I had never read Carson McCullers‘ The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter (1940), which is sort of a shameful admission, right?
Now, I have; and if you haven’t read it yet, you should, too.
There are a few things to recommend it. First, the characters are drawn with a loving kindness that permeates the reading. There is a warmth to their portrayal–from young adults to community leaders to those struggling in poverty to an introverted mute who serves both as a primary character and a screen for projection for others in the novel–that is rarely seen.
And this is what, I think, enables the second point. I think The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter would struggle to get published today. There isn’t really a plot, per se: there are interconnected scenes, there are things that happen, there are characters to care about. But there is really nothing that drive sit all forward in anything like a coordinated way.
So, the attractiveness of the characters becomes a pre-requisite for the novel’s success, and our empathy and care for them is what makes the novel such a beloved work.
I was surprised by how explicitly political the book was as well: one of the central characters spends, over the course of the story, several pages railing against capitalism and how its internal logic is rigged forever against the working class. The fact that that critique, along with quite a bit of both the implicit and explicit racial observations, remains cogent 70 years on is sobering.
Highly recommended.