Me before reading this book



Me after reading this book:



I found this book so frustrating that when I finished it I involuntarily threw it across the room.

Before I read it I’d only heard only good things, it appeared on a load of ‘best of’ lists (the Modern Library placed it at number 17 in its list of the best 20th Century novels written in English and TIME magazine included it in its list of the best 100 novels of all time, to name just some)
and all the GR reviews were glowing.

I've no idea what the hype is all about. This book is soul-crushingly BORING. If I hadn’t been reading it for my book group I would have DNF’d it after a few chapters, but I slogged on and - SPOILER ALERT - IT DOESN’T GET ANY BETTER, OR MORE INTERESTING.

On one level, I can understand that McCullers was a “good” writer. By “good” I mean her writing is clear and confident and her characterisation is realistic. She writes about a small southern US town in the 1930s from the perspective of five characters who are all isolated in some way.

Unfortunately, NOTHING F*CKING HAPPENS. And I mean nothing. You just have these five people wandering around a dusty little town and bouncing off each other for 350+ pages, never having any meaningful interactions.

The characters:

- John Singer, a deaf-mute, starts out as an obvious plot device and quickly becomes a tedious metaphor. All of the other characters talk to him even though he can’t talk back and they imprint onto him the traits that they wish him to have - elevating him in their minds to a saint.
- Jake Blount is a drunk communist and no-one wants to listen to his rants
- Biff is an unhappily married restaurateur with (I think?) some unresolved issues surrounding his sexuality
- Dr Copeland is a black doctor frustrated that his community won’t engage with his Marxist philosophy
- Mick is a tomboy from a poor family who wants to write music

The plot:
THERE ISN’T ONE. Not even a smidgin of an iota of one.
There is no character development whatsoever and nothing happens . Occasionally something big would happen and I’d get excited thinking maybe the real story was about to kick off; but then it was always glossed over in one or two paragraphs and never mentioned again.



I found the characters mostly quite pathetic. Blount and Copeland were unable to engage with people because they didn’t take the time or effort to try and work out how other people thought or what they wanted. They talked but weren’t able to truly listen. Mick and Biff were just really boring characters with nothing about them. Singer mooned after his 'friend' Anatopolous who didn't give a damn about anything but himself.

The only time I really got where a character was coming from was on page 224 where it says ‘Biff also thought of death’, because by that point I was thinking about death A LOT.



The idea behind the book is that, for various reasons, people can become lonely and isolated. That’s basically the whole thing. There, I just saved you a lot of time and effort. Now you don’t actually have to read it.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is a story of heartbreaking solitude and the brutal clash between dreams and reality. Biff in his New York Café, Mr. Singer in his muteness, Mick in her Inside Room, and Dr. Copeland in his sickness are all joined together by a longing, unrealized, to surpass their circumstances.
In Biff's words, n  "Why? Because in some men it is in them to give up everything personal at some time, before it ferments and poisons - throw it to some human being or some human idea. They have to."n (P. 32).
Seeking clarity, Dr. Copeland says to his daughter Portia,n  "I am not interested in subterfuges...I am interested only in real truths."n (P. 78)
There is little redemption for these characters as their truths will ultimately break, as Mick's brother Bubber/George says prophetically, n  "I come to believe we all gonna drown."n (P. 160)
The languid descriptions of the Southern town where the story takes place tell the interior story of the characters: Mick trying to coax Bubber out of hiding, n  "The yard was lonesome and the wind made quick, scary shadows and a mourning kind of sound in the darkness."n (P. 175)
Copeland strains against his heart, n  "The faces of his suffering people moved in a swelling mass before his eyes. And as he steered the automobile slowly down the street his heart turned with this angry restless love."n (P. 197)
The "angry, restless love" actually plagues each of the tortured and beautifully drawn characters during the year that the book takes place.
Meanwhile, the mute Singer is plagued with memories of his interned friend Antonapoulos: n  "Those ugly memories wove through his thoughts during the first months like bad threads through a carpet."n (P. 203). Singer serves as a kind of Zen figure, a center around which the other characters turn and in whom they project their fears and hopes.

How Carson McCullers could have achieved this kind of maturity by writing this book when she was only 23 is just short of a miracle. Suffice it to say that nearly any other description I could give would spoil the story for you, so I will just leave you to discover (or rediscover) this masterpiece. A must-read.

This was another case where the Pulitzer committee blew it. Here's what wikipedia says about the 1941 prize for which McCullers would have been eligible:
The fiction jury had recommended the 1941 award be shared by The Trees by Conrad Richter and The Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark. While the Pulitzer Board initially intended to give the award to the jury's third choice, Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, the president of Columbia University, Nicholas Murray Butler, persuaded the board to reverse its judgment because he deemed the novel offensive, and no award was given that year.

What a travesty! Arguably, the prize should have been a choice between McCullers and Hemingway. I liked Ritcher's book, but have not read Clark's classic. But, how dumb to not give an award at all and give zero chance to this masterpiece.

My list of Pulitzers

John Singer, the deaf/mute. Biff Bannon, the cafe owner. Dr. Copeland, the Negro doctor. Jake Blount, a drifter. And Mick Kelly, a 14 year old girl who hears beautiful music in her head and heart. These are our main players, each of them lonely and looking for someone to talk to, someone who will listen and maybe understand. They all talk incessantly to Mr. Singer, who can't hear them, and rarely understands. Mr. Singer can only talk with his hands, and then only to those who can understand sign language. So his only outlet is with another deaf/mute, his friend Spiros, who has been placed in an institution by his family.

Carson McCullers took these five people and wrote a story about the human need for love and acceptance that we all recognize and empathize with. She encompassed racial inequality, the class system in America, young people with dreams, older people who had seen their dreams turned to dust, hatred and kindness; it's all here, written by a 23 year old author who surely knew something of loneliness herself.

A southern masterpiece.

O mais importante deste livro, não é a sua história mas sim o que acontece na mente e no coração das suas cinco personagens principais.
John Singer, um homem surdo que é uma constante presença na vida dos outros pois tem umas das melhores qualidades de um ser humano: saber escutar.
Biff Brannon, o proprietário do café onde as personagens se encontram por vezes, é um homem que vive atormentado pelo fracasso do seu casamento e que trabalha de dia e de noite para dar algum sentido à sua vida.
Jake Blount, um operário alcoólico que sonha com uma revolução mas que está cego pela sua própria raiva.
O Dr. Copeland, um médico intelectual, negro e que vive armagurado pela impossibilidade de um dia se conseguir acabar com a segregação racial. Finalmente, Mick Kelly, uma adolescente ternurenta, sensível mas muito corajosa.
O valor de um livro pode ser medido pelo poder de quanto consegue arrebatar o leitor mesmo muito depois de ele virar a última página, e este O Coração É Um Caçador Solitário tem esse poder e recusa a desprender-se de nós e estas personagens tão bem construídas e tão reais ficam connosco por muito tempo.

Well, that was eviscerating. I am not sure that should not be my whole review, but I will say a bit more.

I know that Faulkner is considered to be the Dean of Southern Despair, but I would argue that Carson McCullers' depictiion of hollowness seems more honest and both more personal and somehow more universal than Faulkner's. When her people soldier on in the face of despair it somehow seems a less noble option than ending it all. It feels like they are chickens running around with their heads cut off. Already dead but beholden to their reflexes and maybe a dab of muscle memory. There is a discussion to be had about this topic, but it would be spoiler-laden, and I don't want to go there. It would be a hell of a book club discussion.

An extraordinary novel improbably written by a woman in her early 20s (she was 23 when it was published.) Read it if you want to be reminded of the power of literature. Don't read it if you want to feel good.

One note -- I read this on my Kindle, but in the last 1/3 switched off between text and audio. The audiobook is read by Cherry Jones, and it is exceptionally good. I am still glad I read this, the language is too good to not spend time with, but I think when I feel the need to be gutted again I will listen to the whole on audiobook.

By the time Mozart was 5, he was composing his own music and performing for royalty. John Stuart Mill had mastered Latin, Greek, Algebra and Euclidean Geometry by the time he was 8. Bobby Fischer won the US Chess Championship at the age of 14. When Orson Welles was 20, he directed his own adaptation of Macbeth as a WPA project with unemployed black performers in Harlem. Why I myself, if you’ll forgive me for crowing, memorized the batting averages of every member of the Cincinnati Reds’ starting lineup as a 12-year-old. So is it really all that impressive that Carson McCullers wrote this top 100 book* at the ripe old age of 23?! (Sorry, my humor never matured much beyond the days of Reds’ glory.)

I have to confess that it was almost a distraction to read this knowing how young McCullers was to have written something so insightful, polished and world-weary. She managed to get deep inside the heads of five very different characters in a mill town in Georgia just prior to WWII and give voice to their many valid concerns. In the case of John Singer, the voice was purely an inner one. He was a deaf mute. In a way, he was the central island in the archipelago to which the others hoped to connect. Singer was a good listener (reading lips) and had understanding eyes, but there was a bit of Chauncey Gardiner about him, too, in that people assumed more of a Christ-like, simpatico alliance than was possible from their confidant. They didn’t realize how sad and lonely he was himself when his only friend, another deaf man, had been sent to the asylum. Singer’s hands (used for signing) became silent.

Among the other characters, the adolescent tomboy, Mick Kelly, was most prominent. She’s said to be a semiautobiographical construct, which is easy to believe given her lanky appearance, her artistic sensitivity, and her advanced intellect. To me, she was a more human (read flawed, troubled and nuanced) version of Harper Lee’s Scout. She was written so powerfully – it was easy to ache alongside her as she craved more music (her big love in life) and peace of mind (that family circumstances would not allow).

Doctor Copeland was another memorable character. As a highly educated black physician, he had few peers, but he had a vision for lifting his people and combating racial injustice. The lack of progress was brought home convincingly as McCullers did an excellent job personalizing it through him and his family. She was evidently ahead of her time, casting a critical, clear-sighted eye on the relations of the day.

The two other POV characters were Jake Blount, a hard-drinking carnie mechanic with a Marxist bent, and Biff Brannon, a café/bar owner with a generous, aesthetic spirit struggling against alienation. They, too, bared their souls to John Singer as a part of an empathetic hub and spoke model.

We get to know a handful of other characters, too, valuable for advancing the plot and populating the communal landscape. The Jewish boy growing up with Mick who fears the news out of Europe, Dr. Copeland’s son who finds himself on the wrong (black) side of the (white) law, Mick’s little brother George whose impulsive actions led to dramatic changes (most profoundly in himself) – they all had important parts to play.

Things happen in this book, but I wouldn’t call it plot-driven. It’s mostly profiles of the people and reactions to the times. There was precious little cheer to go around. Faced with that fact, McCullers never did flinch. As one of the chaps in Spinal Tap once said, standing at Elvis’s grave, it was almost “too much bloody perspective.” Sugar must have been scarce in the Depression-era South – scant amounts to coat the world that she saw. But there seemed to be hope for sweeter days ahead. Even if I’m wrong about those hopes, this is an important and authentically observed book, well worth the time.

*In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter seventeenth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. (Copied from Wikipedia)

“The Heart is a lonely hunter with only one desire! To find some lasting comfort in the arms of anothers fire...driven by a desperate hunger to the arms of a neon light, the heart is a lonely hunter when there's no sign of love in sight!”

The book is finished. But not the story.

All the pain, all the loneliness – Jake Blount, Doctor Copeland, Mick – and Singer – Carson has tied it all into a tiny little package, so small, almost a seed – and placed it into the reader, where it will now stay, maybe grow … but certainly stay. And perhaps blossom in the reader as it did in the observer Biff, who looked into the abyss. As I have. I move the book from the “currently reading” to the “read” shelf … and place a copy on one other shelf … “existentialism wide”. Of course it’s misplaced there. I suppose. Or is it? It doesn’t matter, that’s where I will look for it. When I see it there I’ll remember the seed. In me. Thank you Carson.



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"The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" is a novel whose tenderness rests within a surprising brutality. By and by the characters come to life, become larger than life and some of them will probably stay with you for the rest of your life. First and foremost there is Singer, the deaf-mute, whose friendship with Antonapoulos, another deaf-mute, is full of beauty and sadness and remotely reminiscent of the friendship between Narziß and Goldmund.

Singer is the central character, although he serves more as a link between the other characters. They all know him, they all appreciate him, they all confide in him - either because he, as a deaf-mute, keeps their secrets to himself or because he indirectly serves as a mirror in which they can recognize their true selves. The other characters appear episodically and the central themes of the novel take shape through them. It is about poverty, loneliness and despair. About forgiveness, hope and love. These are the great themes of humanity. But it is also about the dark threat radiating out of Germany into the world in the 1930s, about the discrimination of black people in the USA and about communism. In this respect, the book is also a political one.

And it's about what people do to other people. A baby is shot, legs are amputated, people are beaten up, hearts are broken. Some things happen unintentionally, some out of malice, some seem unavoidable. McCullers lets her characters fall and catches them, in order to finally hand them over to life. Some perish, some recognize that there is no way out and some see something reminiscent of hope. Whether it really is hope or just the desire to hope remains an open question, but at least a new day is just around the corner. And that alone gives hope.

4+ stars
‘The Heart is a Lonely Hunter’ by Carson McCullers is a truly extraordinary novel. I found McCullers prose very simple and straightforward without the lyrical flourishes that I so love, however for depth of insight into the human psyche, the writing is a treasure trove. Throughout the book, I was reminded of the psychological defense mechanism of projection. You know how sometimes the things you literally hate about another person are those little parts of your own personality that you’ve sheltered from the light, our shadow persona according to Jungian theory. In this novel, what most intrigued me was the power of attraction shown by McCullers’s characters toward what was most loved in others, projection in the direction of love instead of hate. “How we see others is a reflection of how we see ourselves.”(1) In this story, John Singer, a deaf-mute, attracts a motley crew of unusual friends.

Biff Brannon, owner of the New York Cafe, Jake Blount, a drifter with a rough appearance, a penchant for alcohol and loud opinions, Doctor Copeland, a black man who cannot reel his children into his way of thinking or living, and lastly, Nick Kelly, a fourteen-year-old girl with a rich inner life, all become frequent visitors to John Singer’s room. They all count him as a friend, telling him their innermost thoughts. It is, however, not their friendship that is most prized for him. For John Singer, it is the friendship of another deaf-mute, Spiros Antonapoulos, that jacks up his inner life. When Antonapoulos gets sent to an asylum by his cousin, Singer is bereft, and from there on, Singer seems to live for each visit to his friend. Since Antonapoulos seems to care only about the food treats that Singer brings when he visits, one can only assume that Singer’s friendship is not nearly as important to him as it is to Singer. Meanwhile, Singer moves into the Kelly family home as a boarder and becomes the object of near adoration of his four frequent visitors.

It is Nick Kelly who fascinates me the most. A coming of age tale, Nick is engulfed by her dreams and passions. Music is one of those passions and accompanies her nearly everywhere. As she straps baby brother Ralph into a wagon, she will entrust his care to seven-year-old brother, Bubber, and climb the roofs of houses. There her mind is free to soar. Is it because Carson McCullers was only twenty-three years old when she wrote this novel, that she got Nick Kelly’s character pitch-perfect? And what is it about John Singer that is so attractive to Nick? Surrounded by five siblings, house boarders, and parents that are too busy struggling to get by, is it the fact that Nick has finally found a listening ear? Singer’s listening is magical, but transcendence is a beautiful thing that is darn hard to accomplish. This is a tragic, sorrowful tale, and while hope is present, it is not abundant. This is a significant year in the lives of all these characters, and all of them will see major changes. Between fear and love, the human soul is stretched out. It is toward love that each of these characters has turned in their need for Singer’s companionship, but it is also toward self-love. Some of them seem to have self-hate and self-condemnation from bitter pasts. Ever, the lonely heart searches for the path to self-acceptance and belonging.

"O never a green leaf whispers, where the green-gold branches swing/O never a song I 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."
-- William Sharp (writing as Fiona MacLeod), The Lonely Hunter


I'd never heard of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. At one point, it was a selection for Oprah's Book Club, but why would I know that? (I wouldn't). It was written by Carson McCullers, when she was just 23 years-old. According to the book cover, Tennessee Williams compares McCullers to William Faulkner, another of the South's great prose writers. Don't be deterred, though. With due respect to Tennessee Williams, there are no similarities between Faulkner and McCullers, other than both took the South as a subject. Faulkner is dense to the point of being incomprehensible. One can spend days trying to read a single page, and I don't mean that as a compliment. Heart, on the other hand, is a graceful, elegant, and quick read. The book is written cleanly, almost simply, but a beautiful simplicity.

The story is set in a small southern town during the Great Depression, on the eve of America's entrance into World War II. The main character is a deaf-mute named John Singer. He serves as the planet around which the other main characters orbit. There is Mick, a young girl who is making that rough transition from a child's androgyny to youthful womanhood. There is Jake Blount, an alcoholic, Marxist agitator who blunders into town and takes a job at a carnival. There is Biff Brannon, the proprietor of the New York Cafe; he harbors a "thing" for Mick. Finally, there is Dr. Copeland, a black doctor who distrusts all white men, save for Singer.

Mick, Blount, Biff, and Dr. Copeland all pay visits to Singer at the room he rents in a boarding house run by Mick's family. They use Singer for their own ends, though they each think of him as a wonderful friend. Because he can't speak, and can only listen, they are able to project upon him all the understanding and wisdom they seek.

Despite being outwardly composed, an oracle of sorts to the people of the town, Singer is dealing with his own turmoil. His best friend, a Greek deaf-mute named Spiro Antonapoulos, has been sent to live in an assisted-living facility of sorts. Singer thinks about his friend all the time. He misses him terribly. The great joy of his life is to go visit Spiro and bring him gifts. Spiro, though, isn't a great friend. He is selfish and greedy and seems mildly-retarded. At one point, I was actually getting a little sick of Singer's ridiculous fawning over such an unworthy object. Then Singer sends Spiro a letter, which makes things clear - that in a lonely, isolated, alienating world, we need people who love us, care for us, and understand us.

The way I need you is a loneliness I cannot bear. Soon I will come 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 understand.

The way that love and loneliness walk hand-in-hand reminds me, in a way, of Steinbeck's East of Eden. In addition to Singer, this is exemplified by Biff, the cafe owner. His seemingly loveless marriage ends with the sudden death of his wife. Long after his wife has gone, though, he dabs her perfume on his body:

Biff uncorked the bottle. He stood shirtless before the mirror and dabbled some of the perfume on his dark, hairy armpits. The scent made him stiffen. He exchanged a deadly secret glance with himself in the mirror and stood motionless. He was stunned by the memories brought to him with the perfume, not because of their clarity, but because they gathered together the whole long span of years and were complete. Biff rubbed his nose and looked sideways at himself. The boundary of death. He felt in him each minute that he had lived with her. And now their life together was whole as only the past can be whole.

I was surprised that a book of such knowing sadness, devoid of the cheap wisdom peddled by many of today's precocious authors, could be written by a person of such young age. Then again, noting Carson McCuller's short, interesting life (interesting in the Confucian sense), it probably shouldn't be such a surprise at all.

While I can see the merits of this book and definitely enjoyed many aspects of it, it didn't blow me away as I was expecting it to. Interestingly, I enjoyed the middle third much more than the beginning and ending, which is the opposite of my usual experience with books. Once I got to know the characters and see their connections I was much more invested in their stories, but then it kind of progressed too quickly for me to really sink into their lives and enjoy the novel. It felt like it was over too quickly by that point and the last bit had me underwhelmed. Nevertheless I think this is a sort of underrated classic and I wish I had read it in school! It would make for a very interesting discussion, especially compared to other similar titles in American lit. 3.5 stars