The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (Oprah's Book Club)

published	April 21st 2004 by Mariner
binding	Paperback
isbn	0618526412 (isbn13: 9780618526413)
pages	368
description	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 pr...more [close] 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, an enduring masterpiece first published by Houghton Mifflin in 1940. 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 (and loosely based on McCullers), finds solace in her music. Wonderfully 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, gives voice to the quiet, intensely personal search for beauty. Richard Wright praised Carson McCullers for her ability "to rise above the pressures of her environment and embrace white and black humanity in one sweep of apprehension and tenderness." She writes "with a sweep and certainty that are overwhelming," said the NEW YORK TIMES. McCullers became an overnight literary sensation, but her novel has endured, just as timely and powerful today as when it was first published. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER is Carson McCullers at her most compassionate, endearing best. [close]
date added	12-07-06 edit book

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Trevor rated it:

(review of isbn 0618084746)

06/26/08

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 compar...more

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Darcy rated it:

(review of isbn 0618084746)

12/04/07

If this were a Debbie Macomber novel, a group of misfits would coalesce around a single galvanizing figure, resulting in a community of like-minded souls who would then knit their way to happiness and inner peace.

This isn't. Yes, there are misfits. Yes, there is a single galvanizing figure. No, there isn't knitting. And <spoiler alert> there won't be much inner peace, either.

This is a...more If this were a Debbie Macomber novel, a group of misfits would coalesce around a single galvanizing figure, resulting in a community of like-minded souls who would then knit their way to happiness and inner peace.

This isn't. Yes, there are misfits. Yes, there is a single galvanizing figure. No, there isn't knitting. And <spoiler alert> there won't be much inner peace, either.

This is a very quiet book. There aren't any surprises in this narrative, but oddly that isn't a drawback to it. The characters are set up neatly at the beginning, a few plot elements are put into motion, and then the story proceeds to draw the characters more and more closely together, so that they can't seem to escape from one another. It would seem as though that would be a good thing--this a novel in which the characters are full of potential to reach out to one another, and yet they never manage to do it with any success. McCullers presents a very bleak view of social interaction and community, in which Mick Kelly, Jake Blount, Biff Brannon, and Dr. Benedict Copeland all repeatedly grasp at the central figure of John Singer--a deaf-mute who although able to communicate, presents them with a sort of "blank slate" listener; he always appears to be interested in what they are saying (thus making himself indispensable), and yet his personal letters reveal he understands very little of their concerns or desires.

This would seem to be a novel about the problems of communication--these characters are all talkers, but not listeners. Ironically, the man who does listen--John Singer--doesn't want to understand what is being said, despite his own intense loneliness and longing for human contact. John Singer's deafness, McCullers suggests, doesn't give him any keener insight into the desire to be heard than any of the other characters. Instead, the book presents an infinite retrograde of uncaring listeners. John Singer listens, but does not comprehend, what anyone else says. He himself speaks only to an old friend, Atanapolous, who has been institutionalized due to mental incapacity. Atanapolous understands and cares even less than Singer about what is said to him. With his swollen girth and his intense desire to consume food and drink, Atanapolous is the exaggerated, physical manifestation of the type of person who walks, talks, and thinks only of himself--he is a grotesque caricature of Mick, Jake, and Dr. Copeland.

Of all the characters it seems to be Biff Brannon, more than anyone else, who sees the potential in others to build a community. The book is clearly concerned with this issue; both Jake Blount and Dr. Copeland struggle with the frustration of not being heard. They subscribe to the idealism of Karl Marx, and yet repeatedly find themselves ignored, swept aside, or merely tolerated. But the novel seems to suggest that it is this very desire to speak and be heard that is holding these characters back. In focusing so much on what they have to say, Jake and Dr. Copeland fail to understand others. It is Biff who watches other people carefully, noticing their desires in an attempt to ignore his own. In the end, however, his observations are all to no avail--he does not act on what he observes and so he ends up merely collecting his own thoughts and secreting them away, much as he does the daily newspaper.

This is an incredibly prescient novel, in many ways, particularly in terms of its treatment of racial tension, and the various pressures of stereotyped gender roles. The narrative is extremely adept at weaving together the various frustrations individuals face, even as it ironically points to the similarities in those frustrations. This is not an optimistic novel, but at the very least it points to the potential for hope, a potential located in the almost overwhelming and consuming desire for change....less

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Meika rated it:

(review of isbn 0618084746)

09/29/07

Read in October, 2007

I picked this book up in an effort to better my mind - not a good reason at all. I remembered that it was heavily referenced in the movie, Love Song for Bobby Long, which I loved because it's gritty and heartbreaking and all that is hopeful about it is hinged on the tenuous beauty of Purslane, a girl who is at the brink of giving in to a lost life. I wanted to know the story that Purslane found so captivating.
True that the story centers on John Singer, who loses his companion and soulmate to...more I picked this book up in an effort to better my mind - not a good reason at all. I remembered that it was heavily referenced in the movie, Love Song for Bobby Long, which I loved because it's gritty and heartbreaking and all that is hopeful about it is hinged on the tenuous beauty of Purslane, a girl who is at the brink of giving in to a lost life. I wanted to know the story that Purslane found so captivating.
True that the story centers on John Singer, who loses his companion and soulmate to mental illness and then becomes the deaf-mute sounding board for the deepest passions of four other central characters, Mick, Dr. Copeland, Jake Blount, and Biff Brannon. But the story is about the unfolding of human experience, and it is devastating, powerful and tumultuous - it sinks you into the story on a visceral level. You feel Jake Blount's drunken rages about the evils of capitalism, Mick Kelly's blind optimism at becoming the world's premier concert pianist, and in the end, her heartbreaking hopelessness at realizing she will work at Woolworth's at the cost of those hopes. Biff Brannon's strange introspection casts the other characters in stagelighting, and you can practically smell the Aqua Florida that he dabs behind his ears to remind him that memory has its own life.
What McCullers does is present each experience so that the characters fade into their experiences. So, instead of reading that Jake Blount raged, you read that Jake Blount felt the room begin to spin, and the heat became stifling and the vein on his temple began to pulse... so suddenly you find yourself present. Present in the deep south in the depression, with dirt under your nails and cheap gin in your veins. It's uncomfortable and dangerous, not even your own couch cup of coffee and lamp can save you from the story. The only reprieve granted to the reader is the silence of John Singer, his sanity and impeccable calm. And in the end, that is shattered when he learns that his companion has died. In the end the characters must face themselves.
I suspect this is the connection that The Heart is a Lonely Hunter has with Love Song for Bobby Long. Love Song forces the lonely hearts into proximity with each other. They have no John Singer, only each other.
I am still puzzled by what the suitcase means. In Love Song, there is a suitcase full of books left to Purslane by her mother. In Heart, Jake Blount enters with a suitcase and leaves with it, and John Singer stuffs a suitcase full of towels and soap and various things from his hotel room before killing himself... it might be nothing, but the object stands out the way objects in dreams stand out - like it's subconsciously significant....
I'll be processing this story for a long time. ...less

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