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The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Carson McCullers

3.98 · Rating details · 94,082 ratings · 6,521 reviews

Carson McCullers’ prodigious first novel was published to instant acclaim when she was just twenty-three. Set in a small town in the middle of the deep South, it is the story of John Singer, a lonely deaf-mute, and a disparate group of people who are drawn towards his kind, sympathetic nature. The owner of the café where Singer eats every day, a young girl desperate to gro ...more

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Paperback, 359 pages

Published September 8th 2000 by Mariner Books (first published 1940)

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Jun 26, 2008 Trevor rated it it was amazing

Shelves: literature

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 ...more

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Mar 19, 2012 Jenn(ifer) rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: the tin man

Recommended to Jenn(ifer) by: thank you, whoever you are

Shelves: summer-of-women-2012, read-in-2012, you-should-read-this, the-tops, xx, my-reviews-that-dont-suck, own

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. Until...

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. Until...

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. Dr. 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. Singer. 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. Singer.

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. ...more

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Oct 08, 2017 Lisa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, unforgettable, so-good-it-hurts

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 Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday, in the small town talk and the slightly comical marital scenes. But the tone quickly grew darker, and when African American li ...more

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Sep 06, 2008 Paul Bryant rated it really liked it

Shelves: novels

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? Not much.

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. ...more

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Jan 13, 2017 Arah-Lynda rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: paperwhite, prize-winners, top, lets-get-real, i-said

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.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is timeless, profound and a thing of rare beauty. ...more

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Dec 09, 2009 Lawyer rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Every one should read this book

Recommended to Lawyer by: O.B. Emerson, Professor Emeritus, Department of English, The University of Alabama

Shelves: coming-of-age, 20th-century, favorites, southern-literature, on-the-southern-literary-trail, 2012, debut-novels, modern-library-s-100, group-read

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCuller's Portrait of the Faces Behind the Masks

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter was chosen as a group read by On The Southern Literary Trail 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 ...more

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Oct 29, 2018 Brina rated it it was amazing

Shelves: classics, feminism, southern, coming-of-age

Each year I attempt to participate in classics bingo in the group catching up on classics. This year, so far, so good. I gave a lot of thought as to which classic book I wanted to use for my classic of North America square. There are a few authors that come to mind as classic American authors, where each piece of literature written by them reads like a story being told on one's front porch. The names Hemingway and Steinbeck first come to my mind, along with that of Carson McCullers. Distinctly s Each year I attempt to participate in classics bingo in the group catching up on classics. This year, so far, so good. I gave a lot of thought as to which classic book I wanted to use for my classic of North America square. There are a few authors that come to mind as classic American authors, where each piece of literature written by them reads like a story being told on one's front porch. The names Hemingway and Steinbeck first come to my mind, along with that of Carson McCullers. Distinctly southern and writing about the human condition during the era in which she lived, Carson McCullers is a literary treasure. My mother owns the complete set of her writing in one volume and I have previously read Member of a Wedding, which was a gem. It comes as little surprise then that I selected McCullers' definitive work The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter for my classic of North America square this year as her work comes straight from the heart and is a joy to read.

I can not say much about The Heart is a Lonely Hunter that has not been written before. Taking place in a Georgia mill town during the Great Depression, McCullers writes of the trials and travails that occurred during that time. The town could have been her own and the female protagonist Mick Kelly could been McCullers when she was younger. She speaks out about racism, fascism, the rights of the disabled, as well as the depression, through the alternating chapters told through the eyes of her archetypal protagonists Singer, Biff Brannon, Jake Blount, Doctor Benedict Copeland, and Mick Kelly. Readers find a woman ahead of her time in that she views blacks, Jews, whites, men, and women as equals, and this was during the 1930s. Perhaps the fact that McCullers was all of twenty three years of age when she wrote this timeless novel speaks to her views of society in that her generation did not emerge as leaders until the later 1940s, when people did start to speak out against racism and lack of rights for women. Published in 1940, McCullers work was slightly ahead of its time and most likely eye opening for many.

With blacks and whites, Jews and gentiles, unmarried men and women sharing dialogue in the south, McCullers work is refreshing for this era as well as the country has become as polarized as it was during the times of separate but equal. Each of her protagonists had much to say about society, and each had a plan as to how to better themselves and the world that they lived in. The world needs more people like Doctor Copeland, Biff Brannon, Jake Blount, Singer, and Mick Kelly. Yet, they are a thing of the past and many of their inclusive views with them. The literary world also needs more writers like Carson McCullers who spoke her mind from a young age. Her work remains as timeless as ever and her Georgia mill town an archetype for forward thinking people. Carson McCullers work should be viewed as North American classic writing, and I look forward to reading more of it in the coming year.

5 timeless stars
...more

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Jul 18, 2017 Samra Yusuf rated it really liked it

Shelves: fav

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! Every soul who breaths life, seeks love, to love and be loved the vain and only desire of humans, we can’t help desiring so, we can’t help loving those who gave up on us, we can’t help hoping against hope, and the torment one endures is never justified with any word of any language, but that forsaken love never perishes…
The very essence of platonic love, is seen in the figure of Singer, our main character, It is one of the characteristics of ideal romantic love, derived from Platonism, that it need not be reciprocal; the beloved, indeed, may even be unaware of the lover's existence or the existence of love, love never dies of indifference, never diminishes by ignorance, but the relation of singer with Antonapoulos is not entirely of this sort, it is, in view of the latter's limitations, an approximation of it. Singer's love does not require reciprocation but it does require an object, we may never be in our lives come to see our beloved, but we want him around us, the surety of sharing the same sky can appease much, the certainty of breathing in same air is of comfort immensely, because love needs not reward, or love in return, it’s not an act that expects to be re-acted, it’s the whole life as we keep living, we keep loving ,and when Antonopoulos dies, his own reason for living dies too.........
As for other characters, each of the five main characters strives to break out of his or her isolated existence. The reasons each character is isolated are very different: the deaf-mute John Singer cannot communicate with most of the world because he cannot speak; Mick Kelly cannot communicate with anyone in her family because they do not share her intelligence and ambition; Biff Brannon is left alone when his wife dies; Dr. Copeland is alienated from his family and from other black people because of his education and viewpoints; Jake Blount is alone is his radical social viewpoints and in the fact that he is a newcomer in town.

The fact that Carson was only twenty-three when she completed this heartbreaking tale, makes it sadder than before, and I can’t help thinking, was Carson in truth, trying to carve a home god of her own, who would play silent and listen to her bruised heart? and history says, she didn’t find any, instead died at fifty with a weighty heart. who had so much to say, but heart........…remained a lonely hunter! ...more

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May 14, 2012 Richard Derus rated it it was amazing

Rating: 4.99* of five

A near-perfect book, a joy of a read, and a heartfelt "thank you" to the goddesses of literature for it. My review has moved out of the purview of censors and moneygrubbers to my blog. ...more

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Aug 27, 2015 Elyse Walters rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

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 of 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 l ...more

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Jun 29, 2019 Richard rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: current-lit-us

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is the debut novel by Carson McCullers, written when she was just 23.
This classic American novel, set in 1930’s Georgia, sees a disparate group of characters make their solitary way amid the teeming life of an unnamed mill town. A world of ten cent stores, crumbling tenements, gin soaked alleys, raucous fair grounds and cheap neighbourhood boarding houses.
This is a tale of the lonely, the dispossessed and those, who for various reasons feel like outsiders.
The main p ...more

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Apr 30, 2010 Duffy Pratt rated it it was ok

Shelves: classic

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. ...more

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Sep 19, 2013 Steve rated it it was amazing

By the time Mozart was 5, he was composing his own music and performing for royalty. John Stuart Mill had mastered Latin, Greek, Algebra and Euclidean Geometry by the time he was 8. Bobby Fischer won the US Chess Championship at the age of 14. When Orson Welles was 20, he directed his own adaptation of Macbeth as a WPA project with unemployed black performers in Harlem. Why I myself, if you’ll forgive me for crowing, memorized the batting averages of every member of the Cincinnati Reds’ starting By the time Mozart was 5, he was composing his own music and performing for royalty. John Stuart Mill had mastered Latin, Greek, Algebra and Euclidean Geometry by the time he was 8. Bobby Fischer won the US Chess Championship at the age of 14. When Orson Welles was 20, he directed his own adaptation of Macbeth as a WPA project with unemployed black performers in Harlem. Why I myself, if you’ll forgive me for crowing, memorized the batting averages of every member of the Cincinnati Reds’ starting lineup as a 12-year-old. So is it really all that impressive that Carson McCullers wrote this top 100 book* at the ripe old age of 23?! (Sorry, my humor never matured much beyond the days of Reds’ glory.)

I have to confess that it was almost a distraction to read this knowing how young McCullers was to have written something so insightful, polished and world-weary. She managed to get deep inside the heads of five very different characters in a mill town in Georgia just prior to WWII and give voice to their many valid concerns. In the case of John Singer, the voice was purely an inner one. He was a deaf mute. In a way, he was the central island in the archipelago to which the others hoped to connect. Singer was a good listener (reading lips) and had understanding eyes, but there was a bit of Chauncey Gardiner about him, too, in that people assumed more of a Christ-like, simpatico alliance than was possible from their confidant. They didn’t realize how sad and lonely he was himself when his only friend, another deaf man, had been sent to the asylum. Singer’s hands (used for signing) became silent.

Among the other characters, the adolescent tomboy, Mick Kelly, was most prominent. She’s said to be a semiautobiographical construct, which is easy to believe given her lanky appearance, her artistic sensitivity, and her advanced intellect. To me, she was a more human (read flawed, troubled and nuanced) version of Harper Lee’s Scout. She was written so powerfully – it was easy to ache alongside her as she craved more music (her big love in life) and peace of mind (that family circumstances would not allow).

Doctor Copeland was another memorable character. As a highly educated black physician, he had few peers, but he had a vision for lifting his people and combating racial injustice. The lack of progress was brought home convincingly as McCullers did an excellent job personalizing it through him and his family. She was evidently ahead of her time, casting a critical, clear-sighted eye on the relations of the day.

The two other POV characters were Jake Blount, a hard-drinking carnie mechanic with a Marxist bent, and Biff Brannon, a café/bar owner with a generous, aesthetic spirit struggling against alienation. They, too, bared their souls to John Singer as a part of an empathetic hub and spoke model.

We get to know a handful of other characters, too, valuable for advancing the plot and populating the communal landscape. The Jewish boy growing up with Mick who fears the news out of Europe, Dr. Copeland’s son who finds himself on the wrong (black) side of the (white) law, Mick’s little brother George whose impulsive actions led to dramatic changes (most profoundly in himself) – they all had important parts to play.

Things happen in this book, but I wouldn’t call it plot-driven. It’s mostly profiles of the people and reactions to the times. There was precious little cheer to go around. Faced with that fact, McCullers never did flinch. As one of the chaps in Spinal Tap once said, standing at Elvis’s grave, it was almost “too much bloody perspective.” Sugar must have been scarce in the Depression-era South – scant amounts to coat the world that she saw. But there seemed to be hope for sweeter days ahead. Even if I’m wrong about those hopes, this is an important and authentically observed book, well worth the time.

*In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter seventeenth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. (Copied from Wikipedia)
...more

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Jul 08, 2017 da AL rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Hell, the title alone is marvelous!!! Great reader. A wonder of a book from an essentially child genius lesbian author that delves into so many issues as integral to when it was written as to now. Among them; how one person's struggle influences everyone around them for generations and how life can be beautiful in its struggle. This is one of a handful of books (ie books of Truman Capote & David Sedaris) that make me wish I phrased things as beautifully as southerners can! ...more

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Feb 22, 2015 Traveller rated it it was amazing

Shelves: glbt-and-gender, marxism, vale-of-tears, gender

*10 out of 5 lonely, burning stars, light years apart, yet winking together in a shared cosmos.

THIS IS NOT A LOVE-STORY! Not in the romantic sense, in any case. Somehow the title had always made me think it was a soppy love story about unrequited romantic love.
There is love in the novel, but for the most part not of the romantic kind.
Rather, it is a cry into the existential darkness that surrounds humankind, and in many respects it is a deeply political, even philosophical novel, which reminded ...more

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Aug 01, 2019 Robin rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019, southern-gothic, american, literary-fiction, debut

Loneliness and isolation have been bottled up and painted onto the page here, in Carson McCullers' debut (and now classic) novel set in 1930s small town Georgia. Poverty, segregation, disease, and struggle are all themes in this southern gothic beauty, but it is loneliness that reigns supreme here, a truly desperate need to connect, and an ache-inducing inability to do just that.

John Singer, a deaf-mute who reads lips, is the central figure of this book. He is a magnet that the four main charact Loneliness and isolation have been bottled up and painted onto the page here, in Carson McCullers' debut (and now classic) novel set in 1930s small town Georgia. Poverty, segregation, disease, and struggle are all themes in this southern gothic beauty, but it is loneliness that reigns supreme here, a truly desperate need to connect, and an ache-inducing inability to do just that.

John Singer, a deaf-mute who reads lips, is the central figure of this book. He is a magnet that the four main characters (Mick, Jake, Biff and Dr. Copeland) are drawn to. He is the friendly face, the listening ear, the sounding board for their dreams. He provides a respite for their hopelessness. He's like a Jesus figure in the middle of a desert, offering cool refreshment. He becomes what each person wants him to be - an amazing magic trick spun by the simple fact that he does not speak.

But what they don't know is that Singer has his own Jesus figure, his own centre of gravity - another deaf-mute man and his only friend, Antonapoulos - a self centred and piggish man who lives in an asylum. Singer's devotion to Antonapoulos is baffling and makes the reader question Singer's wisdom, as well as warm compassion for a man who seemingly receives nothing in return for the outpouring of his heart.

So what happens if we lose our beacon, our life raft, and find ourselves alone, truly alone?

Maybe she would think about a phrase of hurrying jazz music. Or that a bowl of jello would be in the refrigerator after she got home. Or plan to smoke a cigarette behind the coal house. Maybe she would try to think a long way ahead to the time she would go north and see snow, or even travel somewhere in a foreign land. But these thoughts about good things wouldn't last. The jello was gone in five minutes and the cigarette smoked. Then what was there after that?

This book is understated in that there is no grandness to the plot, no spiking crescendo of action. The people in this book are not exceptional - they are real, living their lives, and they want more from the world than what they have been given.

It's clear Carson McCullers grew up faster than most, given her deep understanding of the world by the age of twenty-three, when she wrote this book. A melodious, sorrowful tune plays through these pages - a tune that I'll be humming for some time. ...more

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Oct 28, 2019 Michael rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2019, recs

Eerie and harrowing, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter thoughtfully reflects on what it means for the most marginalized of society to endure lives void of the possibility of change, love, or hope. Set in a Georgia mill town at the height of the Great Depression, the novel consists of a series of moving character studies; forsaking plot McCullers fully renders the rich inner lives of a small cast of misfits who fret about the future and share a common fascination with a Christlike deaf-mute man in the ...more

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May 30, 2008 Cecily rated it it was amazing

Shelves: classics, miscellaneous-fiction, historical-fict-20th-cent, favourites, usa-and-canada

Like most of McCullers stories, this is concerns lonely people living in the deep south. This one is set during WW2, told with strong musical currents (she had a place to study piano at the Julliard, and this shines through most of her work) and a radical passion against poverty and injustice.

The language is generally quite simple in terms of vocabulary and sentence length, yet the characters and events are all the more poetic and vivid for this apparent simplicity - a difficult literary trick Like most of McCullers stories, this is concerns lonely people living in the deep south. This one is set during WW2, told with strong musical currents (she had a place to study piano at the Julliard, and this shines through most of her work) and a radical passion against poverty and injustice.

The language is generally quite simple in terms of vocabulary and sentence length, yet the characters and events are all the more poetic and vivid for this apparent simplicity - a difficult literary trick to pull off.

The main character is John Singer, a deaf mute. Biff Brannon (café owner), Jake Kelly (migrant mechanic and social activist), Dr Copeland (black doctor and communist) and Mick Kelly (girl of 13-14) all attach themselves to Singer, who is of course, the perfect listener for their varied troubles and a blank canvas for them to create him as a god-like figure of whatever kind they each want. The main plot is Singer's relationships with the other four (they have almost none with each other). The subplot is a coming of age strand regarding Mick: moving from passionate and ambitious tomboy to frustrated young woman.

Each character who unburdens themselves to Singer thinks they know him and that he is something of a free spirit. None of them know that he is pining for the burden of caring for Antonapoulos, his former flat mate and fellow deaf mute, now in an asylum. In that relationship, Singer did all the talking and assumed that wisdom and empathy came from Antonapoulos, who largely listened. Now on his own, the tables are turned and he is cast in the role of wise listener. Singer's animated hands are redundant for communication - neglected and stuffed in his pockets.

We all need a Singer, but no one wants to be Singer.

All the closest relationships in this story, even amongst the minor characters, are compromised by literal or emotional distance or largely unreciprocated, though the characters themselves are not always aware of this.

As well as sadness, there is often an underlying sense of menace, though when bad things happen, they are often not what you had expected until a page or two before they happened, making them somehow more shocking.

Overall, a powerful and sad book, yet somehow not a depressing one. Despite much tragedy, there is always a glimmer of hope, arising from love and loyalty (even if it is one-sided).

NB "The Mortgaged Heart" (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...) includes an author’s outline of this book, which sheds extra light on the story, though some of her preliminary ideas were not in the final book. ...more

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Mar 21, 2013 Dolors rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Those who speak and have no time to listen

Shelves: read-in-2013

“Go, my songs, to the lonely and the unsatisfied,
Go also to the nerve-racked, go to the enslaved-by-convention,
Bear to them my contempt for their oppressors.
Go as a great wave of cool water,
Bear my contempt of oppressors.”

“Go”, commands Ezra Pound in his poem “Comission” .
And so I obey, and I go.
I go and listen to the mute choir of the lonesome and the restless, of the disinherited and the excluded, of the alienated and the embittered.
Isolated voices withering in despair, wrestling in in ...more

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May 08, 2013 Samadrita rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-and-more, in-by-about-america, melancholia, racism-slavery-post-colonial, adoration, social-justice, human-drama, cherished, by-women-who-matter, timeless-classics

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. Nobody knew. 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 A Room of One's Own 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. ...more

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Sep 06, 2020 Libby rated it really liked it

Shelves: library-loan, coming-of-age, debut, friendships, read-in-2020, published-between-1900-and-1950, on-the-southern-literary-trail

4+ stars
‘The Heart is a Lonely Hunter’ by Carson McCullers is a truly extraordinary novel. I found McCullers prose very simple and straightforward without the lyrical flourishes that I so love, however for depth of insight into the human psyche, the writing is a treasure trove. Throughout the book, I was reminded of the psychological defense mechanism of projection. You know how sometimes the things you literally hate about another person are those little parts of your own personality that you’v 4+ stars
‘The Heart is a Lonely Hunter’ by Carson McCullers is a truly extraordinary novel. I found McCullers prose very simple and straightforward without the lyrical flourishes that I so love, however for depth of insight into the human psyche, the writing is a treasure trove. Throughout the book, I was reminded of the psychological defense mechanism of projection. You know how sometimes the things you literally hate about another person are those little parts of your own personality that you’ve sheltered from the light, our shadow persona according to Jungian theory. In this novel, what most intrigued me was the power of attraction shown by McCullers’s characters toward what was most loved in others, projection in the direction of love instead of hate. “How we see others is a reflection of how we see ourselves.”(1) In this story, John Singer, a deaf-mute, attracts a motley crew of unusual friends.

Biff Brannon, owner of the New York Cafe, Jake Blount, a drifter with a rough appearance, a penchant for alcohol and loud opinions, Doctor Copeland, a black man who cannot reel his children into his way of thinking or living, and lastly, Nick Kelly, a fourteen-year-old girl with a rich inner life, all become frequent visitors to John Singer’s room. They all count him as a friend, telling him their innermost thoughts. It is, however, not their friendship that is most prized for him. For John Singer, it is the friendship of another deaf-mute, Spiros Antonapoulos, that jacks up his inner life. When Antonapoulos gets sent to an asylum by his cousin, Singer is bereft, and from there on, Singer seems to live for each visit to his friend. Since Antonapoulos seems to care only about the food treats that Singer brings when he visits, one can only assume that Singer’s friendship is not nearly as important to him as it is to Singer. Meanwhile, Singer moves into the Kelly family home as a boarder and becomes the object of near adoration of his four frequent visitors.

It is Nick Kelly who fascinates me the most. A coming of age tale, Nick is engulfed by her dreams and passions. Music is one of those passions and accompanies her nearly everywhere. As she straps baby brother Ralph into a wagon, she will entrust his care to seven-year-old brother, Bubber, and climb the roofs of houses. There her mind is free to soar. Is it because Carson McCullers was only twenty-three years old when she wrote this novel, that she got Nick Kelly’s character pitch-perfect? And what is it about John Singer that is so attractive to Nick? Surrounded by five siblings, house boarders, and parents that are too busy struggling to get by, is it the fact that Nick has finally found a listening ear? Singer’s listening is magical, but transcendence is a beautiful thing that is darn hard to accomplish. This is a tragic, sorrowful tale, and while hope is present, it is not abundant. This is a significant year in the lives of all these characters, and all of them will see major changes. Between fear and love, the human soul is stretched out. It is toward love that each of these characters has turned in their need for Singer’s companionship, but it is also toward self-love. Some of them seem to have self-hate and self-condemnation from bitter pasts. Ever, the lonely heart searches for the path to self-acceptance and belonging.

https://medium.com/@briaeliza/your-pe.... ...more

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Jul 24, 2018 Fionnuala added it · review of another edition

Shelves: carsonmccullers, bookgroup, reread

I've been reading Carson McCullers for the last month. I started with this book and then picked up each of her five other books one after the other, leaving myself no time in between to think about what I've read or consider writing a review. Today, I'm glad that I didn't attempt a review of this one because I just came across a piece in the sixth book, The Mortgaged Heart: Selected Writings, entitled Author's Outline of 'The Mute' (later published as 'The Heart is a Lonely Hunter').

Her own wor I've been reading Carson McCullers for the last month. I started with this book and then picked up each of her five other books one after the other, leaving myself no time in between to think about what I've read or consider writing a review. Today, I'm glad that I didn't attempt a review of this one because I just came across a piece in the sixth book, The Mortgaged Heart: Selected Writings, entitled Author's Outline of 'The Mute' (later published as 'The Heart is a Lonely Hunter').

Her own words describe her intentions for this book so clearly that I'm going to use them in lieu of a review:
....The general outline of this work can be expressed very simply. It is the story of five isolated, lonely people in their search for expression and spiritual integration with something greater than themselves. One of these five is a deaf man, John Singer - and it is around him that the whole book pivots. Because of their loneliness these other four people see in the mute a certain mystic superiority and he becomes in a sense their ideal. Because of Singer's infirmity his outward character is vague and unlimited. His friends are able to impute to him all the qualities which they would wish for him to have. Each of the these four people creates his understanding of the mute from his own desires...In his eternal silence there is something compelling. Each one of these persons makes the mute the repository for his most personal feelings and ideas...
This situation between the four people and the mute has an exact parallel in the relation between Singer and his deaf-mute friend, Antonopoulos. Singer is the only person who could attribute to Antonopoulos dignity and a certain wisdom...
About this central idea there is much of the quality of a legend. All the parts dealing directly with Singer are written in the simple style of a parable.
Before the reasons why this situation came about can be fully understood it is necessary to know each of the principal characters in some detail. But the characters cannot be described adequately without the events which happen to them being involved. Nearly all the happenings in the book spring directly from the characters. During the space of this book each person is shown in his strongest and most typical actions.
Of course it must be understood that none of these personal characteristics are told in the didactic manner in which they are set down here. They are implied in one successive scene after another - and it is only at the end, when the sum of of these implications is considered, that the real characters are understood in all of their deeper aspects....

Carson McCullers then goes on to describe her plot and characters in great detail before finishing with some notes about time, place and structure. I was very interested to see that she had a musical structure in mind because I'd experienced the book in musical terms even as I was reading it. This is how she describes the structure: The form is contrapuntal throughout. Like a voice in a fugue each one of the main characters is an entirety in himself - but his personality takes on a new richness when contrasted and woven in with the other characters in the book.

One of the other interesting things that emerged for me is the amount of material she eventually left out of this novel. Because I've read all of her novels and most of her stories at this point, I realise that she recycled some of those deleted scenes. Characters' names and circumstances have also been recycled which makes reading all of her work together extra rewarding. The reader begins to see the entire cast of characters as part of one big family and all of her themes as being connected. She is always writing, in one way or another, about inner isolation and the battle to overcome it. ...more

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Mar 24, 2011 William2 rated it really liked it

Shelves: us, fiction, 20-ce

This is a novel of the American South in the decade or so preceding the Civil Rights Movement. The central character is a deaf mute of almost saintly demeanor, Singer. His story constitutes the narrative spine along which the stories of his fellow characters are strung. These include Mink Kelley, a 13 year old girl; Dr. Copeland, the unnamed town's "negro" doctor, who knows that civil rights for his people is in the offing but is frustrated and angry that his own efforts toward that end have bee ...more

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Nov 26, 2013 Garima rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommended to Garima by: Dolors

Shelves: wehmut, channeling-challenge, favorites, testing-patience-1-2-3, my-2-cents, sing-a-song, no-kidding, read-between-south

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. Now I know. A little.

What did he understand? Nothing. Where was he headed? Nowhere. What did he want? To know. What? A meaning. Why? A riddle.

There are definitions galore for life and each one of them carries the trace of bittersweet truth which is har ...more

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Dec 08, 2013 Ted rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Ted by: Garima

Shelves: classics, lit-american, reviews-most-liked, women-s-works, americana, existenialism-wide

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. As I have. I move the book from the “currently reading” to the “read” shelf … and place a copy on one other shelf … ...more

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Nov 07, 2013 Duane rated it really liked it

Shelves: rated-books, american-classics, reviewed-books, guardian-1000

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 ...more

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Apr 28, 2019 Jr Bacdayan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

“I am not meant to be alone and without you who understands.”

The great burden of humanity lies in our need to be understood. Each human is a vessel of thoughts and emotions simply waiting to be poured forth to other vessels willing to reciprocate, each relationship a barter, an exchange of ideas and feelings, and so there remains in us a shred of influence from every person, idea, experience we encounter. Our lives a shared reality in ways we may not comprehend, a concoction of all impressions a “I am not meant to be alone and without you who understands.”

The great burden of humanity lies in our need to be understood. Each human is a vessel of thoughts and emotions simply waiting to be poured forth to other vessels willing to reciprocate, each relationship a barter, an exchange of ideas and feelings, and so there remains in us a shred of influence from every person, idea, experience we encounter. Our lives a shared reality in ways we may not comprehend, a concoction of all impressions accepted mingled with the fear of those our formed identity rejects.

Yet for a lot of people life is still a lonesome experience. Countless souls have spent years in search of someone to lend them time and understanding but have found none. Even those inside conjugal relations and tribal camaraderie still experience this feeling of solitude. Individuals forge relationships in order to find listeners but do not spare the effort to listen when it is their turn. And so convenient projections are created of each other resulting in fragile bonds that shatter at the earliest stages of conflict. Do we really have a thorough understanding of those we come in contact with on a day-to-day basis?

The heart is a lonely hunter draws from the bitter isolation of individuals on their search for an outlet. Rejects of their own accord malcontent in the different paradigms they exist in. Four distinctive people filled with substance vastly out of place in their simple rural town and at the center of it, an ill-fated deaf-mute who accepts all and gives nothing. A political subversive, a racial activist, a flowering bud of classical music, and a detached voyeur all unload their lonesome bulks on a solitary and often confused deaf-mute. The projection of their ideal companion carelessly placed upon this unsuspecting sacrifice. All pour but none take the time to hear from their perceived equal, until this cracked vessel is broken due to its inability to unburden itself.

Carson McCullers wrote this novel during her 23rd year. A lot of people seem surprised that this work, widely considered an American classic, was written by someone of her age. But this is hardly surprising, that timeframe of early to late twenties is a pivotal period in the human existence when loneliness is most pronounced. It is the time when we are forced to make harsh decisions that more often than not diverge from the idealistic dreams of our youth. This reality compels us to find solace in the shared misery of those around us who have also experienced the crushing bitterness of the world.

McCullers perfectly captures the intensity of loneliness inside us when our failures float into the surface of our attention. This nurtured loneliness that plagues and torments never really goes away. It lingers and it hurts. Perhaps all we can do is share some of the pain to people who have chosen to suffer with us.

“The way I need you is a loneliness I cannot bear.” ...more

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Jan 14, 2017 Diane Barnes rated it it was amazing

Shelves: re-reads

John Singer, the deaf/mute. Biff Bannon, the cafe owner. Dr. 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. Mr. Singer can only talk with his hands, and then only to those who can understand sign ...more

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Dec 03, 2011 Aubrey rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: reality-check, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die, books-are-the-best-invention, 5-star, r-2013, 1-read-on-hand, r-goodreads, reviewed, antidote-think-twice-read, antidote-think-twice-all

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.

...more

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Jan 07, 2017 Diane rated it it was amazing

Shelves: classics

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 ...more

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About Carson McCullers

Carson McCullers

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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.
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