Carson McCullers

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Carson McCullers

Carson McCullers (February 19, 1917 – September 29, 1967) was an American

United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
writer

Writer

A writer is anyone who creates a written work, although the word usually designates those who write creatively or professionally, as well as those who have written in many different forms....
. She wrote novels, short stories, and two plays, as well as essays and some poetry. Her first novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is the debut 1940 in literature novel by United States author Carson McCullers. It is about a Deafness man named John Singer and the people he encounters in a 1930s mill town in the U.S....
explores the spiritual isolation of misfits and outcast

Outcast

An Outcast is a person with a social stigmaOutcast may also refer to:In literature:*...
s of the South.

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Encyclopedia

Carson McCullers (February 19, 1917 – September 29, 1967) was an American

United States

Writer

Outcast

An Outcast is a person with a social stigmaOutcast may also refer to:In literature:*...
s of the South. Her other novels have similar themes and are all set in the South.

Early life

She was born Lula Carson Smith in Columbus, Georgia

Columbus, Georgia

Columbus is a city in Muscogee County, Georgia, Georgia , United States. It is the primary city of the Columbus, Georgia Columbus, Georgia metropolitan area, an MSA which encompasses all of Columbus, Georgia, Chattahoochee County, Georgia, Harris County, Georgia, Marion County, Georgia, and Muscogee County, Georgia counties, Georgia, and Russ...
in 1917 of middle class parentage. Her mother was the granddaughter of a plantation owner and Confederate

Confederate States of America

The Confederate States of America formed as the government set up from 1861 to 1865 by eleven Southern United States U.S. state of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S....
War hero. Her father, similar to Wilbur Kelly in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is the debut 1940 in literature novel by United States author Carson McCullers. It is about a Deafness man named John Singer and the people he encounters in a 1930s mill town in the U.S....
, was a well-to-do watchmaker and jeweler of French Huguenot

Huguenot

The Huguenots were members of the Protestantism Reformed Church of France of France from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries....
extraction. From the age of five she took piano lessons, and at the age of 15 she received a typewriter from her father.

In September 1934 at age 17 she left home on a steamship from Savannah, Georgia

Savannah, Georgia

Savannah is the largest city in, and the county seat of, Chatham County, Georgia, Georgia , United States. Savannah was established in 1733 and was the first colonial and state capital of Georgia....
, planning to study piano at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City

New York City

The City of New York is the List of United States cities by population in the United States, while the New York metropolitan area ranks among the List of urban areas by population....
, but never attended the school, having lost the money set aside for her tuition. McCullers worked in menial jobs and studied creative writing under Texas writer Dorothy Scarborough

Dorothy Scarborough

Dorothy Scarborough was an United States writer who wrote about Texas, folk culture, cotton, ghost stories and a woman's life in the Midwest....
at night classes at Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York , is a private university in the United States and a member of the Ivy League. Columbia's main campus lies in the Morningside Heights, Manhattan neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan, in New York City....
and with Sylvia Chatfield Bates at Washington Square College of New York University

New York University

New York University is a private university, nonsectarian, research university in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan....
. She decided to become a writer and published in 1936 an autobiographical piece, Wunderkind, a piece her course teacher Miss Bates much admired, in Story magazine

Story (magazine)

Story was a magazine founded in 1931 by journalist-editor Whit Burnett and his first wife, Martha Foley, in Vienna, Austria. Showcasing short stories by new authors, 167 copies of the debut issue were mimeographed in Vienna, and two years later, Story moved to New York City where Burnett and Foley created The Story Press in 1936....
. It depicted a musical prodigy's failure and adolescent insecurity and also appears in The Ballad of the Sad Cafe collection.

Marriage and career

From 1935 to 1937 she divided her time, as her studies and health dictated, between Columbus and New York and in September 1937 she married an ex-soldier and aspirant writer, Reeves McCullers. They began their married life in Charlotte, North Carolina

Charlotte, North Carolina

Charlotte is the largest city in the state of North Carolina and the seat of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. The List of United States cities by population in the United States....
where Reeves had found some work. There, and in Fayetteville, North Carolina

Fayetteville, North Carolina

Fayetteville is a city located in Cumberland County, North Carolina, North Carolina. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 121,015....
, she wrote her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is the debut 1940 in literature novel by United States author Carson McCullers. It is about a Deafness man named John Singer and the people he encounters in a 1930s mill town in the U.S....
, in the Southern Gothic

Southern Gothic

Southern Gothic is a Subgenre of the Gothic novel writing style, unique to American literature. Like its parent genre, it relies on supernatural, ironic, or unusual events to guide the plot....
tradition. The title, suggested by McCullers's editor, was taken from Fiona MacLeod's poem 'The Lonely Hunter'. The novel itself was interpreted as an anti-fascist book. Altogether she published eight books. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940), written at the age of twenty-three, Reflections in a Golden Eye
Reflections in a Golden Eye (novel)

Reflections in a Golden Eye is a 1941 in literature novel by United States author Carson McCullers.It first appeared in Harper's Bazaar in 1940, serialized in the October-November issues....
(1941) and The Member of the Wedding
The Member of the Wedding

The Member of the Wedding is a 1946 novel by Southern United States writer Carson McCullers. It took McCullers five years to complete -- though she interrupted the work for a few months to write the short novel The Ballad of the Sad Cafe....
(1946), are the most well-known. The novella The Ballad of the Sad Cafe
The Ballad of the Sad Cafe

Sorry, no overview for this topic
(1951) also depicts loneliness and the pain of unrequited love. She was an alumna of Yaddo

Yaddo

Yaddo is an artists' community located on a 400 acre estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment"....
in Saratoga, New York.

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter was filmed in 1968 with Alan Arkin

Alan Arkin

Alan Wolf Arkin is an American Academy Award-winning actor, Film director, and musician. He is best-known for starring in such films as: Catch-22 ; The In-Laws ; Edward Scissorhands; The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming; Glengarry Glen Ross ; and Little Miss Sunshine, for which he won an Academy Award fo...
in the lead role. Reflections in a Golden Eye was directed by John Huston

John Huston

John Marcellus Huston was an United States film director and actor. He was known for directing the films, The Maltese Falcon , The Asphalt Jungle , The Treasure of the Sierra Madre , Key Largo , The African Queen , The Misfits , and The Man Who Would Be King ....
(1967), starring Marlon Brando

Marlon Brando

Marlon Brando, Jr. was an Academy Award-winning American actor whose body of work spanned over half a century. He is widely considered one of the greatest actors of all time, and was named the fourth AFI's 100 Years......
and Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor

Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, Order of the British Empire , also known as Liz Taylor, is an England-born American actress.Known for her acting skills and beauty, as well as her Cinema of the United States lifestyle, including many marriages, Taylor is considered one of the great actresses of Hollywood's golden years, as well as a la...
. Some of the film was shot in New York City

New York City

Long Island

Long Island is an island located in southeastern New York, United States, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are Borough s of New York City, and two of which are mainly suburban....
, where Huston was permitted to use an abandoned Army installation. Many of the interiors and some of the exteriors were done in Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia....
. "I first met Carson McCullers during the war when I was visiting Paulette Goddard and Burgess Meredith in upstate New York," said Huston in An Open Book (1980). "Carson lived nearby, and one day when Buzz and I were out for a walk she hailed us from her doorway. She was then in her early twenties, and had already suffered the first of a series of strokes. I remember her as a fragile thing with great shining eyes, and a tremor in her hand as she placed it in mine. It wasn't palsy, rather a quiver of animal timidity. But there was nothing timid or frail about the manner in which Carson McCullers faced life. And as her afflictions multiplied, she only grew stronger."

Failed marriage and emotional struggles

McCullers's marriage was unsuccessful, with both parties having homosexual relationships; Carson and Reeves separated in 1940 and divorced in 1941. After she separated from Reeves, she moved to New York to live with George Davis, the editor of Harper's Bazaar
Harper's Bazaar

Harper's Bazaar is a well-known American fashion magazine, first published in 1867. Harper's Bazaar considers itself to be the style resource for "the well-dressed woman and the well-dressed mind"....
. In Brooklyn, she became a member of the art commune February House. Among their friends were W. H. Auden

W. H. Auden

Wystan Hugh Auden who signed his works W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet, regarded by many as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century....
, Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten

Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, Order of Merit Order of the Companions of Honour was an England composer, conducting, viola and pianist....
, and Paul

Paul Bowles

Paul Frederic Bowles was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator.Following a cultured middle-class upbringing in New York City, during which he displayed a talent for music and writing, Bowles pursued his education at the University of Virginia before making various trips to Paris in the 1930s....
and Jane Bowles

Jane Bowles

Jane Bowles, born Jane Sydney Auer , was an United States writer and playwright....
. After World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a Participants in World War II, including all of the great powers, organised into two opposing military alliances: the Allies of World War II and the Axis powers....
, Carson lived mostly in Paris. Her close friends during these years included Truman Capote

Truman Capote

Truman Capote was an United States writer whose short stories, novels, plays, and non-fiction are recognized literary classics, including the novella Breakfast at Tiffany's and In Cold Blood , which he labeled a "non-fiction novel"....
and Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams was an American playwright who received many of the top theatrical awards. He moved to New Orleans in 1939 and changed his name to "Tennessee", the state of his father's birth....
.

In 1945, Carson and Reeves McCullers remarried. Three years later, she attempted suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the intentional taking of one's own life. Many dictionaries also note the metaphorical sense of "willful destruction of one's self-interest"....
while depressed. In 1953, Reeves tried to convince her to commit suicide with him, but she fled. After Carson left, Reeves killed himself in their Paris hotel with an overdose of sleeping pills. Her bittersweet play, The Square Root of Wonderful (1957), was an attempt to examine these traumatic experiences. The Member of the Wedding
The Member of the Wedding

The Member of the Wedding is a 1946 novel by Southern United States writer Carson McCullers. It took McCullers five years to complete -- though she interrupted the work for a few months to write the short novel The Ballad of the Sad Cafe....
(1946) describes the feelings of a young girl at her brother's wedding. The Broadway production of the novel had a successful run in 1950–51 and was produced by the Young Vic in London in September 2007.

McCullers suffered throughout her life from several illnesses and from alcoholism — she had contracted rheumatic fever

Rheumatic fever

Rheumatic fever is an inflammatory disease disease which may develop two to three weeks after a Group A streptococcal infection . It is believed to be caused by antibody cross-reactivity and can involve the heart, joints, skin, and brain....
at the age of fifteen and suffered from stroke

Stroke

A stroke is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to a disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. According to the National Stroke Association, a "stroke" occurs when a blood clot blocks and artery or a blood vessel breaks, interrupting blood flow to an area of the brain....
s since her youth. By the age of 31, her left side was entirely paralyzed. She died in Nyack, New York

Nyack, New York

Nyack is a political subdivisions of New York State#Village in the Orangetown, New York in Rockland County, New York, New York, United States, located north of South Nyack, New York; east of Central Nyack, New York; south of Upper Nyack, New York and west of the Hudson River, approximately 19 miles north of the Manhattan boundary, it is an i...
, on September 29, 1967, after a brain hemorrhage and the resultant stroke. She is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Nyack, where also is buried noted modernist painter Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper was a prominent United States realist Painting and printmaker. While most popularly known for his oil paintings, he was equally proficient as a watercolorist and printmaker in etching....
. McCullers dictated her unfinished autobiography, Illumination and Night Glare (1999), during her final months.

Criticism

"Miss McCullers and perhaps Mr. Faulkner

William Faulkner

William Faulkner was a Nobel Prize in Literature-winning United States author. One of the most influential writers of the 20th century, his reputation is based on his novels, novellas and short story....
are the only writers since the death of D. H. Lawrence

D. H. Lawrence

David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an England author, poet, playwright, essayist and literary criticism. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanizing effects of modernity and industrialization....
with an original poetic sensibility. I prefer Miss McCullers to Mr. Faulkner because she writes more clearly; I prefer her to D. H. Lawrence because she has no message." – Graham Greene

Graham Greene

Henry Graham Greene Order of Merit, Order of the Companions of Honour was an English writer best known as a novelist, but who also produced short stories, plays, screenplays, travel writing and criticism....

"Moving, yes, but a minor author. And broken by illness at such a young age." – Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller was an United States playwright and essayist. He was a prominent figure in Theater in the United States and film for almost 100 years, writing a wide variety of dramas, including celebrated Play such as The Crucible, A View from the Bridge, All My Sons, and Death of a Salesman, which are studied and performed w...

"Carson's major theme; the huge importance and nearly insoluble problems of human love." - Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams

Although McCullers's oeuvre is often described as "Southern Gothic

Southern Gothic

Southern United States

The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive region in the southeastern and south-central United States....
. Her eccentric character

Fictional character

A character is any person, persona, identity, or entity that exists in a The arts. The process of conveying information about characters in fiction is called characterisation....
s suffer from loneliness

Loneliness

Loneliness is a feeling where people experience a powerful surge of emptiness and solitude. Loneliness is more than the feeling of wanting Interpersonal relationship or wanting to do something with another person....
that is interpreted with deep empathy

Empathy

Empathy is the capacity to share and understand another's emotion and feelings. It is often characterized as the ability to "put oneself into another's shoes", or in some way experience what the other person is feeling....
. In a discussion with the Irish

Ireland

Ireland is the List of islands by area in Europe, and the twentieth-largest island in the world. It lies to the north-west of continental Europe and is surrounded by hundreds of islands and islet....
critic

Critic

The word critic comes from the Greek language ' , "able to discern", which in turn derives from the word ' , meaning a person who offers reasoned judgment or analysis, value judgment, interpretation, or observation....
and writer

Writer

Terence de Vere White

Terence de Vere White was an Ireland writer, lawyer and editing.Born in Dublin, he studied at Trinity College, Dublin where he qualified as a solicitor and became a partner in a leading Dublin law firm....
she said: "Writing, for me, is a search for God

God

God is a deity in theism and deism religions and other belief systems, representing either the sole deity in monotheism, or a principal deity in polytheism....
." Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal

Gore Vidal is an United States novelist, screenwriter, playwright, essayist, short story writer and politician. Early in his career he wrote the ground-breaking The City and the Pillar , which outraged mainstream critics as one of the first major American novels to feature unambiguous homosexuality....
praised her work as "one of the few satisfying achievements of our second-rate culture

Culture

Culture is difficult to define. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions....
." Other critics have variously detected tragicomic

Tragicomedy

Tragicomedy is fictional work that blends aspects of the genres of tragedy and comedy. In English literature, from Shakespeare's time to the nineteenth century, tragicomedy referred to a serious Play with a happy ending....
or political

Politics

Politics is the process by which groups of people make decisions. The term is generally applied to behaviour within civil governments, but politics has been observed in all human group interactions, including corporation, academia, and religion institutions....
elements in her writing

Writing

Writing is the representation of language in a textual Media through the use of a set of signs or symbols . It is distinguished from illustration, such as cave drawing and painting, and the recording of language via a non-textual medium such as Magnetic tape sound recording....
.

Cultural References

McCullers narration of The Member of the Wedding was used by Jarvis Cocker

Jarvis Cocker

Jarvis Branson Cocker is an England musician, best known for fronting the band Pulp . Through his work with the band, Cocker became one of the key players in the Britpop movement of the mid-1990s....
on his debut album, Jarvis. It forms the introduction to the song Big Julie and consists of an edited (or slightly mangled) version of the opening lines of the book:

"It happened that green and crazy summer. It was a summer when for a long time she had not been a member. She belonged to no club and she was a member of nothing in the world. And she was afraid."

Sue Denim (of Robots in Disguise
Robots in Disguise

Robots in Disguise are an England, now Berlin-based, Electro band. The group is composed of Dee Plume , Sue Denim , and a rolling live line-up of backing musicians....
) lists Carson McCullers under her "loves and influences" on the Robots MySpace page, and, in her solo project Sue and the Unicorn, Denim references McCullers along with other writers in the song "For JT and Carson and Emily."

The Anniversary
The Anniversary

The Anniversary was an American indie rock band. They formed in Lawrence, KS in 1997 when Josh Berwanger, James David, Christian Jankowski, Adrianne Verhoeven and Justin Roelofs solidified a line up that had been in flux for a year....
, a Kansas City band who released two albums through Vagrant Records
Vagrant Records

Vagrant Records is an independent record label, founded by Face to Face manager Rich Egan and friend Jon Cohen in 1996 in music. The label has become increasingly popular, garnering gold albums and MTV Video Music Awards....
, titled a song "Heart is a Lonely Hunter" on their album Designing a Nervous Breakdown.

Nanci Griffith
Nanci Griffith

'Nanci Caroline Griffith', is an United States singer, guitarist and songwriter from Austin, Texas.Griffith's career has spanned a variety of musical genres, predominantly country music, folk music, and what she terms "folkabilly." Griffith won a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Album in 1994 for her recording, Other Voices, Other R...
's album Clock Without Hands
Clock Without Hands

Released in July 2001, Clock Without Hands was named after Carson McCullers' final novel , and is a particularly personal collection of songs, including "Last Song For Mother" , a moving tribute to her late mother....
is, in part, inspired by McCullers' novel.

Madonna
Madonna (entertainer)

Madonna is an American recording artist, actress and entrepreneur. Born in Bay City, Michigan and raised in Rochester Hills, Michigan, Madonna moved to New York City in 1977, for a career in modern dance....
refers to The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter in a song called ¨Love Tried To Welcome Me¨ on her album Bedtime Stories.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is the debut 1940 in literature novel by United States author Carson McCullers. It is about a Deafness man named John Singer and the people he encounters in a 1930s mill town in the U.S....
is referred to in the movie A Love Song for Bobby Long
A Love Song for Bobby Long

A Love Song for Bobby Long is a 2004 in film Cinema of the United States drama film written and directed by Shainee Gabel. The screenplay is based on the novel Off Magazine Street by Ronald Everett Capps....
; the main character's mother always carried the novel with her and read it over and over again.

Charles Bukowski
Charles Bukowski

Henry Charles Bukowski , was a German American poet, novelist and short story. Bukowski's writing was heavily influenced by the geography and atmosphere of his home city of Los Angeles, California, and is marked by an emphasis on the ordinary lives of marginalized poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, the dru...
wrote an eponymous poem about her.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is the debut 1940 in literature novel by United States author Carson McCullers. It is about a Deafness man named John Singer and the people he encounters in a 1930s mill town in the U.S....
is the name of a song by the British band The Duke Spirit.

Works

Novels

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter
The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter is the debut 1940 in literature novel by United States author Carson McCullers. It is about a Deafness man named John Singer and the people he encounters in a 1930s mill town in the U.S....
(1940)
Reflections in a Golden Eye
Reflections in a Golden Eye (novel)

Reflections in a Golden Eye is a 1941 in literature novel by United States author Carson McCullers.It first appeared in Harper's Bazaar in 1940, serialized in the October-November issues....
(1941)
The Member of the Wedding
The Member of the Wedding

The Member of the Wedding is a 1946 novel by Southern United States writer Carson McCullers. It took McCullers five years to complete -- though she interrupted the work for a few months to write the short novel The Ballad of the Sad Cafe....
(1946)
Clock Without Hands (1961)

Other works

The Ballad of the Sad Cafe
The Ballad of the Sad Cafe

Sorry, no overview for this topic
(1951), a short story collection comprising:

a novella
Novella

A novella is a writing, fictional, prose narrative longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. While there is disagreement as to what length defines a novella, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000....
of the same title, later made into a Merchant Ivory Film
The Ballad of the Sad Cafe

Sorry, no overview for this topic
,
Wunderkind - (Story
Story (magazine)

Story was a magazine founded in 1931 by journalist-editor Whit Burnett and his first wife, Martha Foley, in Vienna, Austria. Showcasing short stories by new authors, 167 copies of the debut issue were mimeographed in Vienna, and two years later, Story moved to New York City where Burnett and Foley created The Story Press in 1936....
, 1936)
The Jockey - (The New Yorker
The New Yorker

The New Yorker is an United States magazine that publishes reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Starting as a weekly in the mid-1920s, the magazine is now published 47 times per year, with five of these issues covering two-week spans....
, 1941)
Madame Zilensky and the King of Finland - (The New Yorker, 1941)
The Sourner - (Mademoiselle
Mademoiselle (magazine)

Mademoiselle was an influential women's magazine first published in 1935 by Street and Smith and later acquired by Cond? Nast Publications....
, 1950)
A Domestic Dilemma - (New York Post
New York Post

The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continually as a daily, although -- like most other papers -- its publication has been interrupted by labor actions....
magazine section, 1941)
A Tree, a Rock, a Cloud - (Harper's Bazaar
Harper's Bazaar

Harper's Bazaar is a well-known American fashion magazine, first published in 1867. Harper's Bazaar considers itself to be the style resource for "the well-dressed woman and the well-dressed mind"....
, 1942)

The Square Root of Wonderful (1958), a play.
Sweet as a Pickle and Clean as a Pig (1964), a collection of poems.
The Mortgaged Heart (1972), a posthumous collection of writings, edited by her sister Rita.
Illumination and Night Glare (1999), her unfinished autobiography
Autobiography

An autobiography is a biography written by its subject . The term was first used by the poet Robert Southey in 1809 in the English language Periodical publication Quarterly Review, but the form goes back to antiquity....
, published nearly 30 years after her death.

Collections

Complete Novels, Carlos L. Dews, ed. (New York: , 2001) ISBN 978-1-93108203-7.

External links

Two different critical views of McCullers: