n   “The way I need you is a loneliness I cannot bear.” n

...I feel close to crying. This book was beautiful. Heartwrenching, but so beautiful and honest that I now call it my new favorite classic. It's incredible that a 23-year old woman wrote such a powerful novel about sadness and loneliness, without making those emotions look ‘pretty’ like many recent authors enjoy to do. Instead this book stands out by its realness: like no matter with how many people you surround yourself, you still can end up feeling alone.

This story is set in a small southern town during the Great Depression, on the eve of America's entrance into World War II. Our main character is a deaf-mute named John Singer. At the beginning of the book Singer’s best and only friend, the deaf-mute Greek Antonapoulos, becomes ill and is send away to an insane asylum. In his friend’s absence Singer starts spending more time in the town, especially in the New York Café.
In that café we meet the other main characters. There is Mick, a tomboyish young girl on the brink of womanhood who loves music. There is Biff Brannon, the watchful owner of the café trapped in a loveless marriage. Jake Blount, the blundering, Marxist revolutionary who struggles with alcoholism. And at last there is Dr. Copeland, a stern black doctor with strong opinions on racial inequality and discrimination.

In various ways Biff, Mick, Jake and Dr. Copeland come in contact with Singer and find solace with him. They grow to think of Singer as their friend, although their relationships with him are very one-sided. Because Singer can’t speak and only listen, the four are able to project on him all the wisdom and understanding that they seek. Never do they show any true interest in the mute himself; only the reader gets to know about Singer’s own thoughts and feelings, like how much he misses his friend.

“My friend," Singer once writes to Antonapoulos, “soon I will visit you again. My vacation is not due for six months more but I think I can arrange it before then. I think I will have to. I am not meant to be alone and without you who understands.”

So no matter how much these five characters differ from each other in age, race, class, and sexuality, they all have one thing in common: loneliness. Everyone feels alone and is looking for understanding, love and acceptance.
But even though the story can get quite heavy, this isn’t just a sad and harrowing book. McCullers’s prose is stunning – vivid and expressive - and her way of describing people and settings is spot-on. With just a few sentences you’ll be sitting in Biff’s café, or feel familiar with awkward Mick or strict Dr. Copeland. It’s due to McCullens amazing writing that you’ll have no problem understanding every main character, how different they might be from yourself.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter: how grand, how true. This book surprised me with its emotional power, its impressive prose and its unexpected modern relevance. At the end I was sad to say goodbye to everyone, but I know I’ll reread this novel very soon (at least I will give it to my dad for Father’s Day). What a beautiful book.

And here we are in the world full of probabilities, reasoning with the unreasoned existence, awestruck at the purposelessness of life, at actions with no consequences, at endings with no more re-beginnings, once we die, we die. Alone is our planet and so are we, some of us are more alone than the rest though, some of us choose to be so, for some it’s the only option. And it is the tale of chosen and of those who chose!
A tale of love and of whom who seek love, of abandoned and espoused, of isolated and integrated, of alienated and assimilated, and of whom, who were left alone! Every soul who breaths life, seeks love, to love and be loved the vain and only desire of humans, we can’t help desiring so, we can’t help loving those who gave up on us, we can’t help hoping against hope, and the torment one endures is never justified with any word of any language, but that forsaken love never perishes…
The very essence of platonic love, is seen in the figure of Singer, our main character, It is one of the characteristics of ideal romantic love, derived from Platonism, that it need not be reciprocal; the beloved, indeed, may even be unaware of the lover's existence or the existence of love, love never dies of indifference, never diminishes by ignorance, but the relation of singer with Antonapoulos is not entirely of this sort, it is, in view of the latter's limitations, an approximation of it. Singer's love does not require reciprocation but it does require an object, we may never be in our lives come to see our beloved, but we want him around us, the surety of sharing the same sky can appease much, the certainty of breathing in same air is of comfort immensely, because love needs not reward, or love in return, it’s not an act that expects to be re-acted, it’s the whole life as we keep living, we keep loving ,and when Antonopoulos dies, his own reason for living dies too.........
As for other characters, each of the five main characters strives to break out of his or her isolated existence. The reasons each character is isolated are very different: the deaf-mute John Singer cannot communicate with most of the world because he cannot speak; Mick Kelly cannot communicate with anyone in her family because they do not share her intelligence and ambition; Biff Brannon is left alone when his wife dies; Dr. Copeland is alienated from his family and from other black people because of his education and viewpoints; Jake Blount is alone is his radical social viewpoints and in the fact that he is a newcomer in town.

The fact that Carson was only twenty-three when she completed this heartbreaking tale, makes it sadder than before, and I can’t help thinking, was Carson in truth, trying to carve a home god of her own, who would play silent and listen to her bruised heart? and history says, she didn’t find any, instead died at fifty with a weighty heart. who had so much to say, but heart........…remained a lonely hunter!

“The way I need you is a loneliness I cannot bear” (217)

This is my favorite book. I cannot think of my own literary experience without it. The first time I read it, I felt all the feels: my body and my heart despondent with rage and sorrow for the book’s despairing setting, and for its lovelorn characters all hungry for love.

With each reread, I am always astonished of McCullers' prodigious talent, with a sensitive and keen eye for compassion and a real love for her characters, who leap off the page.

The dramatis personae are:

Mr. Singer, a deaf mute. He has self-delusion with a hopeless yearning for the greedy Antonapoulos.

Mick Kelly, an adolescent girl who has a desire to escape through music. She has an active imagination.

Biff Brannon, the manager and owner of the New York Cafe, who is mourning the loss of his wife Alice. Despite that their intimacy stopped, he never really stopped loving her. (He is my favorite character!)

Dr. Copeland- the town's black doctor, who has radical viewpoints on racial equality.

Jake Blount- a drifter who has the desire to make the American heartland a communist state.

These 5 main characters continue to live with me, and I think about them, time and again.

For me, this novel remains my favorite book I've read of all time. Simply not because its one of the most subtle and simplistic prose stylings I've come across; but because I can relate to everyone's yearning to be seen, a part of something bigger than themselves.

Such powerful moments are:

Biff Brannon's rubbing his dead wife's perfume onto his armpits, in order to process his grief.

The tragic story of Mick's brother, Bubber transforming as George after almost shooting Baby.

When Mick experiences love for the first time with a possibly bisexual friend Harry Minowitz. Also moments when we see Mick's imagination taking hold of her.

However, the finale of the book is at its most sorrowful best when we see the fates of the characters all collide in a cinematic coda, all trying to cope with the sudden death of Mr. Singer.

As Mick's story ends, it is so courageous and heartbreaking that it hurts to read, "so there was nothing to be mad at. It was like she was cheated. Only nobody had cheated her. So there was nobody to take it out on. However, just the same she had that feeling. Cheated" (McCullers 354).

Jake keeps on babbling, confused and grieving over Singer's demise; Dr. Copeland's sad resignation also hurts.

The most affecting moment is when Biff’s succumbs to his sadness by keeping the diner open 24-7. For me this is one of literature's most heart-stopping moments ever. It is one of the most haunting and loneliest endings imaginable:

"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" (McCullers 359).

As the book closes in its moments of devastation, we are always hunting for someone to love us, to make our heart whole. Anyone who cannot understand this doesn’t have a pulse.

Ultimately, I truly believe we're all lonely hunters. The book is about the mysteries of the human heart as well, of how anything that comes to mind should be accepted and seen simply as how nothing can be defined or tied down.

It is hard to say anything about this novel that has not already been said time and time again. Carson McCullers moves gently through her world, picks at the souls of its inhabitants, and lays them bare for all of us to see. And we know they are true, and we know they are real, and we mourn for how well we know them and how little they know of one another.

John Singer, a deaf mute, becomes the pivot around which the other characters orbit, and because he is silent they are each able to project onto him their beliefs and desires. Each has an extreme need to be understood and each is convinced that Singer is the one man who can and does understand them. Ironically, Singer uses his friend Antonopoulos in the same fashion.

Mick, it seems to me, is the one ray of hope in this bleak landscape. She has dreams that have not been trodden down, she loves music, she has an inner world where she can escape the oppression of her circumstances. The other characters, Biff, Blount, Copeland, are all past the dream. They already know that their past is their future and their future is raw and frozen. When Mick's future is lost and she can no longer access her "inner room", the desolation is complete. Carson seems to be telling us that the isolation is inevitable. Perhaps we are destined to misread and misunderstand one another and never find any common ground that links us at the fundamental level that is our humanity.

The extra large quotes on the back of books can be strange. Like the words of Jonathan Bate, for instance, regarding 'The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.' 'I cannot think of any novel that I take more pleasure in re-reading,' he says. And yet I cannot disagree more. I mean, I adored this book. Like everything McCullers wrote it is charged with individuality and a non-cloying empathy that spotlights the soul in all its ragged glory. But it really pained me to read it. Such loneliness and misunderstanding and injustice and skewed communication and emptiness... and towards the end of the book there is a moment that I couldn't bear... as soon as I read the line I jumped up from my bed involuntarily and had to throw the book down (and that sort of reaction is rare). A crazy response, perhaps, but you invest so much love in these characters because McCullers writes so much humanity into them (they are as flawed as you or I) so to read the book is to open yourself up to heartbreak.

John Singer, the hero of the book, is the pivot about which the other central characters (the dreaming teenage girl Mick Kelly, the sensitive bar owner Biff Brannon, the itinerant Marxist Jake Blount, the disappointed Doctor Copeland) turn. A mute left heartbroken by the loss of his best friend (the fellow mute Antonapoulos, who is sent away to an asylum when he starts to stride around town naked, pleasuring himself) he becomes a reflector for the other characters, who endow him with the knowledge and wisdom and experience and personality that they wish him to have (the good Doctor, who believes Jews have an affinity with blacks on account of the universality of their suffering, even presumes Singer's religion). But Singer is, in effect, an absence until he is in the sight of his beloved Antonapoulos, and it is into this gaping hole that Mick, Biff, Jake and the Doctor throw their love and desires.

Surely there isn't a person alive who hasn't felt loneliness. Perhaps some of us feel it more than others. Perhaps there isn't a day goes by when you don't feel it, whether you are surrounded by people, or your other half, or your family. It is telling that when the four non-mutes run into one another in Singer's room there is awkwardness and lack of communication. They seem only able to tell their story to someone who cannot answer back. Their loneliness, their isolation, leads to a lack of ability, of awareness, in social situations. They are bereft without Singer in the way that he is bereft without his friend Antonapoulos.

A stridently political novel, the only one McCullers wrote, I am astounded she penned it when she was 20. If you haven't read it yet do yourself a favour and do so now. And then listen to 'The Gunman' (the original by Prefab Sprout or the great cover by Cher) and get ready to sigh.


I know that on some narrow street
Our paths will cross, our eyes will meet
And love will leave me at his feet
I'm waiting for the gunman

When I enter a room
I will only sit facing the door
It's love I'm looking for
As I search every face
I start wondering
Is this the place?

For love is a gunman, and no mercy has he
He'll hunt you down until the day
Death sets you free
Love is a gunman, and he's coming to town
You'll meet his gaze, both barrels blaze
Staring you down
Love is a gunman, and no mercy has he
This time his sights are fixed on me

You can run, you can hide
You can even saddle up and ride
But love won't be denied
You can wear a disguise
But he isn't fooled by alibis

For love is a gunman, and no mercy has he
He'll hunt you down until the day
Death sets you free
Love is a gunman, and he's coming to town
You'll meet his gaze, both barrels blaze
Staring you down
Love is a gunman, and no mercy has he
This time his sights are fixed on me

Love is a gunman, and no mercy has he
This time his sights are fixed on me

“¿Cuántos como nosotros hay en este país? Diez mil, quizás. O veinte mil. O muchos más. He estado en innumerables sitios y siempre he encontrado muy pocos de los nuestros. Pero cuando un hombre comprende, y ve el mundo tal cual es, se remonta millones de años atrás para saber cómo llegó a ser lo que es.”

En primer debo decir que este libro tiene uno de los más bellos títulos en la historia de la literatura: “El corazón es un cazador solitario”, que proviene de un poema del escocés William Sharp. Tal vez otros lectores que lean mi reseña puedan aportar otros títulos. Sería un ejercicio muy interesante.
En segundo término confieso que busqué por años hacerme de un ejemplar de esta novela que siempre quise leer y que estaba más cerca de lo que yo imaginaba, así que no perdí tiempo y me puse manos a la obra en su lectura.
Me interesaba mucho conocer cómo escribía Carson McCullers, esta gran autora norteamericana cuya vida se apagó tempranamente pasando los cincuenta años, aunque legándonos varias novelas, cuentos y hasta obras de teatro para leer, y debo decir que me agradó notablemente.
Su estilo para muchos se asemeja, por escribir sobre la difícil vida de la gente pobre o rural, al de otros autores orientados al estilo de vida sureño de los Estados Unidos como John Steinbeck o Harper Lee y también a William Faulkner, especialmente en este último por el proceso narrativo en donde cada capítulo nos va contando acerca de un personaje diferente, pero que a la vez todo está encadenado para contribuir a la trama de la novela.
La diferencia con Faulkner estriba en que McCullers no es tan compleja en la contrucción narrativa de sus novelas, no utiliza técnicas de monólogo interior y tampoco incurre en saltos temporales argumentales.
En esta novela, nos encontramos con la dura vida de personajes que adolecen casi de lo mismo: la soledad y las ansias de comunicarse con los demás. La falta de conexión social los asfixia y angustia a la vez.
Hasta podría asegurar que existe para mí cierta similitud con la “parálisis” que James Joyce instala en los distintos personajes de su libro de cuentos “Dublineses” en donde al igual que acá la desesperanza y el desasosiego están a la orden del día.
En esta novela, la autora nos cuenta la vida de los seis personajes principales que viven en el estado de Georgia, descollando fundamentalmente entre todos ellos el de John Singer, este sordomudo querible y entrañable que abre la novela y alrededor del cual gira todo, puesto que uno a uno irá conociendo a los demás que él va conociendo, entre ellos una chica de pocos atributos y acomplejado raciocinio llamada Mick Kelly, un oscuro y triste hombre llamado Bill Brannon, siempre detrás de la caja registradora de su “Café New York”, el tosco mecánico Jake Blount que se hará amigo inseparable del sordomudo luego de una infernal borrachera en ese restaurante, el revolucionario doctor Copeland, un médico negro que es marxista, a punto tal de que uno de sus hijos se llama Karl Marx, su hija Portia de importante papel en la historia y podríamos agregar a un séptimo personaje, también sordomudo y amigo de Singer, Spiros Antonapulos que aparecerá al principio y luego fugazmente a lo largo de la novela.
Los temas como el racismo (estamos en el sur de Estados Unidos), la guerra (la historia se desarrolla durante el transcurso de la Segunda Guerra Mundial) y las difíciles relaciones humanas (todos los personajes acarrean traumas que no logran superar), le dan a “El corazón es un cazador solitario” el status de una novela con pocos puntos flojos con la mínima excepción de tal vez tener algunas páginas de más.
De todos modos, esto no es inconveniente para que el lector se sumerja activamente en las páginas de la historia para saber cómo se van desarrollando los distintos sucesos de la novela.
Creo que el acierto de la Carson McCullers es la de haber creado una historia que lleva adelante con un estilo narrativo simple y sin vueltas, contando lo que hay que contar y sin irse por las ramas, tratando temas como el racismo, la pobreza y la guerra con altura sin caer en golpes bajos.
Lamentablemente, y como comentara antes, la temprana muerte de esta autora norteamericana (que también me recuerda a otra malograda escritora, Sylvia Plath) no nos impidió de disfrutar una hermosa novela llena de maravillosos personajes que cuesta mucho olvidar.

She went there, didn't she.

As I read this novel, I could tell McCullers was setting the stage for something truly horrible to happen. And horrible things did happen. But they were never as bad as I thought they would be. Until...

Oh yes, she waited until the very end to rip my heart from my chest, throw it on the floor, stomp on it with her pumps and then throw it into the ocean to be eaten by sharks.

How does someone write a book this rich and wise and honest at 23? How does a young woman write such darkness, such tragedy? Like Flannery O'Connor, she suffered from illness from a young age. Maybe that is where her darkness came from?

As you can probably glean from the title, all of the characters in this novel are haunted by the ghost of loneliness. Mick is a girl on the brink of womanhood. Like many teenage girls, she feels isolated and misunderstood, but finds solace in two things: the company of a deaf mute boarder in her family home and her true passion, music. Let me share a passage with you describing Mick's experience of hearing Beethoven's 3rd symphony for the first time:

How did it come? For a minute the opening balanced from one side to the other. Like a walk or a march. Like God strutting in the night. The outside of her was suddenly froze and only that first part of the music was hot inside her heart. She could not even hear what sounded after, but she sat there waiting and froze, with her fists tight. After awhile the music came again, harder and loud. It didn't have anything to do with God. This was her, Mick Kelly, walking in the daytime and by herself at night. In the hot sun and in the dark with all her plans and feelings.This music was her - the real plain her.

I can't emphasize enough how much that passage resonated with me.

The theme of loneliness, of isolation carries through each of the characters we meet as McCullers weaves her magical tale. John Singer is a deaf mute who has only one person in the world he calls a friend; a fellow deaf mute. When his friend goes mad and is institutionalized, Singer no longer has his best friend by his side, he feels lost. Yet all of the folks in this small town are drawn to him. It's as if his deafness gives him a wisdom and understanding that others are sorely missing. Ironically, it's as if for the first time in their lives they feel the are being truly heard. Dr. Copeland is a black physician in the south. He feels isolated from his family because they don't want to follow in his footsteps; his ambition has driven away his wife and children. He feels isolated because he's a black man in a predominately white town. The only white person he feels he can trust is Mr. Singer. Jake Blount is a drunk and a drifter. His rage and inability to relate to others exacerbates his feelings of loneliness. Yet the presence of Mr. Singer soothes him. Biff Brannon is a cafe owner; people come in and out of his restaurant all day, yet he is alone. He and his wife have drifted apart even though they live in the same home; he has no children and no real friends, except for Mr. Singer.

As I made my way through this journey, I hoped and hoped that things would turn out alright for these broken individuals. But things don't always turn out okay, and what you're left with is the harsh reality of life. We all experience tragedy. We are, all of us, lonely hunters.

I simply cannot get this book out of my head.    Like most everyone else I am astounded that Carson McCullers was only 23 years old when she wrote this.  Such wisdom and insight from someone so young is truly remarkable.  

And there are so many great reviews out there, I just could not stop reading them.  A great many of them, as one might expect discuss the greater themes of this book and there can be no doubt that I too fell to pondering these many  things as I thought about the world today.

I mean just think about it:

Racial inequality and discrimination
Economic division of the classes
Subjugation and objectification of women and minorities
Social Injustice
War


Still I would like to talk for just a minute or two about another constant thread within this story and perhaps the best way to begin is to tell you about something that happened to me.  Way too many years ago when I was still  in the early stages of my career I got a promotion, one that I had worked hard to be considered for.  It was an important advancement for me.  No longer was I only responsible for my own contribution but also for the output of others.  As much as I wanted the opportunity to lead, once I actually got it, I was a nervous wreck.  I’m sure my new boss sensed just how jangled I was and called me aside to have a little pow wow in his office.  It was a good meeting and he quickly reviewed some of the tools that he believed would help me achieve my objectives, but mostly he stressed that he wanted me to focus on one skill that his observations told him I already possessed.  The skill of which he spoke was listening.  He went on to add that far too many people forgot how to do it.  That people got so wrapped up in determining just how they were going to respond to someone or a given situation that they actually stopped hearing what was being said to them.   If you want to succeed he said do not fall into this trap.  Listen carefully and not just with your ears he said, but employ all of your faculties.  If you can do this he assured me, everything else would fall into place.  

Well that particular job really did not work out so well for me and I soon moved on to a new opportunity with a different firm, but I never forgot that first pep talk.  Over the years that came and went I thought about it frequently and reminded myself often to focus more on what others had to say than on my own words.  And not just professionally either, but at home and in other social situations.  Wise words,  that despite floundering on more than one occasion, have served me well these many years.

It is also what our five main characters in this novel yearn for.  Someone to listen to them .  For Mick, Jake, Biff and Dr. Copeland, that person was John Singer.  Despite the fact that he was deaf and mute they all believed that he understood them and for Mick he even provided a way for her to listen to her beloved music.  John Singer however, had lost his only audience when they took Antonapoulos away and even though he was never really sure how much of what he signed Antonapoulos actually understood, it did not matter.  He too needed to be heard.  

There are so many layers to this story but through them all lay this need to be heard and to be understood.

How ominous is it that I find myself reflecting on the art of listening  just one week before Donald Trump becomes the President of the most powerful democratic nation in the world.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is timeless, profound and a thing of rare beauty.

n  

Green branches, green branches, I see you beckon; I follow!
Sweet is the place you guard, there in the rowan-tree hollow.
There he lies in the darkness, under the frail white flowers,
Heedless at last, in the silence, of these sweet midsummer hours.

But sweeter, it may be, the moss whereon he is sleeping now,
And sweeter the fragrant flowers that may crown his moon-white brow:
And sweeter the shady place deep in an Eden hollow
Wherein he dreams I am with him—and, dreaming, whispers, “Follow!”

Green wind from the green-gold branches, what is the song you bring?
What are all the songs for me, now, who no more care to sing?
Deep in the heart of Summer, sweet is life to me still,
But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill.

Green is that hill and lonely, set in a shadowy place;
White is the hunter’s quarry, a lost-loved human face:
O hunting heart, shall you find it, with arrow of falling breath,
Led o’er a green hill lonely by the shadowy hound of Death?

Green branches, green branches, you sing of a sorrow olden,
But now it is midsummer weather, earth-young, sunrise, golden:
Here I stand and I wait, here in the rowan-tree hollow,
But never a green leaf whispers, “Follow, oh Follow, Follow!”

O never a green leaf whispers, where the green-gold branches swing:
O never a songI hear now, where one was wont to sing
Here in the heart of Summer, sweet is life to me still,
But my heart is a lonely hunter that hunts on a lonely hill.

n——- THE LONELY HUNTER, William Sharp

And it is from this haunting poem, that Carson McCullers takes the title of her debut novel written at the age of twenty-three, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. The setting of this magnificent novel is a small and struggling mill town in Georgia during the Great Depression where a lot of social and economic issues and racial issues are bubbling to the surface in 1931. There are primarily four main characters at the heart of the story all seeming to be trapped in a series of wants and desires, perceived resentments, and worlds of their own making, often to their detriment. Each struggles with their own sense of isolation and unable to sense it each other.

n  

”The town was in the middle of the deep South. The summers were long and the months of winter cold were very few. Nearly always the sky was glassy, brilliant azure and the sun burned down riotously bright. Then the light, chill rains of November would come, and perhaps later there would be frost and some short months of cold. The winters were changeable, but the summers always were burning hot.”

n

There is fourteen-year old tom-boyish Mick Kelley, dreaming of taking piano lessons so she will be able to compose music. She has a hatbox with all of her precious belongings, including notes of her compositions. Frequently throughout the novel, Mick is hearing symphonies in her head as she learns about the music of Mozart and Beethoven. It is not a stretch to believe that this character is semi-autobiographical in that at one time Carson McCullers was accepted to Juilliard.

n  

”Wonderful music like this was the worst hurt there could be. The whole world was this symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen.”

“And the symphony. When she was by herself in this inside room the music she had heard that night after the party would come back to her. This symphony grew slow like a big flower in her mind. During the day sometimes, or when she had just waked up in the morning, a new part of the symphony she remembered. The inside room was a very private place. She could be in the middle of a house full of people and still feel like she was locked up by herself.”

n

And there is Jake Blount, a labor agitator, often seeking others with those same beliefs in between his frequent bouts of drunkenness. And there is the black, dignified, and well-read Dr. Copeland. Although he is well-versed and engrossed in the Black liberation movement, he finds himself unable to understand his own children or his people. And there is Biff, the owner of the New York Cafe, always very watchful as he contemplates the goings of the people, why? But all of these primary characters are drawn to John Singer, a deaf-mute. It is in Singer’s room that they all tend to gather in the evening, but instead of talking to one another, they address their thoughts to John Singer. And this is the heart of the tragedy as they all see only what they want to see in others as they talk past one another. It is not hard to understand that this magnificent book has become a beloved classic that is just as pertinent today as it was when it was published.

Hell, the title alone is marvelous!!! Great reader. A wonder of a book from an essentially child genius lesbian author that delves into so many issues as integral to when it was written as to now. Among them; how one person's struggle influences everyone around them for generations and how life can be beautiful in its struggle. This is one of a handful of books (ie books of Truman Capote & David Sedaris) that make me wish I phrased things as beautifully as southerners can!

من يفهمك؟

من يفهمك عندما يفيض فؤادك بالشكوى وعندما تود بث مخاوفك أو آمالك؟

من يفهمك؟ سؤال سيطل برأسه الأشعث بين الحين والآخر، سؤال بسيط لكن -للأسف- قد تتعذر إجابته.

لجأ الجميع إلى الأبكم لأنه يفهمهم، ولكن هل حاول أحدهم أن يفهم الأبكم؟ وهل فهمهم حقًا أم أنه وهم راودهم فصدقوه؟

هل تشعر بالوحدة؟ لست وحدك إذًا.
فالأبكم الذي فارق صديقه وحيد.
والزوج المتأمل الذي يقضي حياته مع امرأة عملية،
والفتاة التي تبدو كالصبية ولا تنفك الموسيقى تدوي في رأسها،
والطبيب الذي يريد أن ينشر الوعي بين بني قومه فلا يلقون له بالًا،
والثوري الذي اشتم رائحة الرأسمالية العفنة بين أكوام الدعايات...
كلهم وحيدون، مثلك.
ولكن كثرة من يحسّون بالوحدة، لن تشعرك بالأنس، بل ستزيدك وحشة، فالقلب كان -ومازال- صياداً وحيداً.

رواية كلاسيكية رائعة، تتميز بالوصف الدقيق دون تخطي عتبة الملل. تزخر بشخصيات فريدة من نوعها. القضايا المطروحة ليست مميزة تمامًا: الكساد الكبير، اضطهاد السود، ضعف العلاقات الأسرية، الإحباط الاجتماعي...لكنها جميعاً طُرحت بأسلوب جذابٍ ومتقن.

ذكرتني كثيرًا برواية "أن تقتل طائرًا بريئًا"، من حيث أنها كلاسيكية وممتعة في الوقت نفسه. لا أعرف لِم لم تأخذ حقها من الشهرة بين كلاسيكيات الأدب الأمريكي. لا أذكر حتى كيف وصلت إليها، لكنني سعيد أنني فعلت.

I read this years ago -before being a member on Goodreads. (Just forgot to post any comments)--Thanks to 'Steve' for the inspiration of memory!

"The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" one of those books that leaves a lasting tattoo on your heart forever!

Not only does it take place during the Great Depression -during times of racial injustice --
not only do we 'see-feel-touch-experience' loneliness through a character so profound deeper than most have ever been written--
--but it was 'THIS' novel where I learned the full beauty of 'feeling' music through sign language.

A Classic Best!!!

5 +++++ stars!!!