The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories

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The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories

4.02 of 5 stars 4.02 · rating details · 4,569 ratings · 281 reviews

A classic work that has charmed generations of readers, this collection assembles Carson McCullers’s best stories, including her beloved novella �The Ballad of the Sad Café.” A haunting tale of a human triangle that culminates in an astonishing brawl, the novella introduces readers to Miss Amelia, a formidable southern woman whose café serves as the town’s gathering place....more

Paperback, First Mariner Books edition, 152 pages

Published April 5th 2005 by Mariner Books (Houghton Mifflin Company) (first published 1951)

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Dec 19, 2012 Paquita Maria Sanchez rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: literature

You know those authors; just when you think you've begun to catch your footing running up the landslide that is all the books and authors you want to read, someone trips you up by mentioning, I don't know, "Carson McCullers," and suddenly you're all shaky-clenched fists and "durmurt, foiled again!" Well, (not Johnny) Carson (not Daily) McCullers, I know a bit about you now, and I think I could love you.

*We have lost soul losers who keep on losing.
*Not everyone is completely hollowed out by cycl...more

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Feb 07, 2013 Mariel rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: couraged to flourish and muses often

Recommended to Mariel by: Now slow-mo Quasimoto teeter on

She felt that the marrows of her bones were hollow and there was no blood left in her. Her heart that had been springing against her chest all afternoon felt suddenly dead. She saw it gray and limp and shriveled at the edges like an oyster.
His face seemed to throb out in space before her, come closer with the lurching motion in the veins of his temples. In retreat, she looked down at the piano. Her lips shook like jelly and a surge of noiseless tears made the white keys blur in a watery line. 'I

...more

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Jun 02, 2010 Abailart rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

I've just read this again after more than half a lifetime. The town hasn't changed. The intense feelings and moods are as I remember; the grotesqueries, the eroticism which is inverted into a thrilling sense of dread are the same. The book is the stuff of dreams. It's wetly lyrical, swamp stinking and dry, horrible and very, very funny. Biting in its demolition of cherished character types, a distorting mirror of the absurd upon the southern mythologies. The cafe, of course, is sad because it's...more I've just read this again after more than half a lifetime. The town hasn't changed. The intense feelings and moods are as I remember; the grotesqueries, the eroticism which is inverted into a thrilling sense of dread are the same. The book is the stuff of dreams. It's wetly lyrical, swamp stinking and dry, horrible and very, very funny. Biting in its demolition of cherished character types, a distorting mirror of the absurd upon the southern mythologies. The cafe, of course, is sad because it's character-ised by sad people whose idea of happiness is sad. I have this weird idea that Mcullers and Strindberg both worked from a palimpsestic Borgsian prototype to produce the Ballad and Miss Julie. The novel does encourage weird ideas.

It's written precisely. It is essential to hear every comma. The glissando of relationships (between words, characters, times) are accompanied by pizzicato. The whole rolls seamlessly and beautifully along, yes, like a piece of music. In a story accompanying the Ballad (there are six others), The Sojourner, we have this:

She began with a Bach prelude and fugue. The prelude was as gaily iridescent as a prism in a morning-room. The first voice of the fugue, an announcement pure and solitary, was repeated intermingling with a second voice, and again repeated within an elaborated frame, the multiple music, horizontal and serene, flowed with unhurried majesty. The principal melody was woven with two other voices, embellished with countless ingenuities – now dominant, again submerged, it had the sublimity of a single thing that does not fear surrender to the whole. Towards the end, the density of the material gathered for the last enriched insistence on the dominant first motif and with a chorded final statement the figure ended.

That would seem to me a refraction of the musical sense of composition in McCullers' writing. Then, too, because she writes of dreariness, ennui, alienation, the shabby violences between people (too, the mysterious love that rises in the mysterious counterpoint that can only be experience in the reading, not the writing about), that sense of the existential dilemma of being oneself and not absorbed by the collective, the community, the other (or the weary narratives of the past, dead as the tumbling down ruin): this most beautiful of the chain gang, black and white chained together:

One dark voice will start a phrase, half-sung, and like a question. And after a moment another voice will join in, soon the whole gang will be singing. The voices are dark in the golden glare, the music intricately blended, both somber and joyful. The music will swell until at last it seems that the music does not come from the twelve men on the gang, but from the earth itself, or the wide sky. It is music that causes the heart to broaden and the listener to grow cold with ecstasy and fright. Then slowly the music will sink down until at last there remains one lonely voice, then a great hoarse breath, the sun, the sound of the picks in the silence.
And what kind of gang is this that can make such music?
Just twelve mortal men, seven of them black and five of them white boys from this county. Just twelve mortal men who are together.

(less)

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Dec 11, 2012 Melanie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favourites

There is a dark, syrupy sway to Carson's work that I've always been a sucker for. The Ballad of the Sad Café is faultless.
I devoured it.

She employs her signature style study on heartbreak, cruelty & loneliness, as seen with The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

Set in a town that is 'lonesome, sad, and like a place that is far off and estranged from all other places in the world', with a striking central character Miss Amelia, whose violent & abrupt marriage inspires her to adopt years of solit...more

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May 14, 2008 Andrew rated it 5 of 5 stars

Lush and tender. After reading the crappy sentences of "The Pillars of the Earth," sinking into McCullers's sentences was like easing into a hot bath: "In addition to the store she operated a still three miles back in the swamp, and ran out the best liquor in the country." Ahh. So I didn't mind so much the melodrama or the adolescent rhapsody in sentences like "Otherwise the town is lonesome, sad, and like a place that is far off and estranged from all other places in the world." Or the awful pa...more

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Aug 26, 2008 Christina rated it 5 of 5 stars

“The Ballad of the Sad Café” has an intensity which I can only liken to a Tennessee Williams play. Fantastic. McCullers mixes odd, complex characters together (like a wandering hunchback, the wealthiest woman of a small town, and the bad apple who is her ex-husband) and manages to make their stories believable. As satisfying as a large novel.

Interesting to note in “Wunderkind” another young woman with an almost painful yearning to play and be one with classical music, similar to Mick Kelly in Th...more

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May 23, 2007 Wendy rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: southernfiction

Spring makes me nostalgic for the fiction of the American South, so when we decided to head down to my old stomping grounds for a week of vacation, I headed out to pick up a couple of volumes of short stories by Southern writers. This was the first one I read and the first time I'd ever read anything by Carson McCullers.

This is a collection of one novella, "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe," and 6 short stories. All were good-reads, but I did enjoy "Ballad" the most. A good story. Very Southern. Remi...more

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May 06, 2013 Rebeca rated it 4 of 5 stars

"First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons — but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which had lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know...more "First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons — but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which had lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world — a world intense and strange, complete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring — this lover can be man, woman, child, or indeed any human creature on this earth.

Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. A man may be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he saw in the streets of Cheehaw one afternoon two decades past. The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else — but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.

It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain."(less)

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Nov 14, 2012 Vicki rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: bolt-from-the-blue, sweet-and-sour

Amelia is the main character in The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and she is a rather eccentric person. She turns a mansion into a cafe, and the people who frequent it use it as a gossip center as well as "socializing." The cafe was actually special to the people; however, due to a "situation" another character named Lymon causes such a tragedy for Amelia and the cafe that Amelia basically becomes a different person and her entire way of living is changed.

A lot was centered around food and love. The to...more

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Sep 13, 2012 Geoffrey Fox rated it 4 of 5 stars

This edition includes 7 stories: The Ballad of the Sad Café; Wunderkind; The Jockey; Madame Zilensky and the King of Finland; The Sojourner; A Domestic Dilemma; A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud.

“Ballad” is a strange love triangle in rural Georgia some time in the 1920s: Marvin Macy loves Miss Amelia who loves Cousin Lymon who loves Marvin Macy, and not one of these loves is reciprocated. Macy, a handsome but shiftless and mean orphan, woos Miss Amelia, the hard-hearted and hard-muscled owner of the town...more This edition includes 7 stories: The Ballad of the Sad Café; Wunderkind; The Jockey; Madame Zilensky and the King of Finland; The Sojourner; A Domestic Dilemma; A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud.

“Ballad” is a strange love triangle in rural Georgia some time in the 1920s: Marvin Macy loves Miss Amelia who loves Cousin Lymon who loves Marvin Macy, and not one of these loves is reciprocated. Macy, a handsome but shiftless and mean orphan, woos Miss Amelia, the hard-hearted and hard-muscled owner of the town's general store, who consents to marry him when he agrees to sign over all his property but turns him out of the house when he tries to get amorous; then (to the town's immense surprise) she falls in love with a little hunchback who comes to town claiming to be a relative, Cousin Lymon. He gets her to transform her store into the town's first and only café and then presides over it as a mischief-maker, keeping things interesting for all the town's menfolk who come by to drink and watch what happens. But then the long-departed Marvin Macy, after a stint in prison, returns to seek revenge on the woman who has spurned him, and Cousin Lymon follows him around like a sick puppy. Finally, in a knock-down, drag-out fist fight (Amelia is bigger and stronger than Macy), Cousin Lymon suddenly and magically intervenes to give Macy the victory. Miss Amelia, betrayed, beaten and abandoned, boards up the café and the town returns to its former dreariness.

"Ballad" has the feel of a medieval European tale, with Cousin Lymon as the goblin with magical powers for mischief (at one point, in the final fight, he appears to fly through the air), Miss Amelia as a flawed larger than life hero(ine) and Marvin Macy a dark dragon-like force. What is wonderful and most memorable (besides the vivid portrayals of the dreary town & its characters) is its (disturbing) description of love as a dangerous pathology.

Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which has lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. … Let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring – this lover can be man, woman, child, or indeed any human creature on this earth.

Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. …the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.

It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. for the lover is for ever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain. (pp. 33-34)

“Wunderkind” is a vignette of a girl's emotional crisis when she comes to believe she is not a good enough piano student to live up to her teacher's and others' expectations. “The Jockey” reads like Hemingway, an all-male story of courage and anger at one's failing physical strength. “Madame Zilensky” postulates the existence of a person who is simultaneously a pathological liar and a responsible & productive member of a community (a music teacher & composer). "The Sojourner" is about the loneliness of a man who has missed, or messed up, his chance for a stable marriage & determines to try again. In "A Domestic Dilemma", a loving husband tries to understand, control & even forgive his wife's drinking problem, and in “A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud” a boy gets a lesson in the fundamentals of a kind of love much different from the variety in "Ballad of the Sad Café”, an appreciation and wonder at an object or a person even without a further relationship. 2008/08/17(less)

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Jun 05, 2012 Cindy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Ballad of the Sad Cafe is a masterpiece. It's a story I read in snippets, whenever I could for a couple of days. I read it waiting in the car, or whenever I had a moment or two to walk into the small southern town and visit with Miss Amelia and Cousin Lymon. I also read it out loud to whomever would listen because it's a book that deserves to be read aloud.

This story is Southern Gothic at it's finest. I have lived in the south and have seen the dark swamps and endless rainy days. I can imagi...more The Ballad of the Sad Cafe is a masterpiece. It's a story I read in snippets, whenever I could for a couple of days. I read it waiting in the car, or whenever I had a moment or two to walk into the small southern town and visit with Miss Amelia and Cousin Lymon. I also read it out loud to whomever would listen because it's a book that deserves to be read aloud.

This story is Southern Gothic at it's finest. I have lived in the south and have seen the dark swamps and endless rainy days. I can imagine it back in the day when a still was a source of liveliness in a boring, dying town. Well, to see a hunchback dwarf wander into town would have almost been too much as it was, but to see him claim kin to the richest, ornriest, most reclusive woman in town would have been downright exciting. And what's even more bizarre, is that she welcomes him into her home and allows him to stay with her - why, the ugly rumors run rampant!

Miss Amelia couldn't have been happier to accomodate Cousin Lymon, since she'd lived alone since the day long ago that her daddy died. She had someone to care for and that is something she did well being the town doctor too! My, how she loved Cousin Lymon and tenderly cared for him over the years.

The cafe that is created around Cousin Lymon and Miss Amelia's still, draws everyone in the town together for evenings of chatter and company and swills of excellent whisky and the boastering story telling of the lively, Cousin Lymon. The cafe becomes a great place to escape and to enjoy some hours in the evening especially since Cousin Lymon hates to be alone in the fearful night.

Everything changes when the ex-husband of Miss Amelia, from a whopping ten day marriage, wanders back after a stint in the pentitiary down in Atlanta, and he is a nasty.

If you like a good Southern Gothic tale, this is a must read. You will love the lyrical writing. The atmosphere is so drawn that you can live there a spell in that small town and hear the chain gang singing, off working in the distance and feel the sweat trickle down your back cooled, maybe, by a slight sudden breeze.

You'll want to read this story out loud to whom ever will listen.

Carson McCullers writes so well. With The Sad Cafe's cast of characters, this story has the chance to be campy or humorous, but it's told with such command of language that is is heartbreakingly understood. It is a tale that shows great depths of human emotion packed into a short jaunt into the deep south back in the day when a dirty, hunchbacked dwarf comes wandering into town at midnight.(less)

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Dec 06, 2011 Melissa rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Ballad of the Sad Cafe is an odd little story, which partly explains why I like it. It's sad, and sharp, and full of imagery. It has a haunting effect that leaves you knowing that you may not ever understand what it means. But, it leaves you wondering. For me, that's enough to recognize it as beautifully literary.

What was clear to me in this story is the complexity of love and companionship, and just how inexplicable it can be. Carson McCullers captured the subtleties of town mentality and...more

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Aug 20, 2010 Isaac (Tower of Stories) rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories is a small collection of short stories by Carson McCullers which was originally published in 1958. The title story of this collection, a novella that takes up the first half of the book, is a sad and strange story by an author who had a sad and strange life.

"The Ballad of the Sad Café" was first published seperately in 1951 and is a classic of the Southern Gothic style. It tells the story of the rise and fall of a small town café owned by a powerful w...more
The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories is a small collection of short stories by Carson McCullers which was originally published in 1958. The title story of this collection, a novella that takes up the first half of the book, is a sad and strange story by an author who had a sad and strange life.

"The Ballad of the Sad Café" was first published seperately in 1951 and is a classic of the Southern Gothic style. It tells the story of the rise and fall of a small town café owned by a powerful woman named Amelia Evans. She's a well-known eccentric, and at first the building she owns is a general store. But change comes to town in the form of Cousin Lymon, a hunchback who claims to be a relation to Amelia. She is a hard-edged woman, but Lymon seems to soften her and helps turn the store into a café where the whole community comes to congregate. But trouble and ruin arrive with Marvin, Amelia's ex-husband from a ten-day marriage.

The story takes those three characters and explores ideas about love, gender, and community in a grotesque manner characteristic of the Gothic style. It also employs the theme of spiritual isolation, which was important to McCullers. Each of the characters is separate and isolated, yet each is dependant on the other. Amelia is a hard woman to figure out. Throughout the book the reader sees her mostly through the eyes of the townsfolk, who also don't know what to make of her. She is alternately feminine and masculine in her actions and attitudes, so of course she doesn't fill most stereotypical gender roles. She is certainly difficult to like, and yet I found myself rooting for her. Part of the reason for that is her opposition to the completely distasteful Marvin, who is somewhat of a powerful figure simply from his evil reputation.

What truly makes this the great story that it is, though, is Cousin Lymon, whose shifting allegiances form the crux of the story. In most stories a hunchback who wants to be loved would be a sympathetic figure (I'm looking at you, Quasimodo). In typical Gothic style, though, Lymon is not someone you can readily sympathize with, especially at the end. By the time you start to understand his character and true motivations it's too late.

This is definitely not a happy story, but I was still glad that I read it. It's probably a similar experience to those that read Phillip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass: you might not be happy with the ending, but you still wouldn't want to have missed it.

It is, as I said, a sad and strange, and may have been inspired by McCuller's own marital problems. At the time this was written she had remarried her husband but had become depressed and attempted suicide. A couple of years after this was published her husband tried to get her to commit suicide along with him, but she got away and he did it by himself. Add to that her almost constant health problems and you have an image of an author who obviously led a troubled life and who could understandably turn to the Gothic for catharsis.

The five other short stories in this collection are also Gothic, but in a less ostensible way than the opening one. "Wunderkind" is a great little story about a young girl whose piano teacher had once called her a wunderkind, and this sticks in her head and tortures her as her talent gives way to disappointment. "The Jockey" features a man who can't cope with an injury done to a friend. "Madam Zilensky and the King of Finland" is about a strange woman who teaches music at a college and a discovery about her that shocks the school's music department director. "The Sojourner," my favorite of the short stories, is about a dinner a man has with his ex-wife and her new family and how it affects him. "A Domestic Dilemma" turns an unsettling scene of a parent's drunkenness by making it the mother instead of the father, which was probably pretty unusual back in the '50s. Finally "A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud" finishes the book with an old man telling a young paper boy about how he came to his theory about the science of love.

Some of the stories are better than others, but overall it's an unusually strong collection. The opening novella is a classic, and none of the stories is particularly weak. I highly recommend this book, expecially to those of you who enjoy Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner, and Tennessee Williams, who once said of McCullers "I have found in her works such intensity and nobility of spirit as we have not had in our prose writing since Herman Melville."(less)

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Jul 08, 2010 Adeena rated it 4 of 5 stars

A boy once asked me if I would rather be the lover or the beloved. I wanted this boy to be my boyfriend so I tried to trick him. I told him that most people preferred to be the beloved. I thought that if I could make him my boyfriend, I could buy some time to show him all the reasons to love me. It didn't work, but it was probably for the best. The boy was funny, but he was also uptight and he liked AC/DC a little too much.

Carson McCullers' collection reminded me of this conversation about the l...more

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Jan 07, 2010 Joanna rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 100-books-2010, short-stories

I bought this book at a used bookstore after seeing the following quote on someone's facebook page:

"The most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the field."

The Ballad of the Sad Cafe is certainly the most memorable story in the collection. Reading this book made me contemplate what happened to all the characters in American fiction? Why is every protagonist now written to be an Every Man? Where are the cross-eyed whiskey d...more

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May 16, 2012 Mosca rated it 5 of 5 stars

..................................

Although I live today in the rural Southwestern US, I was born and bred in the american South. I left in 1975 at the age of 25. There was/is much to become alienated with about the South; the racism, the right-wing idealogies, the chauvanism, the narrow-minded parochialism. But there is much to love also: The vast and complex flora--springtime lasts five months; and each week there seem to be at least four different varieties of flowers in bloom! The lay of the...more

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Dec 28, 2012 Andrew added it

Shelves: american-fiction, american-short-stories, southern-fiction

Before this, I hadn't read Carson McCullers in ages. But I distinctly remember The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter as probably the single most depressing thing I've ever read.

Turns out the Ballad of the Sad Cafe is also extra sad. Of all the Southern Gothic writers, her vision seems the most hellishly naturalistic-- unlike the South of Faulkner, her world is not populated by Civil War ghosts and swamp vendetta; unlike the South of Eudora Welty, it's not a treasure trove of family memory and guilt. No,...more

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Dec 02, 2012 olaszka rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

as far as 'sad cafe' is concerned i can't say much - i read it years ago. but the 'other stories' i've just finished and i have to say i thoroughly enjoyed them, as much as you can enjoy being slapped in the face with the uncanny on every single page.
i love me some southern gothic and mccullers, for me, is as good as it gets, save for truman capote. capote (during his short story phase) and mccullers are literary twins. my bold claim is that you literally can't tell the difference. of course, b...more

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Jan 05, 2012 Paula rated it 3 of 5 stars

Esta é uma história que nos mostra o poder da solidão, do amor e da vingança.
Amélia Evans, é uma mulher determinada que não hesita perante situação alguma, no entanto é uma mulher solitária, dirige os seus negócios com sucesso e sozinha, nunca fez amizades. Aliás, “a única utilidade que via nos outros era o dinheiro”. Porém esta situação só se mantém até à chegada do seu primo – um anão corcunda. Ora, este novo parente vem mudar Amélia. Perante ele, a nossa personagem principal cede em tudo que...more

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Apr 28, 2013 Michael Jackson added it · review of another edition

Eleven years after this child prodigy published The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940) at the tender age of twenty-one, she produced this novella. It is a meditation on love, not on what it is, but on what it does to people, even the most unlikely ones. In a tiny mill town deep in the pines of northern Georgia Miss Amelia comes to love the drifter Lymon, but he in turn falls under the spell of the no-good Marvin Macy. These loves are not of the flesh, I add. But slowly, Amelia discovers that she li...more

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Mar 30, 2012 Wendy Chard rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I've longed to read something by Carson McCullers, but until now her books have never shown up in second hand shops. I was thrilled when I found this one, and couldn't wait to add McCullers to my growing list.

The back of the book describes this as a miniature epic- and this is a perfect description for The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. A tragicomedy, set in a dusty North American town, starring the strong-willed Miss Amelia, and the hunch-back that she adored irrationally.

I love anything as evocative...more

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Apr 26, 2010 Eh?Eh! rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: goodreaders-made-me, hafwfu, lit-huh-rary, babble-added

I've noticed many folks who read and review literature on this site will namedrop other authors in a sort of Iron Chef flowery manner of description, knowing that other literary folk will instantly understand what is meant when saying 'this prose invokes a similar sense of spring as Lord Bigbeard With Tiny Spectacles, and a harmonious interplay of flavors identical to Oppressed In Her Time Strong Woman Author' (I swear every episode of Iron Chef used the spring and harmony phrases, it was like "...more

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Feb 25, 2013 Stuart rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The title story is certainly the best, and yes, it's as gloomy as the title suggests, but there is something bewitching in McCullers prose and her ability to evoke southern swamp gothic is pretty amazing. The plot line has elements of Bradbury's fascination with carnival types and bizarre romances, and the under-pinnings of homosexuality, self-loathing, madness, and gender confusion, all fester with sweaty sticky weirdness until the final, awful, repugnant ending- that McCullers then tops with a...more

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Dec 06, 2011 Núria rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 3-buenos, 2011, literatura-en-ingles, prestados, siglo-xx

Me da la sensación que de un tiempo a esta parte empiezo todas mis reseñas contando que antes había empezado un libro de cierto autor pero que no lo había terminado y tengo la sensación que esto no dice mucho a mi favor como lectora. Pero es así: no termino ni mucho menos todos los libros que empiezo. A veces porque no me dicen nada o simplemente no los soporto. Pero no siempre. A veces simplemente porque me canso de ellos. Confieso que uno de mis muchos defectos es la impaciencia, algo que como...more Me da la sensación que de un tiempo a esta parte empiezo todas mis reseñas contando que antes había empezado un libro de cierto autor pero que no lo había terminado y tengo la sensación que esto no dice mucho a mi favor como lectora. Pero es así: no termino ni mucho menos todos los libros que empiezo. A veces porque no me dicen nada o simplemente no los soporto. Pero no siempre. A veces simplemente porque me canso de ellos. Confieso que uno de mis muchos defectos es la impaciencia, algo que como lectora se agudiza, porque muchas veces mientras leo voy pensando: “Estás leyendo esto y tardarás mucho en terminarlo, y en todo este tiempo podrías estar leyendo muchas otras cosas, otras cosas que probablemente te llegarían más”.

Pues esto me pasó con ‘El corazón es un cazador solitario’ de Carson McCullers, que empecé pero no terminé. Ahora he leído ‘La balada del café triste’ (que es notablemente más corta), la he terminado y me ha gustado, pero no me ha entusiasmado. Confieso que los escritores llamados “sureños” pocas veces me entusiasman. Sólo llegó a entusiasmarme William Faulkner, pero esto fue hace muchos años, cuando era joven e impresionable, y temo que, si ahora lo releyera, su estilo recargado me pondría de los nervios. Truman Capote la mayoría de veces me parece soso y, aún las pocas veces que me gusta (‘A sangre fría’ y ‘Desayuno con diamantes’), encuentro que está bien pero le falta algo. Luego me compré los cuentos completos de Flannery O’Connor en formato de bolsillo y sólo llegué a leer tres o cuatro. Y Tennessee Williams la mayoría de las veces me parece de lo más irritante.

En general creo que mi mayor problema con los escritores del Sur de Estados Unidos es que les gusta demasiado el feísmo por el feísmo y sus personajes son tan extremos y/o histriónicos que me cuesta creerlos. En general escriben bien pero siempre hay algo que se interpone entre la historia y yo. Por ejemplo, en ‘La balada del café triste’ me ha encantado como describe el ambiente de un pueblo en medio de ninguna parte, una realmente siente como si estuviera allí, en medio de aquellos hombres toscos y parcos en palabras, respirando ese olor a polvo y a tristeza llena de resignación. Y no niego que los dos protagonistas no sean curiosos, pero me cuesta creérmelos y más aún la historia de amor entre un jorobado y una mujer solitaria y ruda. No porque no sea posible, sino porque no se me explica.

Soy de la opinión que Carson McCullers se afana en describir un lugar y se olvida de los sentimientos de los personajes. Puede que ésta sea su intención, porque no se puede negar que el narrador adopta un punto de vista muy distanciado respecto los hechos que nos cuenta y, así, a mí me es muy difícil empatizar con ellos. Además, la forma de resolver el conflicto me ha parecido algo burda. La obra tenía que acabar de la forma en que acaba, pero no entiendo cómo se llega hasta ahí: no entiendo por qué el jorobado pasa de idolatrar a su supuesta prima, que lo ha hecho todo por él, a idolatrar un tipo que le trata a patadas. Supongo que McCullers nos quería decir que las cosas en la vida pasan así y no hay quién las entienda. Pero a mí no me vale. Me gusta que los libros sirvan para entender mejor la vida.
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Nov 08, 2011 Becca Loo rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

the first story is the only one worth reading. it seems like she had a bundle of stories about sort of sad lonely people and decided to corral them together into a collection except after the first story the others can hardly compare. the ballad of the sad cafe is pretty good, it reminds me of truman capote's the grass harp. plus it has a midget/hunchback and midgets/hunchbacks always liven a story. the ending was super duper sad though and me being the person i am i liked it better than a happy...more

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Aug 11, 2009 Martin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Classic Southern Gothic, my favorite genre, at it's best! Carson McCullers was a master of her craft. The stories of love and loss and all the complications therein are perfectly laid out by a wonderful writer. The symbolism in her writing is amazing and I love the way that each character represents a different aspect of love.

The characters in The Ballad of the Sad Cafe are a window into Carson herself and her life. I particularly like the way that Carson McCullers weaves her personal life into...more

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May 15, 2010 Karen rated it 4 of 5 stars

I was going to skip this review because I am embarrassed about where the suggestion to read it came from, but I just can't...

I loved this collection of stories. McCullers writes beautifully and the characters are very accessible. Each story could be a movie, you see every detail. But more than that they are about life, and particularly hit on the realities of life that have been pressing down on me as of late. From the realization that the person who you love does not in fact love you back, to t...more

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Oct 18, 2011 Arcadius rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: b-anglosphere

'Ballad' is the word, because that's exactly what it reads like - albeit in prose. The main characters are so oddball as to seem semi-legendary, and the story feels like one that has been lovingly handed down (and no doubt improved upon) through many generations. Successfully sustaining this tone throughout is no mean feat, on top of which McCullers contrives to say more about life and love in 85 pages than many other (good) writers can manage in 500. 'Sad Cafe' really is quite a wonderful piece...more

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Aug 03, 2012 Dave rated it 2 of 5 stars

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is one of the three best novels ever written by someone under the age of 25. I say that to start off because the Ballad of the Sad Cafe' is quite bad. An odd, short-lived marriage between an outlaw casanova and a plain, strong, tall storeowner goes sour and a hunchback claiming to be a relative of the latter shows up, alters the woman's personality, and makes himself a key member of town. The whole thing has no point and the hunchback's inclusion is distracting and a...more

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Mar 13, 2010 Alex Fresta rated it 4 of 5 stars

Carson McCullers must surely be one of the most under-rated American writer of the Twentieth Centruy. She should rightly be considered among the like of Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Kerouac etc.

The Ballad of the sad cafe (the volume also contains 7 more short stories, all worth reading) is at once surreal, brutal, funny and incredibly sad. It is said that the the story is essentialy about love and gender, and while this may be true to a point, it is a very limiting criticism. At their core,...more

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About Carson McCullers

Carson McCullers (February 19, 1917 – September 29, 1967) was an American writer. She 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 McCul...more Carson McCullers (February 19, 1917 – September 29, 1967) was an American writer. She 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 a lifelong health problems including severe alcoholism, McCullers died of brain hemorrhage.
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“First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons — but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which had lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world — a world intense and strange, complete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring — this lover can be man, woman, child, or indeed any human creature on this earth.

Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. A man may be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he saw in the streets of Cheehaw one afternoon two decades past. The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as clearly as anyone else — but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.

It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.” — 419 people liked it

“And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being loved is intolerable to many.” — 78 people liked it

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