 
|
|
Hardcover
Publisher: Modern Library
ISBN13: 9780679424741
Condition: NEW
Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices
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.
From the Paperback edition.
| Customer Reviews: |
|
| |
| Classic treatment of the alienated |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
 |
|
`The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter', published in 1940 when Carson McCullers was just twenty-three, is set in a small Georgia town and tells the story of five isolated and spiritually-frustrated characters. There's Mick Kelly (based on McCullers herself), a young girl who is always writing music in her head and dreaming of travel to foreign lands. Dr. Benedict Copeland is an African-American doctor who struggles to make others of his race see the truth about their plight as he sees it. Jake Blount is a potentially violent drifter who rants about socialism and fruitlessly tries to inspire the working class to rise up and demand more from their employers. Biff Brannon is the sexually-ambiguous café owner who spends hours on end thinking through his muddled thoughts. And finally, there's John Singer, a deaf-mute who the other four befriend because, as an intelligent and kind man who cannot talk himself, he is a good listener.
The story revolves around Singer who, more than just serving as a symbol of their mutual incomprehension through his handicap, acts as an almost God-like figure to the other four. He is to each whatever they want him to be. They all go to him to tell him of their problems as a Christian goes to church to pray. Meanwhile, all he really cares about is his friend, also a deaf-mute, who sits miles away in a hospital bed. His whole existence revolves around periodic pilgrimages to see this friend. The other four pout when he's gone, as one might when God doesn't answer a prayer. I found myself wishing they could seek solace amongst themselves, especially Copeland and Blount who shared similar views. But even when they do intersect, they are unable to fully connect. It is only Singer who can bring them solace.
The characters are drawn in a mostly unsympathetic light, except for Singer and Mick who, because of what they are, could almost not be portrayed any other way but sympathetically. Brannon is just too odd; there were times I wondered if he were a pedophile. Blount is too angry to care about. I rooted for Copeland a little bit, but once he and Blount failed to reach a détente, I was left feeling that they weren't interested in compromising their views and thus were really just selfish people, unwilling to live in a world that didn't fit their specific ideas.
McCullers's writing is a cross between the Russian realists of the 19th century and Flannery O'Connor. Like the Russians, she writes to reflect real life. Like O'Connor, she writes about the edges of society. There isn't a traditional plot: the narrative just follows their struggles with isolation and need for self-expression. McCullers has said she based the format of the book on a fugue, which explores various themes through repetition and development. Thus in place of a plot is the examination of these themes to their fullest extent, at which point the book can resolve. The themes she examines are noble themes, some timely (racism, communism), others universal (the need for self-fulfillment, the feeling of isolation from society), which makes this a worthwhile book. Others have written reviews asking why such a `boring' book without a standard plot or happy ending would be considered a classic. It's the universal themes of the book and the beautiful prose that make it a classic. Life doesn't always end up the way we want it to, nor do the books we read.
|
| A New Meaning for Loneliness |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
|
|
Carson McCullers gradually develops a place where a deaf mute learns to adjust to a life without his life-long friend. The author cleverly allows her characters to reveal their own concerns, always turning a deaf ear to the listener, the one who really needs to tell his very own story so desperately. But he cannot, he must assume the burden of silence in the wake of those who spew noxious verbiage. He must endure others' happiness in deference to his own. These characters are vivid and colorful providing an entertaining background while the main problem builds. And finally, we are shocked in such a way so as to shake our inner core to what hides in each of us. What a book!
There are many aspects of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter that give it a status of a memorable book. It brings us back to a simpler time when writers told a story. I became impatient at first when I started to read the volume. It wasn't until halfway into the work that I realized that there was something much deeper going on in the plot and something very creepy loomed over John Singer.
|
| A Classic |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
|
|
This is one really great movie. You won't be sorry that you took the time to watch it.
|
| Good |
| Customer Rating: 4 out of 5 |
 |
|
Despite good qualities, the novel is not without flaws. The most obvious one is that, despite McCullers' open-minded and liberal sensibilities regarding race, hers is still a viewpoint immured in its time, less of a blacks are equals tone than a pity the poor blacks tone. This is made especially clear with Dr. Copeland, who is portrayed, in some ways, as an intellectual superman of his race, part of the old `Talented Tenth', who is frustrated at how many blacks, especially his children, accept their roles as subservient shufflers and falsely smiling yes-men. Yet, even he is not immune to McCullers' backhanded putdowns, as, early on, this doctor, is shown reading the works of the philosopher Spinoza, yet not really able to fully understand it- as if a man who can understand human biology would really struggle with such. The fact that McCullers portrays the majority of her black characters this way shows a passive racism. Now, this would not be a major flaw in the book were one of the main foci NOT race relations, but it is, and this dates the book in ways A Tree Grows In Brooklyn does not suffer from. Many critics, in fact, have lauded McCullers for her pre-Civil Rights Era racial sensitivity, and foreshadowing of the evils of McCarthyism and anti-Civil Rights demagogues, but when one gets beyond Dr. Copeland himself, the eternal exception to her rule, one sees that McCullers' view of blacks is sadly mired in its day- a sort of old style racial noblesse oblige. Another flaw is excess description, at times. Because her writing is not that poetic, such excess does not serve as a `breather' from the narrative, and often does not serve the narrative in any substantive way, merely acting as filler. Here's an example: `This was her, Mick Kelly, walking in the daytime and by herself at night. In the hot sun and in the dark with all the plans and feelings.' Is the second sentence really necessary to qualify the first? Compare that with this passage, from the last few pages of the book, and the difference is stark: `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 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.'
Yet, despite the fact that the book does not follow many conventional narrative tropes, it does follow a standard tripartite structure, and uses a standard third person omniscient voice. McCullers, herself, said that the book's structure was that of a fugue- where voices act antiphonally: `This book is planned according to a definite and balanced design. 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.' In part one the characters, settings, and major themes are laid out. In part two each character's inner lives and failings are revealed, and the climax- Singer's suicide- occurs at the end of this section. And in part three the likely fates of the characters are limned.
This fatality is one of the ways this book most differs, negatively, from A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. That novel, laced with as much oppression and despair, ends on an up note (not the reason it's better) that is hopeful. Francie Nolan has a chance, a good chance, to surmount her past, even though, in many ways, her success was far less likely and less predictable than Mick's, who seems doomed. Both books are slices of life, portraits of bygone Americas in different places and times, but Betty Smith's Brooklyn seems far more vivid and real than Carson McCullers' South because it is more tightly drawn, less dated- thus more realistic, and more poetically mnemonically rendered. The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter also is a bit too long and too unfocused, losing its narrative thrust by going off tangent to things not vital to the main characters' tales, and were some of its excesses trimmed, it could pack more punch in just seventy-five to eighty percent of its length (356 pages). Still, this is, in a sense, nitpicking, and shows how far American literature has fallen because compared to what is routinely published nowadays this novel, despite its flaws, is a near-great book, every bit deserving of its niche in the canon.
|
| Audio Boost for "Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" |
| Customer Rating: 5 out of 5 |
|
|
In rebuttal to Douglas Moran's review on this website, I have to admit I am listening to "Lonely Hunter" on audio cd. I chose it because it's quite a famous book & was pretty sensational in its day (I believe the early 40's). What makes it compelling to me is Cherry Jones's reading. I am Not Southern, therefore am both amused and admiring of her wonderful rendition of all the parts. The dialogue of the poor, blacks and whites, could get tiresome (as it does in "Tom Sawyer), but hearing Jones read the part of Portia, for example, makes you love this character. Same goes for even the crazy Jake. You can just see him!
|
|
