Lone Hunter: A Biography of Carson McCullers

Author: (American) Virginia Spencer Carr
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2006-01-01
Features: Carson McCullers was called by contemporary American critic Walter Earl "the second most outstanding Southern writer after Faulkner," and another contemporary American writer, Gore Vidal, called her "the greatest and most underappreciated Southern writer." Her The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter ranked seventeenth in the "Top 100 Best English Novels" selected by the American Modern Library, while Chinese readers are most familiar with her The Ballad of the Sad Café. The The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter: A Biography of Carson McCullers presented to the readers is a comprehensive, candid, and empathetic record of the life of this outstanding writer. Carson McCullers' heart was often lonely, it was an tireless hunter, searching for the people she could dedicate herself to, but it was a bright heart, its brilliance overshadowed all its shadows. The author wrote this biography comprehensively, candidly, and empathetically, fully understanding every aspect of Carson McCullers' life and works. The setting of the story is similar to the hot Southern town in The Ballad of the Sad Café. She said, "The homoerotic love between the two deaf-mute men in the novel is moving, and the homosexuality is ambiguous, sometimes intense, sometimes silent. The theme highlights McCullers' themes: loneliness is absolute, and even deep love cannot change humanity's ultimate loneliness. Desperate loneliness is less a sin than the original sin of sin." A Nanjing reader named lostpast just finished reading The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, and she believes that The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter expresses the concept of "loneliness" more independently than The Ballad of the Sad Café. She said, "What impressed me most in the book is a little girl from a poor family who hides in a wealthy family's garden, eavesdropping on Mozart played on an old radio, climbing the roof in the dark, and reflecting on Mozart in silence. The little girl will grow up gradually, becoming calm, then dull, and numb, but readers who listen to their inner voices in the dark can find an unbearable loneliness in her. Everyone is lonely, yet they are not connected by this similar loneliness. People are ultimately lonely, as if people are ultimately going to die. This is a cold truth, a cruel reality, but McCullers depicted it vividly and sharply, depicting it in a way that is tolerable and must be tolerated." "McCullers' works may seem absurd, but in her writing, the characters seem to come to life, with meticulous logic and their own destinies, and neither the writer, the reader, nor the critic can control them." Some translators seem to be searching for academic justification for McCullers.