The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940)

I only came to Carson McCullers's first novel about 10 years ago, but have read it several times now. Something about these mundane events in a small Georgia town in the 1930s is mesmerizing and keeps drawing me back. It's extraordinarily beautiful. McCullers started it when she was 20. She was 23 when it was published. Her prodigy is more one of instinct. Her aim is true. Her eye is gentle but telling, circling and unerringly tracking the interior lives of many different people: Mick Kelly, a teenaged girl who dreams of composing music. Jake Blount, an alcoholic Communist true believer. Dr. Copeland, an African American physician who seethes with racial resentment. Biff Brannon, the stoic proprietor of the New York Café, an all-night diner. And John Singer, the deaf-mute silver engraver at the town jewelry store who ties them all together. Each one is plunged into loneliness, hurting for something like soul connections. That's my term, not McCullers's. She is somehow operating on levels beyond language. That's what's most impressive about this novel, even more than how young she was when she wrote it. The most common praise I've seen is for how believable her African American characters are. Richard Wright, who published Native Son the same year, praised them as astonishing. But there are further hints of social tensions here even beyond race and class, flirting with the broader spectrum of sexuality. I sensed them in this novel before finding out more about McCullers's life, which included alcoholism and bisexuality in both she and her husband. The sexuality is mostly on the furthest sidelines of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, just a humming vibration in the background. As much as anything this novel is focused on poverty, the spiritual kind (see title) but definitely the material kind too. It's the Depression era in the South. It may go to the Jesus story and New Testament somewhat obviously, with a martyr and disciples and so on, though not to drive any point or message, let alone a religious one, but more because it is a comfortable frame, a way to understand—a common language. This is her gospel as a young woman, the gospel according to Carson McCullers. The real common language here is pain. Some terrible things happen in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, and arguably the whole thing is downbeat or even depressing. Yet its view of human souls is so penetrating and astute, shot clear through, that it is almost breathtaking in places. Not everything rings fresh and true, but the things that do are often best of their kind. For example, the story of Bubber and Baby, their shared moment of fate and its aftermath. All five of the main characters are memorable and true, and so are their stories. It's amazing stuff—after Gatsby, my favorite American novel.

In case it's not at the library. (Library of America)

"The Sojourner" (1950)

Read story by Carson McCullers online.

This story by Carson McCullers is a nice meditation on time and loss. John Ferris, whose most recent residence is Paris, has returned to the US for the funeral of his father in Georgia. Now it is the last day before he returns and he is in New York, and by chance happens to see his ex-wife. He has not seen her for many years. At first he follows her, struck by the strange coincidence of seeing her again. But finally he catches up to her and greets her. She has since remarried and had children—she and John never did. John knew she had a family but still he is unsettled to meet them, as she invites him for an early supper. She and her husband are going to the theater that night and it's all the time they can spare on such short notice. This is a wonderfully done story, somehow involving and poignant from the start. John has a complex mix of feelings seeing his ex-wife's life. Her son Billy, a boy of about 8, is friendly until he learns John used to be married to his mother. Then he becomes edgy and confused and finally has to be sent to bed. John exaggerates the qualities of his life, claiming he will soon marry the woman he's been seeing, even as he realizes his life has been a long series of short relationships. (There's a terrific last scene in Paris after his return, when John is seen attempting to connect with the 6-year-old son of his present mistress. It doesn't really seem to take, though it makes the boy hopeful even as it makes John sad.) I like the way there is so little incident to the story but so much of life swirls around in it: death, loss, divorce, regret. We're just seeing the aftermath but also realizing how, in many ways, all of our everyday lives is aftermath to something. John is self-deluded, but he is more lost in the world than malevolent. He tells lies and exaggerates about himself, but not to hurt anyone. Only because it hurts him to view the realities of what he has become. They both still have feelings for one another, knowing they will never be acted on. When his ex-wife sits down to play the piano for him, while her husband is seeing to their boy, she plays a song that is meaningful to them. It's also significant that she knew John's father, and the news of his death pains her. This story is done so simply and with such clarity. This is how people behave, and this is how they behave with one another. There's not a single frill to the whole thing, and it's only 10 pages, yet so much is packed into it. It's remarkable.

Short Story Masterpieces, ed. Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine