The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (Modern Library 100 Best Novels) - Hardcover

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Carson McCullers was born in 1917. She was the critically acclaimed author of several popular novels in the 1940s and '50s, including The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The Member of the Wedding, and Reflections in a Golden Eye. Her fiction frequently depicted life in small towns of the southeastern United States and were marked by themes of loneliness and spiritual isolation. McCullers suffered from ill health most of her adult life, including a series of strokes that began when she was in her twenties; she died at the age of fifty.

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When she was only twenty-three, Carson McCullers's first novel created a literary sensation. She was very special, one of America's superlative writers who conjures up a vision of existence as terrible as it is real, who takes us on shattering voyages into the depths of the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition. This novel is the work of a supreme artist, Carson McCullers's enduring masterpiece. The heroine is the strange young girl, Mick Kelly. The setting is a small Southern town, the cosmos universal and eternal. The characters are the damned, the voiceless, the rejected. Some fight their loneliness with violence and depravity, Some with sex or drink, and some -- like Mick -- with a quiet, intensely personal search for beauty.

"From the Paperback edition.

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Excerpt

1
In the town there were two mutes, and they were always together. Early
every morning they would come out from the house where they lived and walk
arm in arm down the street to work. The two friends were very different. The
one who always steered the way was an obese and dreamy Greek. In the
summer he would come out wearing a yellow or green polo shirt stuffed
sloppily into his trousers in front and hanging loose behind. When it was
colder he wore over this a shapeless gray sweater. His face was round and
oily, with half-closed eyelids and lips that curved in a gentle, stupid smile.
The other mute was tall. His eyes had a quick, intelligent expression. He was
always immaculate and very soberly dressed.
Every morning the two friends walked silently together until they
reached the main street of the town. Then when they came to a certain fruit
and candy store they paused for a moment on the sidewalk outside. The
Greek, Spiros Antonapoulos, worked for his cousin, who owned this fruit
store. His job was to make candies and sweets, uncrate the fruits, and to
keep the place clean. The thin mute, John Singer, nearly always put his hand
on his friend"s arm and looked for a second into his face before leaving him.
Then after this good-bye Singer crossed the street and walked on alone to
the jewelry store where he worked as a silverware engraver.
In the late afternoon the friends would meet again. Singer came
back to the fruit store and waited until Antonapoulos was ready to go home.
The Greek would be lazily unpacking a case of peaches or melons, or
perhaps looking at the funny paper in the kitchen behind the store where he
cooked. Before their departure Antonapoulos always opened a paper sack he
kept hidden during the day on one of the kitchen shelves. Inside were stored
various bits of food he had collected—a piece of fruit, samples of candy, or
the butt-end of a liverwurst. Usually before leaving Antonapoulos waddled
gently to the glassed case in the front of the store where some meats and
cheeses were kept. He glided open the back of the case and his fat hand
groped lovingly for some particular dainty inside which he had wanted.
Sometimes his cousin who owned the place did not see him. But if he
noticed he stared at his cousin with a warning in his tight, pale face. Sadly
Antonapoulos would shuffle the morsel from one corner of the case to the
other. During these times Singer stood very straight with his hands in his
pockets and looked in another direction. He did not like to watch this little
scene between the two Greeks. For, excepting drinking and a certain solitary
secret pleasure, Antonapoulos loved to eat more than anything else in the
world.
In the dusk the two mutes walked slowly home together. At home
Singer was always talking to Antonapoulos. His hands shaped the words in a
swift series of designs. His face was eager and his gray-green eyes sparkled
brightly. With his thin, strong hands he told Antonapoulos all that had
happened during the day.
Antonapoulos sat back lazily and looked at Singer. It was seldom
that he ever moved his hands to speak at all—and then it was to say that he
wanted to eat or to sleep or to drink. These three things he always said with
the same vague, fumbling signs. At night, if he were not too drunk, he would
kneel down before his bed and pray awhile. Then his plump hands shaped
the words "Holy Jesus," or "God," or "Darling Mary." These were the only
words Antonapoulos ever said. Singer never knew just how much his friend
understood of all the things he told him. But it did not matter.
They shared the upstairs of a small house near the business
section of the town. There were two rooms. On the oil stove in the kitchen
Antonapoulos cooked all of their meals. There were straight, plain kitchen
chairs for Singer and an overstuffed sofa for Antonapoulos. The bedroom was
furnished mainly with a large double bed covered with an eiderdown comforter
for the big Greek and a narrow iron cot for Singer.
Dinner always took a long time, because Antonapoulos loved food
and he was very slow. After they had eaten, the big Greek would lie back on
his sofa and slowly lick over each one of his teeth with his tongue, either from
a certain delicacy or because he did not wish to lose the savor of the meal—
while Singer washed the dishes.
Sometimes in the evening the mutes would play chess. Singer
had always greatly enjoyed this game, and years before he had tried to teach
it to Antonapoulos. At first his friend could not be interested in the reasons
for moving the various pieces about on the board. Then Singer began to keep
a bottle of something good under the table to be taken out after each lesson.
The Greek never got on to the erratic movements of the knights and the
sweeping mobility of the queens, but he learned to make a few set, opening
moves. He preferred the white pieces and would not play if the black men
were given him. After the first moves Singer worked out the game by himself
while his friend looked on drowsily. If Singer made brilliant attacks on his own
men so that in the end the black king was killed, Antonapoulos was always
very proud and pleased.
The two mutes had no other friends, and except when they
worked they were alone together. Each day was very much like any other
day, because they were alone so much that nothing ever disturbed them.
Once a week they would go to the library for Singer to withdraw a mystery
book and on Friday night they attended a movie. Then on payday they
always went to the ten-cent photograph shop above the Army and Navy Store
so that Antonapoulos could have his picture taken. These were the only
places where they made customary visits. There were many parts in the town
that they had never even seen.
The town was in the middle of the deep South. The summers were
long and the months of winter cold were very few. Nearly always the sky was
a glassy, brilliant azure and the sun burned down riotously bright. Then the
light, chill rains of November would come, and perhaps later there would be
frost and some short months of cold. The winters were changeable, but the
summers always were burning hot. The town was a fairly large one. On the
main street there were several blocks of two- and three-story shops and
business offices. But the largest buildings in the town were the factories,
which employed a large percentage of the population. These cotton mills
were big and flourishing and most of the workers in the town were poor. Often
in the faces along the streets there was the desperate look of hunger and of
loneliness.
But the two mutes were not lonely at all. At home they were
content to eat and drink, and Singer would talk with his hands eagerly to his
friend about all that was in his mind. So the years passed in this quiet way
until Singer reached the age of thirty-two and had been in the town with
Antonapoulos for ten years.
Then one day the Greek became ill. He sat up in bed with his
hands on his fat stomach and big, oily tears rolled down his cheeks. Singer
went to see his friend"s cousin who owned the fruit store, and also he
arranged for leave from his own work. The doctor made out a diet for
Antonapoulos and said that he could drink no more wine. Singer rigidly
enforced the doctor"s orders. All day he sat by his friend"s bed and did what
he could to make the time pass quickly, but Antonapoulos only looked at
him angrily from the corners of his eyes and would not be amused. The
Greek was very fretful, and...