. A sort of mythical mirror which reflects everything one wants to see and successively turns everyone blind to its truth.

In the end, it all culminates into an unforeseen tragedy where one almost wishes to rewrite everything to save everyone from their ill-fate. If only such things are possible in life and literature.

And this is where a reader comes into the picture. This is where a reader needs to stop and mull over the futilities and capabilities of their existence. This is where a reader realizes that being a person of solitary disposition is not always a matter of choice but sometimes ensues from an ironic stroke of time and destiny. This is where yours truly understood that Loneliness doesn’t go away by receiving few moments of compassion but quietly stay somewhere as a faithful companion and emerges when the weakness of human nature results into fateful accidents.

This is what McCullers showed me and this is what I know at the risk of being slightly right but not entirely wrong. Carson’s writing, all I want to say that her prose touched the rustic chords of my anxious heart and composed an extraordinarily moving symphony which is still resonating in my ears and proved it once again that there is no dearth of noise in this world but only few things are worth listening to. Windows Server 2003 32 Bit Sysprep Download. There is no dearth of words in books but only few are worth reading. In this (she) knew a certain strong and holy gladness.

And here we are in the world full of probabilities, reasoning with the unreasoned existence, awestruck at the purposelessness of life, at actions with no consequences, at endings with no more re-beginnings, once we die, we die. Alone is our planet and so are we, some of us are more alone than the rest though, some of us choose to be so, for some it’s the only option. And it is the tale of chosen and of those who chose! A tale of love and of whom who seek love, of abandoned and espoused, of isolat And here we are in the world full of probabilities, reasoning with the unreasoned existence, awestruck at the purposelessness of life, at actions with no consequences, at endings with no more re-beginnings, once we die, we die. Alone is our planet and so are we, some of us are more alone than the rest though, some of us choose to be so, for some it’s the only option. And it is the tale of chosen and of those who chose!

A tale of love and of whom who seek love, of abandoned and espoused, of isolated and integrated, of alienated and assimilated, and of whom, who were left alone! Sing for the South, the Nation, the World Entire, for they know not what they do. Sing for the man with the matted suit and pearl-rimmed tongue, the rustic know how and the fine edged intellectual gait, the words, the words, always the words. He walks with his heart bound in a lexicon and pinned upon his mouth, and where he walks he sees the terrible secret and cannot keep silent. Long ago he stripped from himself his measure of complacent comfort, and now he wanders in a naked anger, ever seekin Sing for the South, the Nation, the World Entire, for they know not what they do.

Sing for the man with the matted suit and pearl-rimmed tongue, the rustic know how and the fine edged intellectual gait, the words, the words, always the words. He walks with his heart bound in a lexicon and pinned upon his mouth, and where he walks he sees the terrible secret and cannot keep silent. Long ago he stripped from himself his measure of complacent comfort, and now he wanders in a naked anger, ever seeking those who would understand. He is a creature of self-efficient worlds, bound on the edge of drunken madness on one and a host of academic truths on the other, a jester screaming out the obscene reality to their blind and mulish audience.

Sing for him, one who lives on a crust of a dream and pays the daily horror of a price for dreaming. Sing for the girl with the sulky dress and responsive love, the family blood and the soul-lined melody, the notes, the notes, always the notes. There is a stamp of genius on the muddled obscurity of her thoughts, and where she listens she hears the world and cannot contain it all on her own. In the beginning her time was her own, but now she must sell out the insides of her self for the keeping of kith and kin, all for a broken back, a broken brother, a broken skull. She is a victim of the monetary exchange, bled by chance of birth and circumstance of her gorgeous instinct, a self-made muse without the tools for flight. Sing for her, one who would offer life untold bounties and wondrous insight, if only it would let her.

Sing for the doctor with the cultured plan and possessed ideals, the living symbol and the lived out potential, the means, the means, always the means. He would cure far more than the broken bones and congested lungs of his people, lead them to a higher ground born of wisdom and of faith bred on his affirming standards. His effort has been unceasing, both the gains and the gaps, the bridges built to sophistication on the burning sacrifice of those once stretched towards empathy, and always, always the enemy above and his beloved ones below. He is a priest of a creed that kills and cures in equal measure, and the promised land crawls with the vipers of inherited skin. Sing for him, one who grasped for the light with every breath in his body and found it only when it ran him through. Sing for the bearded one with the open door and contemplative eye, the mindful heart and quiet aesthetic. He out of all of these souls has found the safest harbor, and with this truth in his essence seeks to parcel this refuge out in any form acceptable.

And thus there is about them an aura of a society spread enigma, as strange and mixed a creature as his own sensibilities of the gendered division, but one that he cannot for all his sympathetic overtures solve to the level of comfort he has found in solitude. He understands as fully as is possible, and doles out from his position of privilege the small pieces of acceptance to a world that bewilders him with its lack of his hard won kindness. Sing for him, a lighthouse in the dark neither fully submerged nor fully transcendent, and the pinpoint of bright bringing a few of the oceans of teeming wretches home. Do not sing for the deaf-mute.

Say, and say, and weep, for talk is cheap to those blessed with easy spending, as cheap as the breath enters the blood and as vital for the ones oublietted by their different drums, and as heartbreakingly necessary. Say, and say, and pray that it will be enough. Sing for this land of ground out lives and barbed wire mentalities, the twenty-three year old woman who seventy three years ago saw and saw and wrote to stave off the seeing, the seventy three years that have passed with both so little and so much to show for it, the history that rhymes. Sing for the social organism of humanity and those who have been spliced off through no fault of their own, doomed to the rest of their days in the land of the free and the home of the insidiously amputated existence. And by habit they shortened their thoughts so that they would not wander out into the darkness beyond tomorrow.Sing for those locked in by life, for they know not what they do, less of what they speak. But if they listen, and learn to add their voices to the chorus of the common good and human soul, oh.

There may be hope yet. I have read 8 of Carson McCullers books, and like the rest of the world I agree that this is her best work. It sets a tone that I found prevailing in almost all of her books, a sad and melancholy outlook on life, and being a young and impressionable eccentric in 1940's small town Georgia, I can understand that. This is her masterpiece. It was made into a 1968 movie starring Alan Arkin and it is firmly placed in the list of best American novels.

4.5 stars Side note: Sunday, Feb. 19, 2017, will mark I have read 8 of Carson McCullers books, and like the rest of the world I agree that this is her best work. It sets a tone that I found prevailing in almost all of her books, a sad and melancholy outlook on life, and being a young and impressionable eccentric in 1940's small town Georgia, I can understand that. This is her masterpiece. It was made into a 1968 movie starring Alan Arkin and it is firmly placed in the list of best American novels. 4.5 stars Side note: Sunday, Feb. 19, 2017, will mark the 100th Birthday of Carson McCullers.

I may come back and give this four stars, but for now I can't. I first started this book maybe two years ago. I got about 100 pages into it and stopped.

I didn't stop because I disliked it. Rather, it seemed at the time a natural result from the inertia and momentum of the book itself. Basically, I wasn't quite sure whether I had stopped or whether the book itself had simply stopped and I was just going along with it. I picked it up again because I've always had a nagging feeling about it, and bec I may come back and give this four stars, but for now I can't. I first started this book maybe two years ago. I got about 100 pages into it and stopped. I didn't stop because I disliked it.

Rather, it seemed at the time a natural result from the inertia and momentum of the book itself. Basically, I wasn't quite sure whether I had stopped or whether the book itself had simply stopped and I was just going along with it. I picked it up again because I've always had a nagging feeling about it, and because I hate leaving anything unfinished. And besides, the writing is very good, and there is quite a bit of promise in the book. Of course, all the promise turns out to be false, and that's pretty much the point. (Actually, I guess the point is not so much that the promise is false, but that it gets shut away.) The book is almost unrelentingly bleak. The main characters are all on the edge of despair.

There isn't much chance of any of it getting turned around. And, since a happy resolution is not in the cards, most novels would push the characters over the edge in some sort of cataclysm.

McCullers doesn't opt for that sort of showiness. Instead, she just further seals off each of her main characters from any possibility of genuine human contact.

This resolution is even sadder, but for me it makes for a less compelling novel. I've read reviews of people complaining that nothing happens in this book. That's not true. There are lots of great incidents: a riot, a young girl accidently shot in the head, a prisoner losing both of his feet to gangrene after being put in the hole during a freeze, etc. But there's no plot. It never feels like any of the incidents drive anywhere else.

And the wants of the characters don't lead to any of the incidents. It's almost like there is a complete disconnect. Similarly, because the characters are so unable to communicate with each other, there is also no possibility for drama. The characters kind of bounce off of each other from time to time, but they never actually interact.

And again, I think all of this is exactly according to plan. But, for me at least, this plan doesn't make for an enjoyable work.

And the bleak view of the world does not do much for me now. If I had read this book in my twenties, when i felt much more in tune with alienation for its own sake, I probably would have loved this book.

Even now, I might want to switch my review to four stars because I can see that this is very well done for what it is. But it's no longer for me. I read somewhere a long ago that tragedy was for adolescents, and that comedy was for grown-ups. I hate to think of myself as a grown-up, but over time I do seem to have lost some of my taste for this kind of despair. This debut novel from Carson McCullers blew me away. She was 23 — only 23!!

— when it was published in 1940, and her book is incredibly gorgeous and moving. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter follows a deaf man, John Singer, in a Georgia mill town in the 1930s. Singer is lonely after his one good friend, Spiros, is taken away to a mental hospital. Gradually, other people in the town come to regard Singer as a confidante, and we get involved in the lives of four people: tomboy Mick Kelly, who loves musi This debut novel from Carson McCullers blew me away. She was 23 — only 23!! — when it was published in 1940, and her book is incredibly gorgeous and moving. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter follows a deaf man, John Singer, in a Georgia mill town in the 1930s.

Singer is lonely after his one good friend, Spiros, is taken away to a mental hospital. Gradually, other people in the town come to regard Singer as a confidante, and we get involved in the lives of four people: tomboy Mick Kelly, who loves music and hopes to someday escape the town; diner owner Biff, who is in an unhappy marriage; Dr. Copeland, a black man who wishes he could inspire more people to improve themselves; and Jake, a political protester who struggles with alcoholism. My favorite character was Mick, an adolescent girl who seemed like a stand-in for Carson. I took this novel with me on a recent trip to Georgia, and it was perfect, because southern writers are meant to be read in the South. (Carson was born in Columbus, Georgia, and later escaped to New York.) I was surprised at how modern and relevant this book felt.

I admired how Carson wrote these characters to be so real and well-formed. This novel was an engrossing read, and when I finished I was sad to say goodbye to these folks. Highly recommended. Favorite Quotes 'The fellow was downright uncanny.

People felt themselves watching him even before they knew that there was anything different about him. His eyes made a person think that he heard things nobody else had ever heard, that he knew things no one had ever guessed before. He did not seem quite human.' 'It was always funny how many people could crowd in from nowhere when anything out of the ordinary happened.' 'Because in some men it is in them to give up everything personal at some time, before it ferments and poisons — throw it to some human being or some human idea. They have to.'

'I doesn't see my Father much — maybe once a week — but I done a lot of thinking about him. I feels sorrier for him than anybody I knows. I expect he done read more books than any white man in this town.

He done read more books and he done worried about more things. He full of books and worrying. He done lost God and turned his back to religion.

All his troubles come down just to that.' 'But you haven't never loved God nor even nair person. You hard and tough as cowhide. But just the same I knows you. This afternoon you going to roam all over the place without never being satisfied. You going to traipse all around like you haves to find something lost.

You going to work yourself up with excitement. Your heart going to beat hard enough to kill you because you don't love and don't have peace. And then some day you going to bust loose and be ruined. Won't nothing help you then.' 'What I'm trying to tell you is plain and simple.

The bastards who own these mills are millionaires. While the doffers and carders and all the people behind the machines who spin and weave the cloth can't hardly make enough to keep their guts quiet. So when you walk around the streets and think about it and see hungry, worn-out people and ricket-legged younguns, don't it make you mad? 'You see, it's like I'm two people. One of me is an educated man. I been in some of the biggest libraries in the country.

I read all the time. I read books that tell the pure honest truth.

Over there in my suitcase I have books by Karl Marx and Thorstein Veblen and such writers as them. I read them over and over, and the more I study the madder I get. I know every word printed on every page.

But what I'm getting at is this. When a person knows and can't make the others understand, what does he do?' 'It don't take words to make a quarrel. It look to me like us is always arguing even when we sitting perfectly quiet like this.'

'Doctor Copeland did not know how to begin. Sometimes he thought that he had talked so much in the years before to his children and they had understood so little that now there was nothing at all to say.' 'Wonderful music lik this was the worst hurt there could be. The whole world was this symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen.' 'Being mad is no good.

Nothing we can do is any good. That's the way it seems to me. All we can do is go around telling the truth. And as soon as enough of the don't-knows have learned the truth then there won't be any use for fighting. The only thing for us to do is let them know.

All that's needed. 'But we are forced to sell our strength, our time, our souls during almost every hour that we live. We have been freed from one kind of slavery only to be delivered into another. Is this freedom? Are we yet free men?' 'All I can say is this: The world is full of meanness and evil.

Three fourths of this globe is in a state of war or oppression. The liars and fiends are united and the men who know are isolated and without defense.' 'How can the dead be truly dead when they still live in the souls of those who are left behind?' John Singer, the deaf/mute.

Biff Bannon, the cafe owner. Copeland, the Negro doctor. Jake Blount, a drifter. And Mick Kelly, a 14 year old girl who hears beautiful music in her head and heart. These are our main players, each of them lonely and looking for someone to talk to, someone who will listen and maybe understand.

They all talk incessantly to Mr. Singer, who can't hear them, and rarely understands. Singer can only talk with his hands, and then only to those who can understand sign John Singer, the deaf/mute. Biff Bannon, the cafe owner. Copeland, the Negro doctor. Jake Blount, a drifter. And Mick Kelly, a 14 year old girl who hears beautiful music in her head and heart.

These are our main players, each of them lonely and looking for someone to talk to, someone who will listen and maybe understand. They all talk incessantly to Mr. Singer, who can't hear them, and rarely understands. Singer can only talk with his hands, and then only to those who can understand sign language.

So his only outlet is with another deaf/mute, his friend Spiros, who has been placed in an institution by his family. Carson McCullers took these five people and wrote a story about the human need for love and acceptance that we all recognize and empathize with. She encompassed racial inequality, the class system in America, young people with dreams, older people who had seen their dreams turned to dust, hatred and kindness; it's all here, written by a 23 year old author who surely knew something of loneliness herself. A southern masterpiece. The book is finished. But not the story. All the pain, all the loneliness – Jake Blount, Doctor Copeland, Mick – and Singer – Carson has tied it all into a tiny little package, so small, almost a seed – and placed it into the reader, where it will now stay, maybe grow but certainly stay.

And perhaps blossom in the reader as it did in the observer Biff, who looked into the abyss. I move the book from the “currently reading” to the “read” shelf and place a copy on one other shelf The book is finished. But not the story. All the pain, all the loneliness – Jake Blount, Doctor Copeland, Mick – and Singer – Carson has tied it all into a tiny little package, so small, almost a seed – and placed it into the reader, where it will now stay, maybe grow but certainly stay.

And perhaps blossom in the reader as it did in the observer Biff, who looked into the abyss. I move the book from the “currently reading” to the “read” shelf and place a copy on one other shelf “existentialism wide”. Of course it’s misplaced there.

It doesn’t matter, that’s where I will look for it. When I see it there I’ll remember the seed. Thank you Carson.

Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I'm one of them. That's a Ray Bradbury quote, from Dandelion Wine, but I feel it is an apt description of this very young author who seems to carry the whole weight of the world on her shoulders.

How is it possible to have so intimate a knowledge of Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I'm one of them. That's a Ray Bradbury quote, from Dandelion Wine, but I feel it is an apt description of this very young author who seems to carry the whole weight of the world on her shoulders. How is it possible to have so intimate a knowledge of pain and loss, loneliness, disillusionment, alienation when you are barely out of your school years?

Empathy is more of a curse than a blessing. I thought I had it rough, but compared with Singer, Mitch, Copeland, Blount, Biff and the rest of the cast of this debut novel, my life has been a 'walk in the park', surrounded by more friends that I probably deserved and sheltered from the extremes of poverty and intransigence that mar the blazon of Southern culture. Humbled is the shortest way I can express the experience of living for about a year in this nameless Southern town, around 1939, in the aftermath of The Great Recession and shortly before the opening salvoes of WWII. Both events shape and define the scene on which the actors perform, through the economical woes most of the people are experiencing and through the fascist, anti-semite, racist ideologies prevailing.

Even Marxism and religion come up short when it comes to offering practical solutions for social injustice: the vehement speeches of both Blount and of the street preacher are sterile, abstract, unrealistic. There is though a Christ-like, Messianic figure, like a bright star showing the way through the darkness, like a haven from the storm, gathering around him the lost children and taking their pain into him. Singer is a deaf-mute gentleman working as an engraver in a jeweler store. The Painful Realities of Small Town Southern Life in 1930s ' Southerners are more lonely and estranged. I think because we have lived so long in an artificial social system that we insisted was natural and right and just--when all along we knew it wasn't.' Carson McCullers ' I am a lone lorn creatur.and everythink goes contrairy with me.'

Gummidge, David Copperfield. This veracious Southern Gothic novel, with its common gothic staples of disfigurement, disease, brutality and mortality present The Painful Realities of Small Town Southern Life in 1930s ' Southerners are more lonely and estranged. I think because we have lived so long in an artificial social system that we insisted was natural and right and just--when all along we knew it wasn't.' Carson McCullers ' I am a lone lorn creatur.and everythink goes contrairy with me.' Gummidge, David Copperfield.

This veracious Southern Gothic novel, with its common gothic staples of disfigurement, disease, brutality and mortality present in a dull and mean small Southern town, makes for a compelling, albeit painful, study of isolation and loneliness in a Georgia milling town in the 1930s. At the center is a deaf mute who lip-reads named John Singer. The beginning of the novel starts with Singer's longtime friend and roommate Spiros, a morbidly obese Greek deaf mute, losing his sanity and being committed to an asylum. Singer is left all alone in the small Georgia town, terribly missing his only true friend. The remaining characters gravitate to Singer as fragments of steel to a magnet as they struggle mightily to escape loneliness and see some kind of meaning in their lives. Singer seems to listen and care but says nothing back (even though, as he only knows, he was taught how to speak).

These widely diverging characters therefore see in Singer who they believe or imagine him to be, a looking glass of their wants. Jake Blount is a frustrated and idealistic working man who stews in his brew and becomes violent at a hair trigger.

He is a social reformer who aspires to stir the working masses to a revolt and sees Singer as his audience to speeches he'll never deliver to an audience more than one. Benedict Mady Copeland is an African-American physician who suffers from tuberculosis. Copeland obsesses over his wish that his people be saved from docile submission. Unfortunately, his gruffness and aloofness turn off his people from hearing what he has to say. He believes (without any particular reason) that Singer is Jewish and thinks him the only compassionate white he has ever known and that Singer can identify with Copeland as both are members of an oppressed class. Mick Kelly is a pubescent tomboy who loves music and dreams of playing a piano and composing symphonies one day. She believes that, though Singer is deaf, he can hear music in his head and she tells him of her wishes and dreams.

She is soon forced to confront life in poverty in which she may be required to quit school and go to work. Finally, Biff Brannon is a cafe' owner who observes much, but is trapped in a loveless, childless marriage. After his wife's death, he becomes awfully lonely and would like to connect with any of the other four characters. In a cruel irony, these characters all effectively rebuff Biff's efforts, thus rejecting the only person who accepts them and offer them a human connection. I guess the moral is that we all need to connect with other people, but it is nearly impossible to do so in any significant way; and, perhaps, if we do connect, we'd best be unselfish and do all we can to keep the wire live.

I read this years ago -before being a member on Goodreads. (Just forgot to post any comments)--Thanks to 'Steve' for the inspiration of memory! 'The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter' one those books that leaves a lasting tattoo on your heart forever! Not only does it take place during the Great Depression -during times of racial injustice -- not only do we 'see-feel-touch-experience' loneliness through a character so profound deeper than most have ever been written-- --but it was 'THIS' novel where I lear I read this years ago -before being a member on Goodreads. (Just forgot to post any comments)--Thanks to 'Steve' for the inspiration of memory!

'The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter' one those books that leaves a lasting tattoo on your heart forever! Not only does it take place during the Great Depression -during times of racial injustice -- not only do we 'see-feel-touch-experience' loneliness through a character so profound deeper than most have ever been written-- --but it was 'THIS' novel where I learned the full beauty of 'feeling' music through sign language. A Classic Best!!!

5 +++++ stars!!! A credible friend here in GR told me that this novel is the saddest he had ever read. That’s the main reason why I read this. Well, it is the saddest and most depressing among the fiction ones that I’ve read too. Saddest among the ones I found earlier to be downright depressing: Good Morning, Midnight (1939) by Jean Rhys and The God of Small Things (1997) by Arundhati Roy.

Well, I am still to read The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton and A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. Also, the holocaust-base A credible friend here in GR told me that this novel is the saddest he had ever read. That’s the main reason why I read this. Well, it is the saddest and most depressing among the fiction ones that I’ve read too. Saddest among the ones I found earlier to be downright depressing: Good Morning, Midnight (1939) by Jean Rhys and The God of Small Things (1997) by Arundhati Roy. Well, I am still to read The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton and A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. Also, the holocaust-based semi-autobiographical but classified as fiction novels are, by nature, all sad so I am excluding those.

This list is very long but the saddest ones are Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels, Austerlitz (2001) by W. Sebald and Night by Elie Weisel. So what makes this novel sad and depressing? In my opinion, there are three main reasons: (1) This was set during the 1930’s Great Depression in the Southern State of Georgia. The characters belonged to middle- to low-class families. Also, during that time, the racial discrimination in the US was still a big problem; (2) the tone and mood that McCullers’ prose created. In the novel, all the characters are unhappy people.

They all wanted something which were not realistic given the time, place and circumstances that they were in; and (3) McCullers seemed to me a real unhappy person judging from the Wiki entries about her life – failed marriage, attempted suicide due to depression, alcoholism and frequent ailments that lead or contributed to her untimely death at the early age of 50. So, at 23 (the age she wrote this novel), this seemed to have foretold the sadness that she would later experience in her life. It could be a case of creating in her mind, the image of her future self. Think about the power of mind: what can it attract without us knowing.

Given the many examples of brilliant yet sad novels about The Great Depression like John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men and Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March, I have nothing against the first reason. The second reason is something that is not very realistic for me unless the author’s main purpose is to make her author sad like the characters in the book. At the age of 46, I have experienced awfully sad events in my life but those were all temporary or during those events that were almost always somethings that were going right, i.e., happy.

I remember that when my father died in 1997, my family life was going great what with my cute little girl making us, including my father happy. I also told my father before he died that I wished I could have another (better) job.

Few years after his death, my wish was answered. In McCullers’ story, all the characters were unhappy and they seemed to have gotten nothing but problems, one after the other, in their lives: death, sickness, imprisonment, loss of sanity, loss of feet, loss of dreams, loss of virginity, loss of innocence, etc. Even the birds in that scene when Mick and Harry made love for the first and last time sang sad songs.

Even the almost poetic lines were sad with this as my favorite: ”'How can the dead be truly dead when they still live in the souls of those who are left behind?' The third reason is something that I am scared of as a reader. I hope that the sadness in this book will not rub on me. On the positive side, I appreciate the main theme that this book wants to impart: our need for somebody or our fear of being isolated. The struggles of four of John Singer's acquaintances make up the majority of the narratives.

They are: Mick Kelly, a tomboyish young girl who loves music and dreams of buying a piano; Jake Blount, an alcoholic labor agitator; Biff Brannon, the observant owner of a diner; and Dr. Benedict Copeland, an idealistic African-American doctor. They seemed to have nobody to talk with and they all found Singer (who name is in itself an irony: a mute who sing or even speak) as their confidante. Maybe they thought that their secret was safe with him. They just did not know that he could write and he thought that at least one of them was crazy and he could not understand what they were saying.

Well, even that one is sad. Being my saddest book so far, this is definitely one of the most memorable reads. Thanks to my GR friend for telling me about this book’s existence.

I find myself consistantly tongue-tied about this book. I've begun nearly four different reviews of this eminantly enjoyable read that have all petered away into nothingness as I try to put into words just what it was that gripped me about McCullers' opus. The first word I can think of is shock. Shock that I had heard next to nothing about this book until pulling it from my shelf. Shock that I have gone so long without it being assigned to me in a class or forced into my hands by a friend.

Shock I find myself consistantly tongue-tied about this book. I've begun nearly four different reviews of this eminantly enjoyable read that have all petered away into nothingness as I try to put into words just what it was that gripped me about McCullers' opus. The first word I can think of is shock. Shock that I had heard next to nothing about this book until pulling it from my shelf. Shock that I have gone so long without it being assigned to me in a class or forced into my hands by a friend.

Shock that this book is not featured on more of those 'must-read' or 'best writing of the 20th century' lists that get bandied about with the regularity of summer monsoons here on Goodreads. Mostly, though, shock that McCullers turned out such an exquisite and world-weary look at the loneliness that engulfs people and swallows them down when she was only 23. Things like that just make me feel lazy and unaccomplished.

I am the first to admit that I have very little firsthand knowledge of the Southern United States. What I do know is informed through the media I consume and the history we were all taught in school (though, apparently, that history is subjective as well; see 'The War of Northern Aggression').

In fact, I could honestly claim that I know more about other continents than I do about the South. As such, I don't feel too comfortable claiming that there is a darkness that seems to live in the land, seeping out to inspire random acts of cruelty or violence and spread waves of intangible dread among its inhabitants (notice that it didn't actually stop me from making said claim). Whether or not this darkness is inherent to the South or McCullers is just tapping into her own personal ennui, reading The Heart is a Lonely Hunter often made me feel as though I were journeying upriver to listen to Kurtz exhort me to 'exterminate all the brutes.' The book follows four different people and the dreams for a different/better life that they all hold close as a means of escaping the pervasive loneliness which always seems ready to swallow them whole. For Mick Kelly, a precocious young teen cut in the mold of To Kill A Mockingbird's Scout Finch, this dream is of being able to compose and play the music that infects her mind. For the wandering Jake Blount it is of inspiring the downtrodden workers to strike at the mills to improve their conditions.

Cafe owner Biff Brannon is ashamed of his creative impulses and the maternal feelings he carries for the children of his patrons and Dr. Copeland is so consumed by his desire to inspire his fellow blacks to greatness that he refuses to take time off to treat the tuberculosis which is slowly killing him. The lynchpin of all these dreamers is the enigmatic Mr. A deaf-mute in a city of speakers, Mr. Singer offers himself up as the perfect tabula rasa for the four dreamers.

In the small room that he rents from Mick's parents, he sits as calm and quiet as the Buddha as each in their turn visit and pour out their dreams, desires and passions to him- the perfect opinionless tabula rasa. My heart ached for all of these characters as they struggled with realising their dreams and the compromises they all made as they ran into the hard wall of reality. Yet it was Mr. Singer that I cared for above all. Always receptive of others yet unable to share his own thoughts, his only confessor his former roommate who is now interred at an asylum. He is wrapped in a bubble of isolation and it is his loneliness that has stuck with me the hardest since finishing the book. It's been five days since I finished this book yet I can't bring myself to put it back on my shelf, to really believe that my time with these achingly real people has come to an end.

My copy is dog-eared now from me folding down the corners of pages to record a choice description or bit of dialogue and I keep referring back to it in order to make sure that I am not bastardizing McCullers' exquisite prose. It may not have been listed on the 1001 List (but 12 different Ian McEwan novels made the cut?!?) but this is absolutely a book that you must read before you die. Its beauty and its sorrow can't help but touch you. The ending of Carson McCuller's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is one of the saddest I've ever read. In fact, I'd not hestitate to say it is one of the worst things that could ever happen to me, and I hope like hell it never does. I related too much to situations of concentrating on some small special thing to get through the day. Hearing music and stories in my head.

The luxury of energy (and the heart left) to expend on such thoughts should not be taken for granted (even if it is just about some The ending of Carson McCuller's The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is one of the saddest I've ever read. In fact, I'd not hestitate to say it is one of the worst things that could ever happen to me, and I hope like hell it never does.

I related too much to situations of concentrating on some small special thing to get through the day. Hearing music and stories in my head. The luxury of energy (and the heart left) to expend on such thoughts should not be taken for granted (even if it is just about something good to eat later on in the day. Woody Allen is wrong though, there IS such a thing as bad pizza). That McCuller's wrote 'Hunter' at the age of twenty-three is a much talked about point. Is it a point?

The book jackets (such as the Josh Nichols heroine's book club edition, no doubt) tout this a lot. It's not some Orson Wellesian making their masterpeice and peaking before age twenty-four behind the story to me. As if that could ever be the point. (Well, yeah, maybe. Their lives were frustrating as all heck, and fascinating too.

I got too depressed investigating either one, actually. They were both Orson Wellesian on that score.) Isaac Bashevis singer didn't write a novel until he was forty (in my opinion, he's was as awe-inspiring as any youngster). There are assuredly buttloads of such examples for either direction on the age time line. I don't think it is age, only that some experiences are more shattering than others. Truman Capote wrote Other Voices, Other Rooms before twenty-four.

It was autobiographical (Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird shows some of those shared experiences. Must've been some time they had.) Some people stop listening to music when they get out of high school. Is it like that?

I don't know. The capacity to be shaped still by experiences (and not every shaping experience is profound). Do you stop growing at some point? (Is 'Hunter' autobiographical in a sense? I feel it is. The Member of the Wedding too.

The 'Take me with you' feelings of that book has to be.) Did they give up and have nothing else left to bleed? I know that I don't want to think of McCullers ending up without the stories in her head. So she's still twenty-three. I just don't want to think of anyone ending up like Mick.

If it all ends for naught, it is still too painful to live without the love for something better. For me, one of the most haunting parts of 'Hunter' was the story of Willie Copeland. Fuck, that was hard. It is hard to think beyond that. Carson McCullers was only 22/23 when she wrote this; an amazing feat and a truly great novel.

The plot centres around John Singer a man who is deaf and mute. Singer initially lives with his friend Spiros Antanopoulos. Their companionship comes to an end when Spiros's mental health deteriorates and he is admitted to an asylum. Singer then takes a room in the Kelly hpusehold. Here a group of people gravitate around him.

Mick Kelly, the daughter of the household has musical aspirations and feels ou Carson McCullers was only 22/23 when she wrote this; an amazing feat and a truly great novel. The plot centres around John Singer a man who is deaf and mute. Singer initially lives with his friend Spiros Antanopoulos. Their companionship comes to an end when Spiros's mental health deteriorates and he is admitted to an asylum. Singer then takes a room in the Kelly hpusehold. Here a group of people gravitate around him. Mick Kelly, the daughter of the household has musical aspirations and feels out of place as she grows up.

Biff Brannon, the owner of the local bar/diner who has recently lost his wife. Benedict Copeland, an African American doctor who has great hopes and ideals. Finally Jake Blount, a radical and labour agitator who is also an alcoholic. They all gravitiate towards Singer and his room; each with their own different angsts and stories.

Singer is like a mirror who reflects their concerns. He is attentive and can read lips. He writes down what he wishes to say. They all believe him to be taking in their concerns and feel better for talking to him. The fortunes of most of them are in a downward spiral (this is the depression). Copeland is ill and has family problems; he is also increasingly affected by the oppression and racism he experiences and sees around him. Mick Kelly is watching her family descend into poverty following a shocking occurence.

Blount is being overtaken by his drinking and is frustrated by the society he lives in. Events spiral towards a tragedy that is unexpected. Isolation and loneliness run throughout as a theme in the novel, as does the ache ofunachieved hope and ambition. Things do not always work out for the good and endings are seldom happy; people take more than they give and don't see what is in front of them. Singer reminded me of the religious symbol of the animal (goat) onto which all the sins of the community are placed and is then sent out into the wilderness carrying the sin with it.

He is a holy, almost religious figure for the other characters. Singer is treated by the others as a tabula rasa, but a knowing one who agrees with them. The writing is simple and poetic and the whole thing will tear your heart out. Oppression and injustice have bee with us for so long and continue to be with us. This book is a poignant reminder that they happen to real people with real hopes and dreams. It is also a reminder that the person opposite you has their own feelings and aspirations too.

The title is perfect and poetic. The extra large quotes on the back of books can be strange.

Like the words of Jonathan Bate, for instance, regarding 'The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.' 'I cannot think of any novel that I take more pleasure in re-reading,' he says. And yet I cannot disagree more. I mean, I adored this book. Like everything McCullers wrote it is charged with individuality and a non-cloying empathy that spotlights the soul in all its ragged glory. But it really pained me to read it. Such loneliness and misunderstandi The extra large quotes on the back of books can be strange.

Like the words of Jonathan Bate, for instance, regarding 'The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.' 'I cannot think of any novel that I take more pleasure in re-reading,' he says. And yet I cannot disagree more. I mean, I adored this book. Like everything McCullers wrote it is charged with individuality and a non-cloying empathy that spotlights the soul in all its ragged glory. But it really pained me to read it.

Such loneliness and misunderstanding and injustice and skewed communication and emptiness. And towards the end of the book there is a moment that I couldn't bear. As soon as I read the line I jumped up from my bed involuntarily and had to throw the book down (and that sort of reaction is rare). A crazy response, perhaps, but you invest so much love in these characters because McCullers writes so much humanity into them (they are as flawed as you or I) so to read the book is to open yourself up to heartbreak. John Singer, the hero of the book, is the pivot about which the other central characters (the dreaming teenage girl Mick Kelly, the sensitive bar owner Biff Brannon, the itinerant Marxist Jake Blount, the disappointed Doctor Copeland) turn. A mute left heartbroken by the loss of his best friend (the fellow mute Antonapoulos, who is sent away to an asylum when he starts to stride around town naked, pleasuring himself) he becomes a reflector for the other characters, who endow him with the knowledge and wisdom and experience and personality that they wish him to have (the good Doctor, who believes Jews have an affinity with blacks on account of the universality of their suffering, even presumes Singer's religion). But Singer is, in effect, an absence until he is in the sight of his beloved Antonapoulos, and it is into this gaping hole that Mick, Biff, Jake and the Doctor throw their love and desires.

Surely there isn't a person alive who hasn't felt loneliness. Perhaps some of us feel it more than others.

Perhaps there isn't a day goes by when you don't feel it, whether you are surrounded by people, or your other half, or your family. It is telling that when the four non-mutes run into one another in Singer's room there is awkwardness and lack of communication. They seem only able to tell their story to someone who cannot answer back.

Their loneliness, their isolation, leads to a lack of ability, of awareness, in social situations. They are bereft without Singer in the way that he is bereft without his friend Antonapoulos. A stridently political novel, the only one McCullers wrote, I am astounded she penned it when she was 20. If you haven't read it yet do yourself a favour and do so now. And then listen to 'The Gunman' (the original by Prefab Sprout or the great cover by Cher) and get ready to sigh. I know that on some narrow street Our paths will cross, our eyes will meet And love will leave me at his feet I'm waiting for the gunman When I enter a room I will only sit facing the door It's love I'm looking for As I search every face I start wondering Is this the place?

Carson McCullers was an American who wrote fiction, often described as Southern Gothic, that explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcasts of the South. From 1935 to 1937 she divided her time, as her studies and health dictated, between Columbus and New York and in September 1937 she married an ex-soldier and aspiring writer, Reeves McCullers.

They began their married life in Charlotte, Carson McCullers was an American who wrote fiction, often described as Southern Gothic, that explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcasts of the South. From 1935 to 1937 she divided her time, as her studies and health dictated, between Columbus and New York and in September 1937 she married an ex-soldier and aspiring writer, Reeves McCullers. They began their married life in Charlotte, North Carolina where Reeves had found some work.

There, and in Fayetteville, North Carolina, she wrote her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, in the Southern Gothic tradition. The title, suggested by McCullers's editor, was taken from Fiona MacLeod's poem 'The Lonely Hunter.' However, many (including Carson McCullers) claim she wrote in the style of Southern Realism, a genre inspired by Russian Realism. The novel itself was interpreted as an anti-fascist book. Altogether she published eight books. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940), written at the age of twenty-three, Reflections in a Golden Eye (1941), and The Member of the Wedding (1946), are the best-known. The novella The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (1951) also depicts loneliness and the pain of unrequited love.

She was an alumna of Yaddo in Saratoga, New York. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter was filmed in 1968 with Alan Arkin in the lead role. Reflections in a Golden Eye was directed by John Huston (1967), starring Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor. Some of the film was shot in New York City and on Long Island, where Huston was permitted to use an abandoned Army installation. Many of the interiors and some of the exteriors were done in Italy. 'I first met Carson McCullers during the war when I was visiting Paulette Goddard and Burgess Meredith in upstate New York,' said Huston in An Open Book (1980). 'Carson lived nearby, and one day when Buzz and I were out for a walk she hailed us from her doorway.

She was then in her early twenties, and had already suffered the first of a series of strokes. I remember her as a fragile thing with great shining eyes, and a tremor in her hand as she placed it in mine. It wasn't palsy, rather a quiver of animal timidity. But there was nothing timid or frail about the manner in which Carson McCullers faced life. And as her afflictions multiplied, she only grew stronger.'

After lifelong health problems including severe alcoholism, McCullers died of brain hemorrhage.