The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter in Queereaders

Jun 24, 2009 Chloe rated it it was amazing

Shelves: classics, fiction, southern-lit, i_am_in_love

I find myself consistantly tongue-tied about this book. I've begun nearly four different reviews of this eminantly enjoyable read that have all petered away into nothingness as I try to put into words just what it was that gripped me about McCullers' opus. The first word I can think of is shock. Shock that I had heard next to nothing about this book until pulling it from my shelf. Shock that I have gone so long without it being assigned to me in a class or forced into my hands by a friend. Shock I find myself consistantly tongue-tied about this book. I've begun nearly four different reviews of this eminantly enjoyable read that have all petered away into nothingness as I try to put into words just what it was that gripped me about McCullers' opus. The first word I can think of is shock. Shock that I had heard next to nothing about this book until pulling it from my shelf. Shock that I have gone so long without it being assigned to me in a class or forced into my hands by a friend. Shock that this book is not featured on more of those "must-read" or "best writing of the 20th century" lists that get bandied about with the regularity of summer monsoons here on Goodreads. Mostly, though, shock that McCullers turned out such an exquisite and world-weary look at the loneliness that engulfs people and swallows them down when she was only 23. Things like that just make me feel lazy and unaccomplished.

I am the first to admit that I have very little firsthand knowledge of the Southern United States. What I do know is informed through the media I consume and the history we were all taught in school (though, apparently, that history is subjective as well; see "The War of Northern Aggression"). In fact, I could honestly claim that I know more about other continents than I do about the South. As such, I don't feel too comfortable claiming that there is a darkness that seems to live in the land, seeping out to inspire random acts of cruelty or violence and spread waves of intangible dread among its inhabitants (notice that it didn't actually stop me from making said claim). Whether or not this darkness is inherent to the South or McCullers is just tapping into her own personal ennui, reading The Heart is a Lonely Hunter often made me feel as though I were journeying upriver to listen to Kurtz exhort me to "exterminate all the brutes."

The book follows four different people and the dreams for a different/better life that they all hold close as a means of escaping the pervasive loneliness which always seems ready to swallow them whole. For Mick Kelly, a precocious young teen cut in the mold of To Kill A Mockingbird's Scout Finch, this dream is of being able to compose and play the music that infects her mind. For the wandering Jake Blount it is of inspiring the downtrodden workers to strike at the mills to improve their conditions. Cafe owner Biff Brannon is ashamed of his creative impulses and the maternal feelings he carries for the children of his patrons and Dr. Copeland is so consumed by his desire to inspire his fellow blacks to greatness that he refuses to take time off to treat the tuberculosis which is slowly killing him.

The lynchpin of all these dreamers is the enigmatic Mr. Singer. A deaf-mute in a city of speakers, Mr. Singer offers himself up as the perfect tabula rasa for the four dreamers. In the small room that he rents from Mick's parents, he sits as calm and quiet as the Buddha as each in their turn visit and pour out their dreams, desires and passions to him- the perfect opinionless tabula rasa. My heart ached for all of these characters as they struggled with realising their dreams and the compromises they all made as they ran into the hard wall of reality. Yet it was Mr. Singer that I cared for above all. Always receptive of others yet unable to share his own thoughts, his only confessor his former roommate who is now interred at an asylum. He is wrapped in a bubble of isolation and it is his loneliness that has stuck with me the hardest since finishing the book.

It's been five days since I finished this book yet I can't bring myself to put it back on my shelf, to really believe that my time with these achingly real people has come to an end. My copy is dog-eared now from me folding down the corners of pages to record a choice description or bit of dialogue and I keep referring back to it in order to make sure that I am not bastardizing McCullers' exquisite prose. It may not have been listed on the 1001 List (but 12 different Ian McEwan novels made the cut?!?) but this is absolutely a book that you must read before you die. Its beauty and its sorrow can't help but touch you. ...more

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Jul 05, 2007 David rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: top-20

This book made me weep when I first read it as a teenager. The sadness of the characters was so overwhelming. But I loved the writing, and the book stayed with me. When I read it again a few years ago, it still packed an emotional punch. And somehow, for all the sadness in the book, I don't find it in the least bit depressing. Maybe it's the ability of McCullers's writing to remind the reader of the redemptive power of storytelling. ...more

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Dec 11, 2017 Chris rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I haven’t read a book that made me feel so hard in a long time. Mulling it over for now.

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Apr 01, 2014 Lord Beardsley rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, read2014

I first read this book when I was 14 or 15 on an Amtrak van from Omaha, Nebraska to Kansas City. Yes, Amtrak operate vans.

Rereading this as an "adult" (term used loosely) was a totally different experience. The first time I read it, I distinctly remember being enamored with the language to the point of it being a sort of magic experience that totally swept me away. It was one of the books that I related to on a very deep level, that spoke to how lonely I felt at the time, and the oppressive nat ...more

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Aug 11, 2007 Teddy rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-in-2004-or-before

Good but over rated.

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Feb 27, 2008 Andy rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-in-youth, classics

This was another book that I feel is lost on youth. I read this the first time when I was in high school and while I enjoyed it, it wasn't until I read it a few years later that I really understood the message. ...more

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