Set in the isolation of a small southern milltown in the 1930s, this sentimental yet powerful story centres around a deaf-mute, John Singer, and Mick, a teenage girl. Mick and Singer become friends, though they are separated by Singer’s lack of communication and Mick’s struggle with teenage traumas.The lives of the people Singer touches are varied, linked only by him they include a deaf-mute, a drunk, and a doctor.

Singer does his best to help those around him solve their problems, but who is there to help him solve his own? Although the five central characters cross paths continually throughout the course of a year, they are not able to connect with one another, and their loneliness becomes the over-powering theme of this classic work.

Last month’s book, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers produced a mixed bag of opinions. We went from ‘absolutely wonderful’ to ‘rather indifferent’. These comments were directed mostly towards the book’s characters, which we all agreed were the driving force of this novel. In fact, it was the range of characters and their individual isolation which really pulled on some of our heart-strings.

Denise made comment on how she had never read an American novel that dealt so well with the anger of the working class and at the injustices of society. A few of us found similarities with Steinbeck’s work; the struggle and inequities of life tends to overflow in his novels, and Heart seems to find the same space. Here is a story of unique tenderness and love that lacks the ability to share and soar, leaving more than a few souls lost and forlorn. There are few who could not be touched by this exquisitely human dilemma. To read more visit our blog Over The Fence.

It took me four weeks to read this book, but it’s not because I didn’t like it. I really did. It was just a little more difficult to read than some of the recent books I’ve read because some characters were not really introduced but just thrown into the mix. I kept going back to read the chapter before to make sure I didn’t miss something.

The book is set in the 1930s and revolves around a deaf mute called John Singer and his relationships with people in the town. Parts of the book are difficult to understand, but the characters are well-developed and interesting. My favorite character was a young girl named Mick. I would have liked the story to focus more on her, but I guess that’s how it goes with books.

I am having troubles in finding a good reading time, and whenever I am able to grab it, I just can’t stop. As much as I would like to continue reading, I have to discipline myself regarding my sleeping habits. Anyway, the opening chapters of the second part of this novel explored music, death, and families, which are all either the means to deal with loneliness or the cause of it.

Mick Kelly could not get music out of her head. Everyday, music was all that she could think about. Her head would always be up in the clouds summoning an event with a musical score floating in the background. She still took care of her little brothers during the day, but when the day was over, the night was all hers. She would be found sneaking in the yards of people who were listening to the radio, especially if they were tuned in to a beautiful music program. One night though, her dad called. She was in a real hurry to catch a radio program from someone else’s radio, but she could not run away from her dad. He immediately noticed this and decided to let her daughter go, but Mick saw that his father was lonely. Deep down, he always felt useless since the time he broke his hip and resorted to fixing watches for a living. She just let her father talk, with beer in hand, about his loneliness, and for a long time, Mick discovered that it was the first time that she really got to know his dad.

At the time, Mick was attending vocational school. Like most adolescents her age, she longed to belong to a particular group, but it turned out that she didn’t. To approach her problem, she decided to throw a party. She invited boys and girls that she thought would be interesting, and good enough, the party pushed through. During the party, everyone was stiff, trying to act like a grown-up. However, some gatecrashers caused a commotion which led everyone, including Mick, to act like the kid that she was.

When talking about friendships, does one need pretense to secure some sort of a belonging? Wouldn’t it be better off to be alone than to come up with such a facade all the time? When Mick came to her senses, she declared that the party was over, walked aimlessly, and found herself on the house where she always sneaked into in order to listen to her music. She crept in and heard Beethoven’s Third Symphony. She was so absorbed in listening that she was confused on whether to capture fragments of the music and repeat them on her head, or to listen to the whole of it without having to think of anything else. Afterward, she felt more alone. The music that she listened to only hurt her more. She wanted to hear more to soothe the pain, but the show was over. She kept hurting herself until she fell asleep, and in the middle of the night, she woke up and ran as fast as she could to go back home.

Meanwhile, Biff was going through tough times since he was dealing with the death of his wife Alice. His sister-in-law Lucile advised him not to think backward for him to get away from pain. As for her, she had her share of tribulations by raising a daughter singlehandedly and enduring two divorces from the same man. In short, Lucile chose to live blindly to save her from loneliness. Personally, I do not know if I should pat Lucile on the shoulders for deciding to do so, but there is a truth in her words. If you come to think of it, the shallow are somehow blessed for they will never find the depths of life, and it is in these depths where one can really drown himself in dread and misery.

After the funeral, Biff looked at his collection of newspapers, all stacked in a room that his wife asked him to convert into a ladies’ toilet. He did not grant this wish, and as far as he could remember, it was the only wish of Alice that he did not approve of. And while at the restaurant, he was observing his regular customer Singer, who seemed to attract a lot of people. Biff was wondering what quality did the mute have that made certain people seek for his company. Even in his sleep, it bothered him a lot, which led him to believe that there was something wrong.

Doctor Copeland continued to visit Singer. He even took the mute with him during his rounds. The doctor was indeed so busy fulfilling his purpose. He started to believe so hard in this right after he finished his education while working hard for it and being a slave before it. He knew deep down that he had a truth to share with his people, but his body was whittling him down. He was suffering from tuberculosis and he needed to rest badly, but he just wouldn’t. To aggravate matters, her daughter Portia informed him that one of his sons, Willie, was put into jail for assault that was caused by an ugly woman in a bar. He was sentenced to serve no more than a year in jail for that.

After a few weeks, the paternal grandfather of Doctor Copeland’s children went to town, along with the other two sons of Doctor Copeland. He had not talked to these two sons of his after he was separated from his wife and kids due to a heated argument that became physical. Portia, the only child that was constantly communicating with his father, urged him to go for the sake of seeing his sons after a long time.

The doctor attended the reunion. He saw his wife’s father and his two sons. The former made an effort to talk to him about medicine since it greatly interested him, but the latter two felt really awkward. No words were exchanged. The reunion had a little talk about spirituality, about God, about angels, and about miracles. All the people in the reunion fervently believed in such, especially about miracles, except for Doctor Copeland, who was a man of reason. However hard he tried to open his mouth, no words came out. Because of that, he started seething with anger. The talk went on and on, and he left without saying a word.

Somehow, I feel for Doctor Copeland. You try to hold on to your ideals and impart them to the people who mean a lot to you, but you end up misunderstood and worse, ridiculed. Doctor Copeland chose to live out his purpose, and he ended up with a life in loneliness and obscurity.

Life is indeed an intricate puzzle. Life is mysterious, but death is plain simple.

This might be a novel about loneliness, but that does not mean that you will be put in a state of depression while you are reading it. It has a good pace, and if I only had all the time in the world, I would have read as many pages as I could. Anyway, I just finished the first part of this novel. There are two more to go, but before that, allow me to sum up the next series of events.

Jake Blount woke up from the room of John Singer, and for the first time, he found out that the latter was deaf-mute. Singer offered his room to Jake until he found some place where he could stay, but of course, the latter did not accept it. He then went out and his feet took him to the restaurant of Biff. They talked a bit and Jake asked for some directions regarding the location of a certain carnival where he would apply for a job. He got the job as a mechanic, but before leaving the place, he had a chitchat with a few men. He was feeling poetic, so he asked about the working conditions that were prevalent in the area. He ranted about the rights of a laborer, but the men that he was talking to did not seem to get it. More importantly, what ticked Jake off was that these men were indifferent. In the end, he was ridiculed for harboring such thoughts. He went back to the room of Singer bringing a fruit basket with him. They ate it together with wine, wherein he continued ranting to the deaf-mute about knowing something and trying to make others understand.

Is it somebody else’s job to make people understand, or is it the responsibility of each person to understand for himself? You can have all the teachers, the poets, and the seers in the world, but in the unfortunate event that the student fails to grasp certain truths, who is to be held liable? It is then no wonder why there are a lot of idealists who lose their hope and faith on humanity, and ignorants who further infect others with sheer apathy.

The next chapter introduced the last of the major characters in the novel, a Negro doctor named Benedict Mady Copeland. Doctor Copeland dedicated a huge portion of his life to his ideals, which came to a point that his children started to harbor feelings of fear for him. He dreamed a lot and he had grand plans for his four children, but the problem is, his children seemed to have failed him just for the very reason of having conflicting values. His children, who are now grown ups, preferred the simple life as opposed to the vision of Doctor Copeland, which was raising a scientist, a teacher, a lawyer, and a doctor. It could be said that the doctor was largely misunderstood and unappreciated by both his wife and his children. As a result, the visits of his children always end up in big quarrels.

Doctor Copeland had a tendency to be too prim and proper, as far as his family was concerned. He wanted to surround his family with intellectual things, but this did not work for his wife and children because they chose the ordinary path. Could it be that people would prefer this kind of life than a life filled with intellect and ideals? Apparently, Doctor Copeland was not able to reach his vision, which led him to lead both a solitary and a lonely life.

Through his daughter Portia, who worked for the Kelly’s, he found out about John Singer. This immediately caught his interest because he had a patient who was deaf-mute. Since then, Singer always had his share of visitors in his room. First was Doctor Copeland, then there was Jake Blount, then there was also Mick Kelly, and even Biff Brannon had squeezed in some time to visit him despite his hectic time at the restaurant. Singer’s visitors were all shocked when he left the room without telling them. He just left an envelope on the bed which contained his payment for the rent.

Where did he go? He spent a summer vacation at the asylum with his long time best friend. He brought gifts for him, but his ingrate of a friend disregarded all of these when he found out that there was no food. Singer was excited to share stories with Antonapoulos, but the latter did not feel the same. It was like a one-way relationship, wherein Singer was giving him high regards and attention and the other was just like blah. Is this because Antonapoulos is all that Singer ever had as a friend?

Singer must be starting to realize that he had no real place in Antonapoulos existence. When he went back home, his visitors where all curious about his little vacation, but he just disregarded every question concerning it. However, he did not change his ways. He was still the gentle deaf-mute that everybody knew. People felt that he could understand them in more ways than a normal person would.

And that ended the first part. The loneliness of the characters that vary in levels are now out in the open. How they cope with it will soon be unraveled.

I was recently hired, but there was a bit of a problem so I have a week’s worth of unpaid leave, which is a bit of a blessing since it will give me some time to focus on this novel before I go full force in the world of employment. As an overview, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is a tale about a deaf-mute, a restaurant owner, an alcoholic, a black doctor, and an adolescent girl.

The first chapter opens with John Singer, the deaf-mute. For the past ten years, he spent his life with another deaf-mute. This person was almost the total opposite of Singer, a fat and gluttonous Greek who had no interest in more intellectual processes. They were somehow getting along until this so-called friend of Singer got sick. He became almost impossible to deal with, wherein he came to the point of acting like a loon and breaking the laws and ordinances of their town, which caused washed out the savings of Singer. In the end, he was taken to the asylum by a cousin despite the pleadings of Singer.

He then moved to a new room to somehow cope with the loneliness. He ate regularly at the restaurant of Biff Brannon, who himself was somewhat lonely. He had a wife who always complained about another customer named Jake Blount, who was a carefree radical. This was because he had been drinking on credit for five days. There was yet no mention whether Biff had children or not, but one thing was for sure, he and his wife never sleep together on the same bed at the same time.

As for Blount, a veil of mystery surrounded him. The same mystery that emanated from Singer drew him closer. Blount must be an intellectual of some sort, and he appreciated the fact that Singer seemed to respond to his ramblings without knowing of his auditory and speech disabilities. In one of his drunken bouts, he beat himself relentlessly outside the restaurant of Biff. Biff decided to let Singer take care of him for the time being when the latter volunteered to do so. He took Blount home at the place he was renting, which belonged to the family of Mick Kelly.

Mick was at the threshold of the teenage years and was exploring the vice of smoking. She was drawn to the music of Mozart which she picked up from the radio of the old lady who was also renting a room in their house. She wanted to have a piano very badly so that she could play all the classical masterpieces. As a stepping stone, she transformed a ukulele into a violin. She was hoping beyond hopelessness that the little project of hers would be a success. However, after seeing the ukulele-mandolin-violin from another perspective and with her favorite person, who was her brother, she realized how stupid she was.

So far, this novel exposed the loneliness of four of the five major characters. Singer was lonely physically, a deaf deafened from the outside and a mute muted by his insides. The loss of his Greek firend, who could not really be considered a friend given the context, somehow triggered the loneliness that was enthralling him. He would eat methodically, alone and ignored save for Biff. Biff, like Blount, was drawn to Singer because of his disability. He was the type of person who took notice of freaks, as his wife put it. As regards to Blount, his loneliness bordered dangerously on depression and alcoholism. He was a disillusioned intellectual who must have gone to a lot of places and did a lot of things until he moved into town a few weeks back. He felt like nobody understood him, but in the silence of Singer, he felt like he was able to connect with him. Indeed, loneliness needs company.

And Mick, she was starting to harbor angst, which is quite common among teenagers. Despite the hustle and bustle inside their household, there was this loneliness that she couldn’t quite figure out. She longed to soar and to play music in a place that only she would know, but for the mean time, it was not possible.

As early as the first three chapters, the major themes that I was able to pick up are religion and racism. And above all, loneliness. I have a feeling that these would be prevalent in the rest of the book. How the author will do it is still in question. Carson McCullers wrote this novel with subtlety, so I am really excited on how the five characters will come to terms with their own respective conflicts and weave their resolutions into a seamless whole.

I just remember Mick feeling alone inside their house, despite the dinner and despite the guests their borders had. It is indeed true, that man is fundamentally alone.

In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together.

I am really looking forward to maintaining this blog despite my bad training schedule. Anyway, here is the next novel that I will read, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers.

I really like the title. The words are simple, but the effect that it has over me is so powerful. If you come to think of it, the title of this novel is a basic fact of life.

I used the title as one of my previous SMS signatures. And oh, I do not really know what to expect. Perhaps this is something that will put me into tears.

In this novel, which takes place in a small Georgia town during the late Thirties, the main character is a deaf mute. Other characters gravitate to Mr. Singer, the mute, because with him they feel so understood and known. They pour out their hearts and souls and he listens, intently, deeply. They thrill over their luck at finding a kindred spirit, a soul mate.

Mick, the adolescent daughter of the people whose boarding house Mr. Singer lives in, was first merely curious about him and his differentness. Then he got a radio and she becomes a constant visitor to his room. The music transports her to a better place. She dreams of becoming a famous composer, and tests everything she thinks or believes on Mr. Singer as he sits, nodding with a beatific smile.

The novel features two characters who are Marxists. The ancient Dr. Copeland, the area’s only black M.D., is a widower, estranged from his children. Dr. Copeland was never successful at keeping a lid on his rage, so his boys – Hamilton, William and Karl Marx – stay as far away from his wrath as they can. They’re just ordinary black men trying to get along in an unjust world. But their father takes their very existence – and lack of elevation among their Race – as a personal insult, a slap in his face.

While Dr. Copeland, first and foremost, hates Whites who dominate, manipulate and impoverish Negroes, he also hates his brethren, for refusing to listen and understand. With his college education and perfect diction, the boys in his hood find him “biggity” and soundly ignore him. It is the heart-breaking fact of his life that he, whose mission it is to save them, fails to even interest them.

Dr. Copeland then can barely believe that the only saving grace in his life is a friendship with a white man. He finds Mr. Singer quiet, intelligent and socially conscious.  Unlike any white man the doctor has known, devoid of contempt, ever kind, and completely in agreement with the good doctor’s worldview.

The novel’s other communist character is Jake Blount, a white, pugnacious, ham-fisted wanderer who lands in town and becomes a day laborer at a local carnival. He just wants to enlighten the workers of the world. But his unrequited passion has turned him into a loud, obnoxious drunk. During his visits with Mr. Singer, he drinks and drinks, sweats profusely, pounds his fist while pontificating on his True Religion, the evils of capitalism and bellows his outrage until he finds oblivion and a measure of peace in the bottle. His would-be flock of working stiffs mock, revile him and roundly reject him.

Little do these characters know that most of the time Mr. Singer can’t make heads or tails out of their carrying on. He only accepts their companionship out of a desperate emptiness left by the loss of his roommate – another deaf mute, a person like himself living in a soundless, speechless bubble. Mr. Singer had been in the habit of sharing the start and end of each day with his friend, his hands a wild flurry of gestures. When his friend’s family cart him off to a loony bin, Mr. Singer jams his hands deep into his pockets where they twitch with his untold stories, which the townspeople would be incapable of comprehending.

Only the Everyman character, Biff, the owner of the local all-night diner, remains aware that these gabfests with Mr. Singer are one-sided. He alone is conscious that Mr. Singer’s accommodating nature is born out of an inability to interrupt, contradict or even mutter an edgewise word. But Biff doesn’t judge his citizens harshly for seeking fellowship with Mr. Singer. Perhaps his compassion for them arises from the recent death of his wife. Perhaps it’s the result of his own bone-deep longing for intimacy his marriage and his life lacks.

It would serve no purpose to give away the tragedies and epiphanies that befall Mick, Dr. Copeland, Jake, Biff or Mr. Singer; because, just as in real life, the survivor’s stories go on, each continuing to follow the call of their own lonely, hunting heart.

But, here’s the really amazing thing. The author, Carson McCullers, wrote this book and saw it published in 1940 when she was merely 23 years old. Her debut novel made it clear that she deeply knew how unpredictable and complicated we humans are and how sad life can be. This sadness seeped into and seemed to come to characterize her own life. While she achieved widespread acclaim early on and throughout her life for her short stories, plays and novels, she also was an alcoholic, bi-sexual, and near-suicide, who suffered illness, strokes, partial paralysis and deforming surgeries until she died at age 50. Yikes!

What’s the saddest book you’ve read recently?
Judging by the title alone, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers does not spell an upbeat mood. The loneliness of the characters pervades the entire narrative that makes me sore. Each of the characters struggles in their social position, ambition, civil justice, and racial inequality. The all find solace in the friendship of a deaf man named John Singer. The writing captures a feeling so tense as conspiracy and menacing or as the deadly quiet before a catastrophe—and indeed, compounding the soreness, the novel culminates very sadly. I am surprised I have not discovered this book earlier, consider it has been widely taught in high schools and colleges. Given the weighty subject matter that McCullers delves, I gather it is far more fulfilling, in the sense of appreciating the autistic nature of the book, that I have read it after my flighty years are behind me. I hope the grim outlook of the book would not deter prospective reader, for the writing is beautifully lucid and contemplative. It irradiates a sense of forlornness that life is already all plotted out and so dismal for these people that all they could do is to admit the absurdity and cry.

It’s not what you’re thinking – I can promise you that!

Here goes – it’s the second-hand bookshop outside the Nungambakkam suburban railway station (at #5 Nelson Manickam Road, Choolaimedu) – a regular haunt of mine called Indira Book Centre.

The owner, Mr. Manimaran (mobile # 9444249899), has a unique collection going for a song and gets fresh stocks quite frequently – either library surpluses or discards from North America or old (but often untouched) stock from book stores in the UK and USA. How do I know? The evidence speaks – library pockets and cards and price stickers…

Last month I picked up about a dozen paperbacks for IRs 350 (approx. USD 7.20). These included

Sara Paretsky’s Burn Marks

Anna Quindlen’s Black and Blue

Martin Cruz Smith’s Gorky Park

and pristine copies of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers and

Tamarind Mem by Anita Rau Badami

- the latter of which I thought utterly delightful – really well written, capturing the essence of the Indian ethos and an absolute hoot in parts!

I’d already read Paretsky (Fire Sale) and Qundlen’s Blessings and One True Thing, but all the others were new to me, though I’d read about them…

© Sosha Srinivasan

“How Singer had been before was not important. The thing that mattered was the way Blount and Mick made of him a sort of home-made God. Owing to the fact that he was a mute they were able to give him all the qualities they wanted him to have.” [232]

In was 1938. In a Georgia mill town, John Singer and Spiros Antonapoulos are two mutes who have no other friends, and except when they work they are alone together. After Antonapoulos is sent to the asylum for public indecency, Singer takes up a room at a boarding house owned by the Kellys. Three times a day the deaf man eats at New York Cafe, where he befriends the owner Biff Brannon, who later becomes a widower; Mick Kellys, a 12-year-old girl who aspires to be a musician; Dr. Benedict Copeland, the idealistic African-American doctor who is estranged from his family because he denounces God; and Jake Blount, an alcoholic agitator who hopes the working class will understand that they have been oppressed and need to fight for their rights.

Mister Singer was different from any other man, and at times like this it would be better if other people would let him manage. He had more sense and he knew things that ordinary people couldn’t know. [179]

For almost a year these neighborhood acquaintances have paid visits to the deaf man on a regular basis. Not only have their company taken Singer’s mind off his loneliness in Antonapoulos’s absence, his inability to respond to their pleas gives these people a sense of trust that they can confide in him even issues so sensitive as racial inequality and injustice. For example, Dr. Copeland, stricken with consumption, cannot be treated at a good hospital because he is black. Jake Blount risks his life breaking up racial riot at Dixie Show. Whereas religion has reduced to a self-delusion, all four people feel compelled to establish some guiding principle or God. That John Singer has embodied their hopes, along with his blank-state quality and a quiet understatement, has rendered him a quasi-God figure—one that both inspires and comforts. For the deaf man, who does not possess the insolence of all the white race, has come to stand for all that these characters believe in their own minds.

By midsummer Singer had visitors more often any other person in the house. From his room in the evening there was nearly always the sound of a voice . . . There was truly none of the quiet insolence about this (white) man. [90-91]

In The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, Carson McCullers, with her keen observation and senses, has risen above the tension of her time and milieu to embrace black and white humanity. The writing captures a feeling so tense as conspiracy and menacing or as the deadly quiet before a catastrophe, like a racial clash and violence described in few occasions in the book. McCullers has lent a voice for those who are forgotten, oppressed, rejected, and exploited. In narrating the struggles and enunciating their profound loneliness she has not only communicated their feelings but also gives them dignity.

359 pp. [Read/Skim/Toss] McCullers wrote this American classics when she was only twenty-three. Richard Wright was astonished by her ability “to rise above the pressures of her environment and embrace humanity in one sweep of apprehension and tenderness.” This is her first novel and surely will not be my last reading of hers.

First edition cover, 1940

Last week, I finished reading Carson McCullers’ “The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter.” It’s the sort of book that you might pore through, or you might lose steam, and which of those happens probably has more to do with the reader than the book.

“The Heart” is driven by characters, and McCullers’ are rich, memorable, and tantalizingly underplayed. She paints a beautiful, bleak landscape of the interior life and how we look out from our “inside room” and see (or don’t see) the people looking out from theirs.

This is a beautiful and bleak story- wonderful for readers who enjoy narratives shaped by character rather than plot. McCullers’ insight into human thought and ambition is brilliant, and all the more so because it is delivered so subtly.

Her writing is wonderful and well-crafted, but so clean and so subtle to draw no attention to itself; I soaked it up like the I-miss-lit-class sponge that I am. (And really, it’s the sort of book you want to read in class, or with your awesome-nerdy book club, because there is so much going on underneath the surface.)

I don’t often re-read books, but this is one that I’m sure I’ll come back to. Extra bonus/intrigue: This was McCullers’ first novel; she was 23 when it was published.

Yes, it’s a classic (#4 in 1961), but I had never heard of the song until I watched the coming-of-age movie by the same name in 1986, and the song played over the final credits. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one, as Wikipedia tells me that the song was re-issued that year and re-ented the Top 10 (at #9). So it joins “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Unchained Melody” as movie anthems that were just as good the second time around as when they were first released.

Out of the three, as great as they all are, it’s “Stand By Me” that makes my Top 101. It’s such a simple sentiment: Don’t go. Stay. That’s what the whole song boils down to, and really, who hasn’t felt that about someone? I’m not the neediest of guys (I LOVE my alone time, thank you very much), but when I hear Ben wailing “Oh, darling, DARLING, stand by me…” there’s a little pang I feel inside that reminds me, yes, even you possess a human heart, and as Carson McCullers put it so well, the heart is forever a lonely hunter, no matter how much you may want to deny it.

86 Stand By Me – Ben E. King

P.S. Thinking about the movie (a classic in itself) reminded me of the other eternally burning question: If Pluto was the dog, which he plainly was, what the heck was Goofy supposed to be? Seriously, did anyone ever figure that out? It’s a far bigger dilemma of a question that the often-quoted “If a tree falls and no one hears it, does it really make a sound?”

Come on, that one is so simple. OF COURSE IT DOES!!! Just get a video camera, tape the tree falling, and watch it on a TV. Trust me, you’ll hear the sound on the tape. Agree? Well, there you go. The tree fell. It made a sound. Otherwise, no sound would have been recorded. Right? That was easy. Now let’s go back to Pluto and Goofy…

Normally when someone thinks of prom, something like this comes to mind:

Not the case in Carson McCullers 1940 book, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

The story’s main character, Mick Kelly, a tween as we would say these days, decides to throw a prom party. The rules of this party are to dress up in your best suit or dress and to fill out a prom card. ‘To prom’ with someone did not mean a dance, but a walk around the block , a promenade if you will.

This got me curious about proms as we know them today and when the tradition originated. Here is what I found from WIKI answers:

The word “prom” was first used in the 1890s as a shortened form of “promenade,” a reference to formal dances in which the guests would display their fashions and dancing  skills during the evening’s grand march.

In the United States, it came to be believed by parents and educators that a prom, or formal dinner-dance, would be an important lesson in social skills, especially in a theoretically classless society that valued behavior over breeding. The prom was seen as a way to instill manners into children, all under the watchful eye of chaperons.

The first proms were held in the 1920s. By the 1930s, proms were common across the country. For many older Americans, the prom was a modest, home-grown affair in the school gymnasium, often decorated with crepe-paper streamers. Promgoers were well dressed but not lavishly decked out: boys wore jacket and tie and girls their Sunday dress. Couples danced to music provided by a local amateur band or a record player. After the 1960s, and especially after the 1980s, the high-school prom in many areas became a serious exercise in conspicuous consumption…

I can’t decide which prom tradition Mick follows more, but her party isn’t like any rom I ever went to.

Why? Why was it that in cases of real love the one who is left does not more often follow the beloved by suicide? Only because the living must bury the dead? Because of the measured rites that must be fulfilled after a death? Because it is as though the one who is left steps for a time upon a stage and each second swells to an unlimited amount of time and he is watched by many eyes? Because there is a function he must carry out? Or perhaps, when there is love, the widowed must stay for the resurrection of the beloved – so that the one who has gone is not really dead, but grows and is created for a second time by the soul of the living?

~ Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

The funeral has come and gone. A frantic weekend of trying, and mostly failing, to sleep on a blow-up mattress; driving through rain and tears back and forth between the homes of relatives, the funeral home, the church, the cemetery; getting reacquainted with cousins I haven’t seen in too long, one in particular whom I haven’t seen face to face in nearly a quarter of a century.

The roller coaster ride requisite for such times left me emotionally drawn and quartered.

On the morning of the visitation, my father and I sat on the floor for an hour or so digging through old photographs . . .

. . . of times way before my time, but not his. He’s the one on the left. A handsome young lad, no? These memories belong to him alone . . .

. . . and they carry a weight only he can bear. Some memories however . . .

. . . are all mine. This one made the front page of the Grayville paper on May 21, 1970, just days after the Kent State Massacre. That’s me . . . protesting.

My son? He laughed most of the way through is first real haircut. I’ll never forget the way Papaw and Bob, the local barber who has trimmed the hair and tickled the ears of four generations of Thomas men, joked about the old days: glass bottles of grape Nehi chilling in a lift-top vending machine in the corner; refreshment in twenty-five cent servings; my lack of bravado when confronted by those annoying clippers. Neither my son nor I remember much about our respective trimmings . . .

. . . but we’ll never forget this day. This was as close as my son could get to Papaw’s casket. He sat on the front pew and played his guitar. Tears in his eyes. Other, more concrete and perhaps happier, memories flooding his head.

The man in the casket is not my grandfather. These pictures are not him either. What he was – the essence of the man – lives on in my mind. The way he looked when he smiled, gazing over his glasses or down at the afternoon paper. His gentle sense of humor. His willingness to lend a hand in whatever way the situation demanded. When I think of him, I think differently. I am more compassionate. I let things slide. I find beauty in the simplest of things.

The words of Douglas Hofstadter, from his book I Am a Strange Loop, floated through my head most of the weekend. At the heart of this challenging yet poignant book, amid references to Kurt Gödel, Russell and Whitehead’s Principia Mathematica, and Fibonacci sequences, lies a touching memoir about coming to grips with the death of his wife, Carol, of a brain tumor in 1993. This passage resonated with me when I first read it a few summers ago, and it lingers heavy today . . .

What is really going on when you dream or think more than fleetingly about someone you love (whether that person died many years ago or is right now on the other end of a phone conversation with you)? In the terminology of this book, there is no ambiguity about what is going on. The symbol for that person has been activated inside your skull, lurched out of dormancy, as surely as it had an icon that someone had double-clicked. And the moment this happens, much as with a game that has been opened up on your screen, your mind starts acting differently from how it acts in a “normal” context. You have allowed yourself to be invaded by an “alien universal being”, and to some extent the alien takes charge inside your skull, starts pushing things around in its own fashion, making words, ideas, memories, and associations bubble up inside your brain that ordinarily would not do so. The activation of the symbol for the loved person swivels into action whole sets of coordinated tendencies that represent that person’s cherished style, their idiosyncratic way of being embedded in the world and looking out at it. As a consequence, during this visitation of your cranium, you will surprise yourself by coming out with different jokes from those you would normally make, seeing things in a different emotional light, making different value judgments, and so forth . . .

The sad truth is, of course, that no copy is perfect, and that my copies of Carol’s memories are hugely defective and incomplete, nowhere close to the level of detail of the originals. The sad truth Is, of course, that Carol is reduced, in her inhabitation of my cranium, to only a tiny fraction of what she used to be. The sad truth is, my brain’s mosaic of Carol’s essence is far more coarse-grained that the privileged mosaic that resided in her brain. That is the sad truth. Death’s sting cannot be denied. And yet death’s sting is not quite as absolute or as total as it might seem.

When the sun is eclipsed, there remains a corona surrounding it, a circumferential glow. When someone dies, they leave a glowing corona behind them, an afterglow in the souls of those who were close to them. Inevitably, as time passes, the afterglow fades and finally goes out, but it takes many years for that to happen. When, eventually, all of those close ones have died as well, then all the embers will have gone cool, and at that point, it’s “ashes to ashes and dust to dust”.

Memories. They are what we have left. And I’m learning that, at this point, they may be more than enough . . .

[top photo credit]

wisteria in Columbus, Georgia

“The first days of April were windy and warm.  White clouds trailed across the blue sky.  In the wind there was the smell of the river and also the fresher smell of fields beyond the town.”

from The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

Carson McCullers was born Lula Carson Smith in 1917 in Columbus, Georgia.  Her first novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, was published in 1940, when she was just 23 years old.

I first read this novel in high school and didn’t particularly like it.  I’ve read it three times since then, amazed at the genius of the character of the deaf mute, the many threads of the theme of loneliness, and the depth of the writing.  Amazed that it was a first novel.  Amazed that it could have been written by a 23-year-old.

McCullers’ childhood home is located about fifteen minutes from where I live.  We’ve had a lot of rain in these early days of April 2009, sixty-nine years after she wrote these words:  “The sound of the rain was like the swelling sound of the sea.”

Il cuore è un cacciatore solitario, introduzione di Goffredo Fofi, nella storica traduzione di Irene Brin, da Einaudi

New York, 1940: solo una breve passeggiata separa il ponte di Brooklyn da Middagh Street, dove un grande appartamento fatiscente ospita una comunità di giovani artisti destinati a diventare, lungo percorsi diversamente eccentrici, icone della cultura angloamericana del ‘900. George Davis, direttore responsabile della narrativa di Harper’s Bazaar e acuto talent scout, ha offerto alloggio a un gruppo che comprende Wystan Auden, Benjamin Britten, Klaus ed Erika Mann, Paul Bowles e sua moglie Jane. Insieme a loro, la stella del momento: Carson McCullers. Erano bastati pochi mesi perché, poco più che ventenne, la scrittrice abbandonasse l’anonimato e l’inerzia della vita di provincia (era nata a Columbus, in Georgia, come Carson Lula Smith) per trovarsi proiettata al centro dell’attenzione mediatica statunitense.

Nel giugno 1940, pochi giorni dopo la pubblicazione del suo primo romanzo – Il cuore è un cacciatore solitario – la ricezione entusiasta del pubblico e della critica avevano spinto la giovane a lasciarsi alle spalle il North Carolina per trasferirsi a New York insieme al marito Reeves McCullers. Acclamata imediatamente come nuovo fenomeno letterario, Carson Smith sarebbe rimasta fino alla morte un personaggio di primo piano della controcultura statunitense. La sua biografia parla di una figura sregolata tanto quanto limpida e rigorosa era la sua scrittura, condensata in cinque brevi romanzi capaci di illuminare alcune zone d’ombra della cultura americana, ed è quindi meritorio che Einaudi Stile Libero abbia cominciato l’operazione di recupero integrale di questo percorso di scrittura oggi difficile da reperire sul mercato italiano.

Una trama di solitudini

Il primo volume di McCullers riproposto è Il cuore è un cacciatore solitario (pp. 368, euro 11,80), che esce nella traduzione ancora impeccabile di Irene Brin. L’introduzione di Goffredo Fofi giustamente ci ricorda come questo romanzo d’esordio riesca nell’impresa di essere a un tempo l’ultimo dei romanzi proletari degli anni ‘30 e il primo esempio di quel disincanto dolente che sarebbe esploso nell’immaginario di massa con Un tram che si chiama desiderio di Tennessee Williams, pochi anni più tardi. I protagonisti di McCullers anticipano molti dei temi che solo la beat generation sarebbe poi riuscita a recuperare e a articolare in modo esplicito. Dunque, Il cuore è un cacciatore solitario ruota intorno alla figura di un sordomuto, John Singer, legato da un amore profondo (e «indicibile» anche a livello metaforico) a un altro uomo, Spiros Antonanopulos, anch’egli muto, vittima di un esaurimento nervoso che, nonostante gli sforzi dell’amico, porterà al suo ricovero in manicomio. Rimasto solo, Singer – che ha poco più di trent’anni – abbandona la casa in cui erano vissuti insieme per un decennio e affitta una stanza in un albergo modesto, gestito dalla famiglia Kelly. Qui fa amicizia con la figlia dei proprietari, Mick Kelly, una dodicenne che indossa solo pantaloni per non assomigliare alle sorelle – il cui impegno principale è scrivere lettere alle star hollywoodiane e copiare i loro vezzi seduttivi – e dichiara imperturbabile: «Io credo tanto in Dio quanto in Babbo Natale». L’androginia di Mick Kelly – come, negli stessi decenni, quella dell’Orlando di Virginia Woolf o delle eroine di Djuna Barnes – è metafora di un desiderio di autonomia e di creatività che riesce ad esprimersi solo rovesciando i segni visibili di una femminilità percepita come condanna all’isolamento tra le pareti domestiche.

Mick, che vorrebbe essere un ragazzo per vivere come Bill, il fratello maggiore di cui invidia la libertà di muoversi e vestirsi senza costrizioni, è solo la prima di una serie di giovani donne attraverso cui McCullers metterà in scena, nel corso della sua carriera, la consapevolezza di una differenza sessuale rivendicata con orgoglio e al tempo stesso scandagliata nelle sue conseguenze debilitanti. In Invito di nozze (del 1946) renderà protagonista Frankie Addams, un’altra giovane donna con un soprannome di genere indecifrabile, facendola sognare di essere un maschio e di arruolarsi nei marines perché «i soldati nell’esercito possono dire noi». Proprio l’assenza di una dimensione collettiva è alla base del malessere esistenziale che pervade queste figure ribelli e scontrose. Ma il senso di esclusione dai meccanismi identitari rassicuranti che imprigionano la gente «normale» si trasforma, nelle storie di McCullers, in uno spazio in cui può nascere l’utopia. Uno spazio marginale e umbratile, dove si stagliano personaggi feriti eppure indomiti che conservano ancora oggi una rara intensità lirica. È così per le giovani donne inquiete come Mick, che sognano di trovare nella pratica artistica fama, successo e una prospettiva di libertà, lontana dal perimetro opprimente delle responsabilità familiari. È così per uomini coraggiosi e disillusi come il dottor Copeland, un medico afroamericano che ha dedicato la vita alla diffusione dell’orgoglio nero e degli ideali marxisti: abituato a ignorare «la tranquilla insolenza della razza bianca» per concentrare la sua attenzione sulla sua gente, Copeland spesso non riesce a controllare il «collerico amore» che lo travolge quando si accorge che la comunità afroamericana è di fatto complice di quel capitalismo razzista che li priva della dignità umana. E anche i suoi stessi figli – incluso quello battezzato Karl Marx nella speranza diventasse una guida per la rivoluzione nera – non sono da meno.

Non stupisce, dunque, che Richard Wright, a sua volta reduce, nel 1940, dalla pubblicazione del suo primo romanzo Paura (Native Son) abbia recensito Il cuore è un cacciatore solitario acclamando in Carson McCullers una scrittrice che «per la prima volta nella letteratura meridionale tratta i personaggi neri con la pacatezza e la giustizia riservati a coloro che appartengono alla sua razza».

Il fiore della povertà

Utilizzando una scrittura tersa e evocativa, McCullers cambia di capitolo in capitolo il punto di vista che filtra gli eventi narrati e fa emergere mondi interiori capaci di plasmare la realtà in modi tanto singolari da renderla di fatto incomunicabile. Così accade quando descrive le utopie del dottor Copeland e l’ambizione artistica di Mick, la passione amorosa di Singer e il radicalismo rabbioso di Jake Blount, comunista in crisi ormai rassegnato al fatto che «il risentimento è il fiore più prezioso della povertà». Anche Blount, tarchiato e imbolsito dai troppi whisky, «dava l’impressione che qualcosa in lui fosse deforme, ma quando lo si osservava con attenzione tutto in lui era normale. Esattamente come doveva essere. E allora, se quel disaccordo non era fisico doveva essere morale». In parte è vero: la deformità dei freaks di McCullers è in primo luogo interiore. L’anomalia che li riguarda consiste nel loro non riuscire a essere uguali a se stessi. Incapaci di collocarsi in modo rassicurante lungo binari conosciuti, osservano il mondo impacciati e dolenti. Come Mick, la cui appartenenza pesca all’interno di confini molteplici, tra infanzia e adolescenza, maschile e femminile, audacia e insicurezza. Stranieri a se stessi, spettatori stupiti delle contraddizioni proprie di una America impoverita dalla recessione eppure egoista e crudele nei confronti dei deboli, i freaks di McCullers si muovono lenti in spazi resi accidiosi dall’aria bollente che arriva dal vicino Golfo del Messico. La canicola sferza e opprime quartieri in disfacimento, pieni di gente affamata e bambini rachitici. Il panorama che ne viene fuori è desolato eppure avvincente.

Strade riarse e assonnate, squarciate all’improvviso da esplosioni di violenza, liti, scoperte macabre («Una mattina d’aprile trovò un uomo assassinato, un giovane nero, in un fossato a circa trenta metri dalla fiera. Gli avevano tagliato la gola con un colpo così atroce che la testa pendeva quasi staccata»). La prosa di McCullers insegue un ideale di semplicità rigorosa, una scarnificazione del discorso narrativo in cui la sperimentazione stilistica modernista si traduce in quadri di ingannevole semplicità, come nell’incipit del romanzo: «C’erano due muti, in città, e se ne stavano sempre insieme. La mattina presto uscivano di casa per recarsi al lavoro: camminavano a braccetto, ed erano molto diversi l’uno dall’altro».

Il rapporto tra i due è sopraffatto, nei capitoli filtrati dal punto di vista di Singer, da una esaltazione passionale che mantiene ancora intatta la sua forza: «Non cessava di pensare a lui: la felicità di rivederlo lo irrigidiva, aveva le narici bianche, convulse, il respiro gli usciva rapido e ansante dalle labbra socchiuse». Amori omosessuali dignitosi e profondi, donne coraggiose e «pazze di rabbia» per le costrizioni subite, intellettuali protesi verso una missione di giustizia sociale cui non rinunciano nemmeno nei momenti di amarezza e disillusione: questi i freaks cui McCullers dà la parola in un romanzo del quale, non a caso, è stata riscoperta la sua valenza di manifesto femminista e queer.

Un riferimento per la cultura gay

Anche la biografia della scrittrice, del resto, contiene innumerevoli spunti che contribuiscono a renderla, oggi, una figura dai tratti mitizzabili. La casa di Middagh Street, che Anaïs Nin avrebbe ribattezzato «February House» perché molti dei suoi abitanti compivano gli anni nel mese di febbraio, è diventata un riferimento importante per la storia della cultura gay del ‘900. In quelle stanze Benjamin Britten viveva con il suo compagno, e altrettanto faceva Wystan Auden, che aveva sposato Erika Mann solo per garantirle la cittadinanza britannica. Anche Klaus Mann non aveva mai fatto mistero della propria omosessualità, mentre qualcosa di analogo rendeva inconsueto il legame tra Paul Bowles e la moglie Jane. Più tradizionale invece il ménage di Richard Wright, che arrivò a Brooklyn insieme alla moglie e alla figlia. In questo contesto trasgressivo e elettrizzante, fatto di cene, collaborazioni artistiche e fiumi di alcool, presero forma opere decisive per la cultura anglo-americana del dopoguerra. McCullers si immerse nella vita della February House con un entusiasmo che avrebbe presto minato il suo fisico, già debilitato dalla febbre reumatica.

Fra talento e sventura

Dopo anni di salute cagionevole, quando era appena trentenne un ictus le paralizzò il lato sinistro del corpo. Sarebbero seguiti altri vent’anni di successi letterari e tracolli esistenziali: dopo il divorzio McCullers risposò il marito Reeves, poi tentò più volte il suicidio, mentre la malattia progrediva rapida e si alternavano amori, spesso impossibili, per uomini e donne. Finché la morte arrivò nel 1967 quando Carson McCullers aveva appena compiuto cinquant’anni. Le fotografie degli ultimi anni la ritraggono ormai paralizzata, eppure il volto era rimasto quello androgino e trasognato della giovane in camicie di taglio ostentatamente maschile.

«È stata sin dagli inizi una leggenda tipicamente americana: la sua fama era, in uguale misura, il risultato del suo talento e di imponenti campagne promozionali» ha scritto Gore Vidal. Ma lo stesso Vidal ammette che, diversamente dal solito, il talento della scrittrice era così evidente da rendere superfluo il contorno pubblicitario.

(Valeria Gennero, “Il Manifesto”, 11 marzo 2008, pag. 12)

There’s nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a song unfinished. Or an old address book.

Carson McCullers

Carson mc Cullers pubblica The Heart is a Lonely Hunter a 23 anni e il suo talento è immediatamente riconosciuto e apprezzato. Ambientato in una cittadina del profondo sud degli stati Uniti negli anni trenta, è un romanzo corale in cui come in una composizione musicale la trama e l’ordito del racconto sono intessuti dalle voci di quattro personaggi. Elemento unificante, vero e proprio perno attorno a cui ruota la narrazione, è il solitario Singer, il sordomuto che diventerà il confidente di ognuno. Con il suo ascolto silenzioso permetterà ad ognuno di loro di giungere a inaspettate rivelazioni.

There are five characters but the novel ‘pivots’ on one, a deaf mute called John Singer. The other four ‘impute to him all the qualities they would wish for him to have’. They ’sing’ to him the songs they believe no one else will listen to. In choosing the four ’satellites’, McCullers highlights different kinds of loneliness or alienation – depending  on race, class, age and sexuality. Thirteen-year-old Mick Kelly confesses her growing passion for music; fifty-one year old Doctor Benedict Copeland talks about his frustrations  at raising the consciousness of the town’s black people (starting with his family); Jake Blount a twenty-nine-year-old itinerant labour agitator and drunk reveals his plans for   revolution; only Biff Branno, the fourt-year-old café owner, recognizes that Singer is a ‘home-made god’ for them all.

In some ways we seem to be encouraged to think of Singer as Christ-like. He is a good listener, attracts disciples and is thirty-three  when he dies. On the other hand, he does not understand, or even care much about, what the others tell him. some prefer to think of Singer as a kind of Moby Dick figure – a blank canvas on to which just about anything can be projected.

Kasia Boddy on The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

(This is now one of Doprah’s picks.  Drats!)

As you know, I’m always thinking of new giveaways.  I think I concoct them more for my own entertainment than for the pleasure of my readers.  It makes me feel good to share my enthusiasm for particular books and authors with all of you, and since I know most of you aren’t going to rush to the nearest used bookstore to buy one of my favorite old titles, I’ve decided to send some of my favorites your way.  This is one of those times.

I got this idea from Care over at Care’s Online Book Club.  She read The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and then watched the movie.  I have the feeling that she enjoyed the movie a little bit more than the book, and I think I did too–just a teeny little bit.  I believe it’s pretty rare to like a movie as well or better than the book it was adapted from, since books capture your imagination while films depict the screenwriter and director’s imaginations.  Sometimes movie folks understand a novel so completely and love the story so much that they do a wonderful job on the film.  A good example of this is To Kill a Mockingbird. It’s so amazingly well done that I still have a crush on Gregory Peck.  We were going to be married–I decided this when I was a young girl.  (This might sound kind of creepy, but I also had a thing for Robert Duvall.  He was so vulnerable and sad and sweet, and I believe those qualities appeal to girls of all ages).

Jeez, there’s nothing like going off on a tangent, is there?  Now, back to The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. The film is brilliant, and the acting is some of the best I’ve ever seen.  Every actor is suberb.  Alan Arkin won the New York Film Critics Award for his depiction of Mr. Singer, and both Arkin and Sondra Locke were nominated for Oscars.  Stacy Keach was also great in his debut role as Blount, a lonely alcoholic who befriends Mr. Singer.  Cicely Tyson excelled in her screen debut as well.  I developed a little crush on Arkin when I saw this, due to the aforementioned sadness and sweetness quotient.  It seems I’ve always been a sucker for unhappy men, much to my regret.  Another digression!  Good God!

So anyway, are you interested in entering this giveaway?  You should be!  The DVD is brand new and was just produced this year!  I will send a used copy of the book and a new DVD to one winner.  To enter, leave a comment about a screen adaptation you’ve liked as well or better than the book it was adapted from.  This may give me ideas for later giveaways!

I’ll choose the winner on Wednesday, Nov. 19th.  Good luck!

P.S. I bought a …Heart… DVD for myself and watched it last night.  I’m glad I was alone because I wept like a little child.  I think the true measure of oncoming senility is a sharp increase in the number of times a person either: a) goes off on tangents while writing blog posts, and/or b) becomes a tear-stained mess with increasing (and increasingly embarassing) frequency.  I find myself doing both much more often than I used to.