Carson McCullers: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (2016, Penguin Books, Limited)
384 pages
English language
Published May 9, 2016 by Penguin Books, Limited.
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940) is the debut novel by the American author Carson McCullers; she was 23 at the time of publication. It is about a deaf man named John Singer and the people he encounters in a 1930s mill town in the US state of Georgia. A. S. Knowles, Jr., author of "Six Bronze Petals and Two Red: Carson McCullers in the Forties," wrote that the book "still seems to capture [the author's total sensibility more completely than her other works." Frederic I. Carpenter wrote in The English Journal that the novel "essentially [...] described the struggle of all these lonely people to come to terms with their world, to become members of their society, to find human love—in short, to become mature."
I really enjoyed this one. The prose is beautiful, visceral, and ponderous. The characters reflect their time and place, with corresponding moral complexity. It's a tragedy worth experiencing.
I think I added this book to my list when I saw @toddrobbins mark it was "to read," and I'm glad I did. After reading this, Mick and Mr. Singer became two of my favorite characters of all time. The depiction of queerness is really interesting and seems way ahead of its time for 1940, and the depiction of childhood is striking too (not to mention how the novel addresses both of these through the character of Mick).
Just recently re-read this after maybe 25-30 years (LOL I am OLD). It still holds up. In fact I'll bump the rating up 1/2 of a star to 4 1/2 stars. When I think that Carson McCullers was only 22-23 (?) when she wrote this...just wow. She understood human longing for connection, to make a difference in the world. She understood how we can feel cheated when we realize we will just have an ordinary life, that most of our dreams and wishes will not be fulfilled. She understood a young girl's emotional pain as she matured, the obsessive thoughts, and unfortunately, the post traumatic stress she, all too often, chooses to hide from the world.
This author created great, believable characters whose pain you felt because you understood them fully, as horrible and hateful as they could sometimes be. Unlike the relationships the characters have with Singer... they might …
Just recently re-read this after maybe 25-30 years (LOL I am OLD). It still holds up. In fact I'll bump the rating up 1/2 of a star to 4 1/2 stars. When I think that Carson McCullers was only 22-23 (?) when she wrote this...just wow. She understood human longing for connection, to make a difference in the world. She understood how we can feel cheated when we realize we will just have an ordinary life, that most of our dreams and wishes will not be fulfilled. She understood a young girl's emotional pain as she matured, the obsessive thoughts, and unfortunately, the post traumatic stress she, all too often, chooses to hide from the world.
This author created great, believable characters whose pain you felt because you understood them fully, as horrible and hateful as they could sometimes be. Unlike the relationships the characters have with Singer... they might have all been deaf AND blind as much as they saw into each others' hearts, as much as they understood each others' dreams and desires. Perhaps Singer was the most guilty of this, refusing to make a real connection to any of them. He just pined away for that crappiest friend of all Antonapolous. He silently looked at them as they spoke, just half comprehending what they were saying. They poured their hearts' desire out to him as he silently watched. It's hard to blame the others for being so selfish because friendship take real effort of both people. There has to be a give and take for it to be real. Singer would not try for whatever reason. We never really find out why. He remains silent even to the reader. And he was perhaps the loneliest hunter of all and had many people with whom he could have made a real connection, but perversely he would not.
This is a book worthy of anyone's reading time. It will not disappoint. It's kind of depressing in a way, but then again life is like that sometimes. Sometimes.
I cared so much for all of these people. Occasionally wrecked.
Commute audiobook. Not thrilled with the narration.
Book was fine. I keep seeing it compared to To Kill A Mockingbird but I much prefer TKAM.
It's about a lot of things: class, race, the change that comes with time, isolation, hope, failure, loneliness, innocence, and basically lots of things that make up the modern human experience. These are all interesting subjects to think about. But I didn't really care one way or the other about any of the characters; and I hated the rubbish representation of African American English, which sounded way too "uncle Remus-y" and made it hard to take the characters whose dialogue was written that way seriously.
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers, is one of the saddest books I've ever read, so sad that it was hard for me to read much of it at a time. I felt for each and every one of the characters and the frustration over how people who have much in common still cannot take comfort in each other. Because of this inability to connect and see things as they really are, everyone is very alone. Each character has a dream, a purpose, or something he or she looks forward to, and without this, life seems pointless. Unfortunately, these dreams are unattainable and become torments. Mick Kelly is a particularly tragic character, an unusually bright girl growing up with a clear idea of what she would love to do in life, but no means of attaining that goal. There are four troubled and thoughtful personalities who are …
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers, is one of the saddest books I've ever read, so sad that it was hard for me to read much of it at a time. I felt for each and every one of the characters and the frustration over how people who have much in common still cannot take comfort in each other. Because of this inability to connect and see things as they really are, everyone is very alone. Each character has a dream, a purpose, or something he or she looks forward to, and without this, life seems pointless. Unfortunately, these dreams are unattainable and become torments. Mick Kelly is a particularly tragic character, an unusually bright girl growing up with a clear idea of what she would love to do in life, but no means of attaining that goal. There are four troubled and thoughtful personalities who are captivated with John Singer, the deaf man who is boarding at the Kelly's. Singer seems to listen to each of them with a wise ear, but none of them can know for sure what he is thinking, since he does not speak. He just listens, which proves to be exactly what each of them needs. Unfortunately, though, Singer has no outlet, himself. He lives for those rare visits with his old friend, another deaf man who has been committed to an asylum. Singer's relationship with this man, Spiros Antonapoulos, however, is the same: Singer has no idea how much Antonapoulos understands or listens, but he has put him on a pedestal, all the same. Antonapoulos has become the vision and inspiration Singer needs to live. This cannot end happily.
We open our mouths, we talk, but we don't really listen to each other, because we are too full of our own inner discourse. Lonely, indeed.
