Everyone wants to feel connected to someone. Everyone wants to share what is in their innermost being to get it out there in the world. To have someone understand what is in their heart and really know and understand what moves them.
That is very much the key message of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. But like the title implies, it doesn't always work out that well. That the heart may search for that person who understands them, but may never find it or may have an false comprehension of the other person.
The book tells the stories of 5 main characters living in a Southern mill town: Mister Singer, a deaf mute; Jake Blount, a drunken wanderer who wants to spread his strong socialist beliefs with others; Biff Branson, the somewhat detached owner of the local diner; Doctor Copeland, a black doctor whose life mission has been to try to uplift and empower other blacks to not accept the roles that white society has given them; and Mick Kelly, a spirited young teenager obsessed with music.
Initially, the story tells of Mister Singer and his friendship with another deaf mute, Antonapoulous, and their time living together and how devoted Mister Singer was to his friend. However, it is very clear even from the first tellings of this friendship that Antonapoulous doesn't really care about Mister Singer in the same way. He's a bit of a schlumpy, aloof, crude, character (I've never read the description of a character as "oily" so many times, and was always a bit grossed out at the description), but Mister Singer looks past all of this, heaping his devotion and adoration on his friend. (Side note: I suspected there was some amount of homosexual implications in the relationship of Mister Singer and Antonapoulous, but McCullers doesn't come out and say it explicitly. Which could have been due to the time it was written or could have just not been made explicit to allow the reader to draw their own conclusions about what kind of love Mister Singer had for his friend). However, Antonopoulous becomes sick which later manifests as mental changes as well. His cousin sends him away to a mental asylum, leaving Mister Singer heartbroken over missing his friend.
Mister Singer then becomes acquainted with the 4 other characters in the story, and they all seem to project onto Mister Singer whoever they want him to be. Because he cannot communicate with them other than writing short responses, all of their interactions with him are one-sided and they all believe that "he gets them" (with the exception of Biff. He's a bit more of a quiet observant of Mister Singer, rather than rapturous over him). But all the while, Mister Singer is really mostly puzzled by all of these folks - there are only a few chapters written from his perspective, so it was interesting to read about his character from the other characters' points of view, and see how much they idolized him without him ever really saying anything back to him. And then to hear it from his perspective when he really didn't understand any of them at all and really only wanted to see his friend who he missed so desperately.
I won't give away the end of the book, because I sure as hell didn't see it coming (I startled my b.f. today when I got to a certain part and yelled out "NO WAY!"), and there were multiple key episodes in the book that really swung the narrative. But again, all of the characters so wanted to not feel so isolated, and for some reason the deaf mute was the one they all turned to (which is so brilliant, right?).
There were so many other layers to this book: the delicate handling of race (I felt as though it was a very honest portrayal of how the different races saw each other and interacted), the loss of innocence of Mick, needing to believe in some kind of god or religion or principal. It was all done in such an emblematic way (so many objects, places, moments in the book stood for something else) with a really clear, straightforward writing style. I believe I have another book by Carson McCullers on my lists, so I'm looking forward to seeing how her writing style is within a different context (and it blows me away that this book was published when she was 23 years old).
So on I move to The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein. This one should hopefully be a pretty quick read. But I've said that before and 6 months later gotten around to finishing it.
I still have to see Sophie's Choice too...that was on my to-do list over the holidays and it just didn't happen. I think there's a movie version of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter floating around out there with Alan Arkin, but I suspect it might be a bit difficult to locate. So I'll put that on my eventual to-do list as well.
236 to go. I'm feeling good about 2016...more progress will be made this year!
Post note: the file hosting page I tried out was not a good option, so I switched back to the previous one. So unfortunately, if you want to actually look at the lists, you'll probably have to create a login to do so. Booo....but that's the interwebs technology for you!
