The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together.

So what happens when one of the mutes goes insane and is sent off to an asylum, leaving the other mute alone, with literally no one he can talk with, and needing to downsize into a single rented room in the Kelly family's boarding house? That's the question that The Heart is a Lonely Hunter answers, and it answers it brilliantly. 

First of all, I see a lot of attention is paid to the fact that Carson McCullers was only 23 when she wrote this book, but that isn't terribly surprising to me: I've noted plenty of times that groundbreaking musicians and artists do their best work in their 20s, doomed to repeat themselves forever after; and perhaps -- perhaps apocryphally -- like small children who talk to ghosts and angels before forgetting how, McCullers was attuned to something available only to the young; I personally lament the things I knew and the enthusiasm I could access in my 20s that are all lost to me now. But this is not to detract from what McCullers achieves in this book -- it is perceptive and ambitious and full of wit and wisdom; truly a masterpiece, like a mashup of The Grapes of Wrath, To Kill a Mockingbird, and A Good Man is Hard to Find.

To return to the mute: after John Singer loses his companion of ten years, he rents a room with a family, and when he starts to eat his meals in the local diner, he catches the attention of various lonely characters who are drawn to him.

People felt themselves watching him even before they knew that there was anything different about him. His eyes made a person think that he heard things nobody else ever heard, that he knew things no one had ever guessed before.

These people start to visit Singer in his room, and although he is a gracious host, he listens and nods but rarely reveals anything of himself. (When Antonapulos was taken away, Singer lost the only person he could communicate with through sign language, but he can write notes -- a method he rarely employs with his visitors.) Everyone projects onto Singer what they want him to be -- to the Marxist, he's probably a Jew; to the oppressed black doctor, he's the only righteous white man; to the music-obsessed adolescent girl, he understands the Beethoven that he's never heard -- and when, by the end of the novel, Singer is gone, these visitors' own lives unravel.

The visitors: Mick Kelly (loosely based on McCullers herself) is a 13 year old girl, who over the year's span of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, grows from a tomboy in shorts to a young woman who needs to leave school to get a job at Woolworth's to do her share to provide for her destitute family. She is loving to her family and confused about growing up and her secret heart has a passion for classical music (she roams the streets at night to find a rich house listening to music on their radio so that she can listen from the bushes and she uses her lunch money to take piano lessons from a girl at school). Listening to Beethoven's 3rd Symphony for the first time:

This music was her—the real plain her...This music did not take a long time or a short time. It did not have anything to do with time going by at all. She sat with her arms around her legs, biting her salty knee very hard. The whole world was this symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen.

Jake Blount is a drifter, a Marxist who goes from town to town trying, and failing, to find like-minded people who will organise into unions and a resistance movement:

But say a man does know. He sees the world as it is and he looks back thousands of years to see how it all come about. He watches the slow agglutination of capital and power and he sees its pinnacle today. He sees America as a crazy house. He sees how men have to rob their brothers in order to live. He sees children starving and women working sixty hours a week to get to eat. He sees a whole damn army of unemployed and billions of dollars and thousands of miles of land wasted. He sees war coming. He sees how when people suffer just so much they get mean and ugly and something dies in them. But the main thing he sees is that the whole system of the world is built on a lie. And although it's as plain as the shining sun—the don't-knows have lived with that lie so long they just can't see it.

Doctor Copeland is a black doctor, born into poverty and racism. He went north to be educated, returning to Georgia in order to care for his people and attempt to lift them up through education and dignity, but even his own family rejected his efforts, preferring to settle for low-paying service jobs and keeping their heads down. (He even named one of his sons Karl Marx -- but he prefers to be called Buddy.):

Our pride must be strong, for we know the value of the human mind and soul. We must teach our children. We must sacrifice so that they may earn the dignity of study and wisdom. For the time will come. The time will come when the riches in us will not be held in scorn and contempt. The time will come when we will be allowed to serve. When we will labor and our labor will not be wasted. And our mission is to await this time with strength and faith.

The fourth visitor, Biff Brannon, is the diner owner and the least talkative of the bunch. He struggles with an attraction to the childish Mick Kelly, and when his (unloved) wife dies, he starts to wear her perfume and sews velvet pillows for his bedroom. The book ends with his epiphany:

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. For in him he felt a warning, a shaft of terror... he was suspended between radiance and darkness. Between bitter irony and faith. Sharply he turned away.

That's just the bare bones of the characters, but the setting and the plot and the themes of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter are all masterfully presented, along with many perceptive and timely observations. Written in 1939, there are warnings about Hitler and Fascism and the "Asian" war. There are calls for black people to rise up (Dr. Copeland dreams of a thousand man march on Washington D.C.) and for the workers to unite, even if Communism isn't exactly the answer ("The main fact is I don't think so much of Stalin and Russia. I hate every damn country and government there is.") There is commentary on poverty and class and racism and religion/atheism (Everybody in the past few years knew there wasn't any real God), as well as more personal insights. 

Three scenes I want to remember, starting with Mick losing her virginity to the neighbour, Harry Minowitz (and I didn't even realise what was happening here until their later conversation):

They both turned at the same time. They were close against each other. She felt him trembling and her fists were tight enough to crack. "Oh, God," he kept saying over and over. It was like her head was broke off from her body and thrown away. And her eyes looked straight into the blinding sun while she counted something in her mind. And then this was the way.

This was how it was.

And this seemed ahead of its time (and as it's from Biff's perspective, it might explain his feminization after his wife dies?):

She was at the age when she looked as much like an overgrown boy as a girl. And on that subject why was it that the smartest people mostly missed that point? By nature all people are of both sexes. So that marriage and the bed is not all by any means. The proof? Real youth and old age. Because often old men's voices grow high and reedy and the take on a mincing walk. And old women sometimes grow fat and their voices get rough and deep and the grow dark little mustaches.

And Portia telling of her brother's torture in prison (Dr. Copeland's reaction was powerful to me):

"It were about six weeks ago," Portia said. "You remember that cold spell then. They put Willie and them boys in this room like ice."

Portia spoke in a low voice, and she neither paused between words nor did the grief in her face soften. It was like a low song. She spoke and he could not understand. The sounds were distinct in his ear but they had no shape or meaning. It was as though his head were the prow of a boat and the sounds were water that broke on him and flowed past. He felt he had to look behind to find the words already said.

"…and their feets swolled up and they lay there and struggle on the floor and holler out. And nobody come. They hollered there for three days and three nights and nobody come."

"I am deaf," said Doctor Copeland. "I cannot understand."

Perfectly capturing so much that was happening at the time, and still remaining entirely readable today, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter deserves its reputation as a classic of American literature.

And as a further musing, there is a conversation in the book between Blount and Copeland, two Marxists who should be sympathetic to each other's politics, but they are both so fanatical that they can't find any common ground -- whereas Copeland would love to see the thousand man march on Washington, Blount thinks that's a fantasy that would never leave the town's borders without being broken up. Instead, he thinks maybe a bunch of chain-letters would get his message out -- which the good doctor ridicules. Every time either of these men talk, spitting fire and brimstone with their conviction, their fanaticism provokes everything from disinterest to ridicule.

All of this reminds me of my friend, Delight. A long-time environmentalist, she has started a facebook group to organise her ideas, and what started with information on climate change and the risks of fracking and extracting the oilsands, has now devolved into a Marxist, anti-capitalism, anti-industrialisation rantfest that is beginning to turn me off. Honestly, much of what she posts could have been said by Jake Blount 75 years ago, and Delight sounds frustrated that the internet and facebook -- the modern day chain-letter, I suppose -- isn't converting everyone to her points of view.

Here's a typical exchange from yesterday:

• Andy: So true. The planet was here before us, and will remain after us. It will cleans its self when it needs to. We don't actually destroy the planet, we just make it less habitable for us, and other life. Life as a whole will adapt, and we will someday be replaced.

  
  
• Delight: yes, Andy it is the truth..she will be here long after we are gone...too bad we can't learn from the past and evolve how man should be evolving...sometimes I think we are devolving....if there is such a thing 

       
• Andy: Everything is just to easy nowadays so most people are very soft. If there is a major world wide disaster most people will simply die. To many will not know what they can and cannot eat. To many will not know how to keep warm. A little thing like a solar flare could almost whip out the human race, because they won't know how to survive without technology. We are evolving, but the problem is we are depending on technology (which is fragile) to do so.

  
  
• Delight  Oh ya, but Andy as soon as you mention such things...as I do...you are looked at like you have two heads.  I think I have about 8 heads according to some of the looks and attitudes I get with some of my thoughts on said subject of technology....haven't you heard...it is going to save us....lol

  
  
• Andy: I know right.

  
  
• Delight:  And the sad thing is Andy, if the technology was affected, as it can be but something as simple as an EM wave....it is the people in the cities that will suffer first...I heard through some reliable sources...that a couple of years ago...in Newfoundland, Canada...they did a study looking at the what ifs of a disaster...they wanted to know how much resources they had on the island at any given time to sustain the population...the answer was 7 days worth....so after a week what happens to people if help doesn't come...and there are many people there who live in smaller towns and don't rely on technology like people in cities do, so they will have a fighting chance...for one thing they are on an island and no one is going to come and try to rob them of their "stuff" right away...but what would happen to people in cities like New York, Toronto, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Edmonton, Calgary? How many days supply of resources do these cities have if it were to all go to shit. People do not think of these things because it is not in the realm of reality for them...it is too far fetched so little heed is made about such things....blinders my friend...we were born with blinders and we like to keep them on. Reality sucks.

Today's links include information on: Coal, Anti-corporate sloganeering, Anti-denier sloganeering, Donald Trump vs Wind Farms, Rainforest destruction, Fracking, Toxic Spill, The Tragedy of the Commons, Right to Work, Obamacare, Foreign Workers, Marijuana Decriminilisation, Anti-religion, Keystone XL, Progressive Protest.

And those are from the past three hours. I don't think Delight has eight heads, I love her enthusiasm, but I wonder what she would think if I sent her a copy of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter?