The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

by Carson McCullers

Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time

When she was only twenty-three, Carson McCullers's first novel created a literary sensation. She was very special, one of America's superlative writers who conjures up a vision of existence as terrible as it is real, who takes us on shattering voyages into the depths of the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition. This novel is the work of a supreme artist, Carson McCullers's enduring masterpiece. The heroine is the strange young girl, Mick Kelly. The setting is a small Southern town, the cosmos universal and eternal. The characters are the damned, the voiceless, the rejected. Some fight their loneliness with violence and depravity, some with sex or drink, and some—like Mick—with a quiet, intensely personal search for beauty.

• ISBN10: 0618084746
• ISBN13: 9780618084746
• Publish Date: 8 September 2000 (first published January 1969)
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Out of Print: 19 July 2005
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Imprint: Houghton Mifflin (Trade)
• Edition: New edition
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 359
• Language: English

Reviews

[gmcgregor]

Carson McCullers' The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter takes place in small-town Georgia, but it could take place in a small town anywhere. Our main character is John Singer, a Deaf man who works as a silversmith (he's continually referred to as "deaf-mute", or "mute", because this book was written in 1940). At the very beginning, he's living with a fellow Deaf man, Antonopolous, as his roommate, and they speak to each other in sign language. While Singer is otherwise typical apart from his deafness, Anton clearly has more profound issues...he seems to have some sort of intellectual disability as well as health problems. After a medical episode, his brother (the local grocer) takes him to an institution to be cared for, leaving Singer in need of a new place to go.

He ends up in the boarding house run by the Kelly family, and it's here that he attracts one of what turns out to be a small but devoted group of...well, followers is the best way to describe it. Mick Kelly, the musically-inclined daughter of the not-well-off family, comes often to Singer's room to talk to him (he can read lips and will occasionally respond in writing) and listen to the radio. At the local cafe, Singer attracts the lonely owner, Biff, who has a bad marriage even before he's widowed, and Jake, a traveling labor organizer trying to inspire the locals to band together. And then he also manages to meet and attract the attention of Dr. Benedict Copeland, the only black doctor in town, whose children (including the maid for the Kelly family) have refused to follow in his footsteps. While he moves through all of these people's lives at the center of their obsession, though, he maintains his own obsession with his friend and former roommate, regularly visiting him and bringing him expensive gifts.

I'll be honest...when I first started reading this, I was concerned that it was going to be a "sad lonely people being sad and lonely" story. Unless they're particularly well-written, those types of stories don't tend to appeal to me. But what I actually found here was a beautifully realized tale of the desperate human need to connect and feel like someone understands you. Each of the people drawn to John is estranged from most social connections: Mick, because her sensitivity and love for music makes her an oddball among her family and most of her peers, Biff, because he and his wife, who he was estranged from, never had the family he craved, Jake, because he's an actual outsider to the community whose efforts to organize them only alienate them instead, and Dr. Copeland because his education and pride separate him from his children as well as his community. In John, who can only listen and doesn't talk and is kind-hearted, they find the acceptance they covet. For John, though, the only person in his life who can understand him and he can communicate with in sign is Antonopolous, and it therefore it is this bond that John prizes above all others.

It's such an insightful look into the human condition that it's hard to believe Carson McCullers was only 23 when she wrote it. We're a social species, humans. We want to be members of the group. Feeling outside of it, especially when we're teenagers like Mick, is difficult to bear. For the most part, the characters McCullers creates feel real and sympathetic...John himself is really the least plausible character, to so patiently bear the demands on his time and emotional energy that his acolytes demand from him. I found myself wondering why he didn't literally shut the door on them once in a while to get some time to recharge. This novel would be best for fans of character-driven rather than plot-driven stories, because quite little actually "happens" besides the emotional journeys of the people involved. But if you're down for a slower, quieter book, this is really very lovely.

[brokentune]

“ ‘All I can say is this: The world is full of meanness and evil. Huh! Three fourths of this globe is in a state of war or oppression. The liars and fiends are united and the men Who know are isolated and without defence. But! But if you was to ask me to point out the most uncivilized area on the face of this globe I would point here [...]”

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is a work of true craftsmanship. The characters are well-appointed, the relationships between them are well structured. The themes and issues picked up by the book are not only conveyed in sympathetic manner, the fact that they are conveyed at all is an act of both foresight and courage.

The fact that Carson McCullers was only 23 when she wrote the book is astounding – and humbling.

McCullers throws us into the sweltering heat of summer in a small town in Georgia, where Mick Kelly is a tomboy on the cusp of growing up. One of things that set Mick apart from the other people around her is a love for music.

We also get to meet Mr Singer, a mute, who owns a radio, keeps himself to himself and focuses his life on his one friend – Mr Antonapoulos. This chosen retreat from society, from the people in the town has the remarkable consequence that the townspeople attribute Mr Singer with all sorts of rumours.

In a way, the character of Mr Singer, reminded me much of Brian in Monty Python’s story – where people would mistake the main character for the messiah and project their expectations on him.

Mr Singer really is the centre character that holds the story together. Through him we also meet Biff, the owner of the local all night cafe/bar, Jake, whose desire for social change leaves him mostly drunk, and Dr. Copeland.

Each of the characters has a story that is revealed. Each has hopes and dreams. Each is a representation of different minority groups of the time and at the time that the book was written. We are confronted with the violence against African Americans, the struggle of artistic young people who are pressured into mundane jobs, the idealists who are despairing over the lack of change.

The major turning point in the novel comes with the death of one of the characters. For the past few days I have been wondering if that death was meant to symbolise Nietzsche’s aphorism that God was dead. And in a way, this event does come close to it but that would presuppose that the events that follow this turning point were caused by or in any way influenced by that death. However, they are not. What follows the death of that character is merely the unravelling of the inevitable. In a way I understood this as a joke. As if to say, whether or not there is a God has no relevance on the suffering that is caused by humanity.

I did not love reading this book. I regard The Heart is a Lonely Hunter as a great and clever book, but it did not enjoy the act of reading as much as I hoped. For all its fabulous structure and courageous stances, I was not gripped by the writing. It is slow, languid, and perfectly at home in its southern setting, in contrast to which I am more at home with the few passages that contrast this.

“The silence in the room was deep as the night itself. Biff stood transfixed, lost in his meditations. Then suddenly he felt a quickening in him. His heart turned and he leaned his back against the counter for support. For in a swift radiance of illumination he saw a glimpse of human struggle and of valour. Of the endless fluid passage of humanity through endless time. And of those who labour and of those who – one word – love. His soul expanded. But for a moment only.”

[cherryblossommj]

--

annotated... 2001.