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There’s a scene in the film “The Heart is the Lonely Hunter” which has haunted me from the first time I saw it in 1968. In the scene the protagonist, a deaf mute named John Singer, pantomimes conducting an orchestra in hopes he can demonstrate to his landlord’s daughter that he appreciates her love of classical music. This attempt at becoming her friend is one of the most painful scenes I have ever seen on film.
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Based on Carson McCuller’s semiautobiographical first novel, the film—like the book—tells the story of the price of isolation. John’s only real friend is Spiros Antonapoulis. a mentally challenged deaf mute who keeps getting arrested because he doesn’t understand the rules. John’s handicap makes this friendship especially important to him, because otherwise he has no one to talk to in the small southern town he lives in. When Spiros is put in a mental institution, John decides to move closer to him so they can visit. This results in becoming a lodger in the home of a family who has fallen on hard times. Naturally, Mick, the middle daughter of John’s landlord, is angry when her parents offer John her bright corner bedroom, forcing her to move into the sweltering attic. Yet over time John’s efforts to become her friend bear modest fruit. She becomes intrigued by John. She is obsessed with Beethoven and Mozart and would love to take music lessons but cannot. McCuller’s depiction of the 13-year-old’s fascination is heartbreaking.
“[Mick] wondered what kind of music [Singer] heard in his mind that his ears couldn’t hear. Nobody knew. And what kind of things he would say if he could talk. Nobody knew that either.”
Richard Wright, author of the monumental Native Son, praised McCuller’s depiction of the local African-American doctor and his daughter in the segregated Georgia town where John and Mick are neighbors. “To me the most impressive aspect of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is the astonishing humanity that enables a white writer, for the first time in Southern fiction, to handle Negro characters with as much ease and justice as those of her own race. This cannot be accounted for stylistically or politically; it seems to stem from an attitude toward life which enables Miss McCullers to rise above the pressures of her environment and embrace white and black humanity in one sweep of apprehension and tenderness.” I would add that the entire book has an amazing equanimity. Every character is given his or her due, warts and all. John’s apparent serenity is balanced with his frustration with the bigotries of others. Mick’s tomboyish ways and fierce independence are weighed against her desire to fit in and find romance. Dr. Copeland’s cynicism and hostility are matched by his concern for his daughter and community. It is a truly remarkable book for a 23-year-old Georgian.
The most impressive aspect of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is the astonishing humanity that enables a white writer, for the first time in Southern fiction, to handle Negro characters with as much ease and justice as those of her own race. —Richard Wright
While McCullers is a late arrival to Modernism, her subject matter carries the kind of deep honesty writers of that era were known for. Perhaps this is a natural consequence of her biography of childhood illnesses, bisexuality, and general contrariness. It could also be her affinity for the works of Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) and Russian authors such as Tolstoy and Chekhov. Whatever it is, McCuller’s viewed her job as “a search for God.” This meant that she considered it imperative to convey her sense of isolation from the divine. Other works by McCullers continued this search. In The Member of the Wedding (1946), McCullers addressed the strange isolation of a sister at her brother’s wedding. Reflections in a Golden Eye (1941) expresses how lonely one can be when one is unable to be one’s self. The novella, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe (1951), reveals the role unrequited love plays in human connection. Consequently, there is a realism that goes beyond the “Southern Gothic” moniker. Little is held back.
McCullers led a wild personal life. She pursued both men and women ferociously, though her biographers doubt she ever actually succeeded in her attempts to bed women. The closest she came to consummating a lesbian affair was with the Swiss-born photographer and journalist Annemarie Schwarzenbach. They shared a single kiss. "She had a face that I knew would haunt me for the rest of my life," McCullers wrote a friend. It’s probably a good thing they didn’t get closer. Schwarzenbach’s self-destructive tendencies matched the author’s. The fact is McCullers androgyny both fascinated and repelled would be partners, which is why so many of her novels deal with unrequited love and a character’s frustrated attempts to connect with the divine in others. When she did marry, her marriages with never seemed to get off the ground. Even a second attempt with her first husband Reeves McCullers failed—most likely because he was gay. In short, it behooves the reader to consume McCullers in small bites because she’s likely to trigger emotional indigestion.
The author lived for a time in 1940 at February House, a communal haven for bisexual artists of all types. (The home in Brooklyn Heights was named by Anais Nin because so many of its residents had birthdays in February.) While there, McCullers established strong friendships with characters as diverse as Paul and Jane Bowles, Benjamin Britten, Gypsy Rose Lee, Salvador Dali, W.H. Auden and Katherine Anne Porter. It was at February House that McCullers began The Ballad of the Sad Cafe which was based on characters she met at a nearby bar. Later, in Paris after the war, she became acquainted with Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams, who would find themselves depicted in her later work. In fact, much of her output is based on things she experienced as a child and young woman.
It behooves the reader to consume McCullers in small bites because she’s likely to trigger emotional indigestion.
The Southerner eventually settled in South Nyack, New York, a far cry from her start in Columbus, Georgia. Yet she retained a Southerner’s languid mindset despite the craziness of her social life. After years of alcoholism and ill health, she died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1967 at just 50 years of age.
Sadly, McCullers never got to see any of her books as films. If she had, I imagine she would have cried like I did at the end of The Heart is A Lonely Hunter.