The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

Article in Themes and Big Read categories.

The Big Read, a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest, is designed to revitalize the role of literature in American culture. The Big Read brings together partners from across the country to encourage citizens to read for pleasure and enlightenment. JMRL invites all book lovers in Central Virginia to join The Big Read throughout March 2016. Read and discuss The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers and participate in programs about the book, its themes, and its author.

We've selected a list of books, movies, and music in the JMRL collection that will inspire further exploration and enhance your reading. There is a printable version of the adult list. Find more resources and discussion questions for this book in the Big Read Reader’s Guide.

About the Author

• Read the official Big Read introduction to McCullers.
• Use the Literary Reference Center database to search for articles about Carson McCullers.
• Watch McCullers in an interview, speaking about her play A Member of the Wedding and writing in general.
• McCullers’ milieu
  • In the early 1940s, McCullers lived in Brooklyn Heights in a house at the center of a bohemian creative circle. Among others, the group contained authors W. H. Auden, Paul Bowles, and Richard Wright, performer Gypsy Rose Lee, and composers Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears. Sherrill Tippins details this enclave in her book February House.
  • She was close friends with playwright Tennessee Williams, and Edward Albee obtained permission to adapt her work, as remembered in this video.
  • Artist Marielle Bancou remembers McCullers in this video.
  • McCullers is frequently cited in the same breath as other Southern Gothic writers as Flannery O’Connor, Truman Capote, and Eudora Welty. (This comparison would be met with denunciation by O’Connor.) Read some of Joyce Carol Oates' thoughts on these connections in this excerpted review.

Works by Carson McCullers

• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940)
  • Downloadable eBook from Overdrive
  • Book Club Kit
  • The NEA Big Read website has a reader's guide to the book
• Reflections in a Golden Eye (1941)
• The Member of The Wedding (1946)
  • Audiobook
  • [Downloadable eBook from Overdrive]
  • Adapted into a play in 1949
• Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories (1951)
  • Contains the title novella and six short stories: "Wunderkind", "The Jockey", "Madame Zilensky and the King of Finland", "The Sojourner", "A Domestic Dilemma" and "A Tree, a Rock, a Cloud"
  • [Downloadable eBook from Overdrive]
  • Adapted into a play by Edward Albee
• Clock Without Hands (1961)
  • [Downloadable eBook from Overdrive]
• The Mortgaged Heart a posthumous collection (1971)

Related Reading - Fiction

Southern Gothic and others: McCullers’ Contemporaries

• Flannery O’Connor
• Truman Capote
• Eudora Welty
• Walker Percy
• Richard Wright
• Paul Bowles

Modern Southern Novels with Similar Themes

• The Long Home, by William Gay
• Ellen Foster, by Kaye Gibbons
• Knockemstiff, by Donald Ray Pollock
• Swamplandia, by Karen Russell

Southern Traditions - Small Towns, Race Relations, The Depression, and More

• To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
• All the King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren
• Lie Down in Darkness, by William Styron
• Tobacco Road, by Erskine Caldwell
• Ava’s Man, by Rick Bragg
• Downhome: an Anthology of Southern Women Writers, edited by Susie Mee
• The Storied South: Voices of Writers and Artists, edited by William Ferris

Related Reading - Nonfiction

• McCullers and Her Place in American Letters
  • The Lonely Hunter: a Biography of Carson McCullers, by Virginia Spencer Carr
  • The Republic of Imagination: American in Three Books, by Azar Nafisi
  • February House, by Sherrill Tippins

• Deafness and Deaf Culture
  • Hands of My father: A Hearing Boy, His Deaf Parents, and the Language of Love, by Myron Uhlberg
  • A Loss for Words: the Story of Deafness in a Family, by Lou Ann Walker
  • Train Go Sorry: Inside a Deaf World, by Leah Hager Cohen

• Exceptional Lives
  • McCullers lived a bohemian life in mid-Twentieth-Century America, traveling widely despite disability, exploring sexuality, and mingling with creative characters of all stripes.
    • Irrepressible: The Jazz Age Life of Henrietta Bingham, by Emily Bingham
    • The Queer South: LGBTQ Writers on the American South, edited by Douglas Ray
  • Doctor Copeland is an African American doctor in the book, serving his community and simultaneously hopeful for and despairing of his family. If around today, he might be interested in Black Man in a White Coat: a Doctor's Reflections on Race and Medicine, by Damon Tweedy, M.D.
  • McCullers' hometown of Columbus, Georgia isn't featured in the South Toward Home: Travels in Southern Literature, by Margaret Eby, but many of the other names mentioned on this page are, and it serves as a good evocation of the region's powerful influence on many great writers.

• The Time Period of the Lonely Hunter
  • Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression, by Morris Dickstein
  • Daily Life in the United States, 1920-1940, by David E. Kyvig

Movies and Music

Film Adaptations of McCullers’ Work

• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1968)
• Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967)
• The Member of the Wedding (1952), contained in the Stanley Kramer Film Collection

Other Films

• Land of Silence and Darkness (1971) – Themes of isolation and communication come to the forefront in this documentary which examines the life of Fini Straubinger, a blind and deaf woman who dedicated her life to helping others with the same affliction.

Music

• Mick is influenced by the music of Mozart and Beethoven in the book.
• McCullers was also deeply interested in music, and was friends with the composer Benjamin Britten.
• Russ Columbo might have been playing on the radio during the time of the book. Get in the mood of the era with Prisoner of Love: 23 crooning hits, 1928-1934.

Books for Teens

Deaf Culture

• Of Sound Mind, by Jean Ferris
• The Dark Days of Hamburger Halpin, by Josh Berk
• Hurt Go Happy by Ginny Rorby
• Five Flavors of Dumb by Antony John

Books for Youth

Picture Books

• 1930s South/Racism
  • Uncle Jed's Barbershop by Margaree King Mitchell

• Deaf Culture
  • Dad, Jackie, and Me by Myron Uhlberg
  • Moses books by Isaac Millman

Chapter Books

• 1930s South/Racism
  • Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred Taylor
  • Dovey Coe by Francis O’Roark Dowell
  • Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis
  • Bird in a Box by Andrea Davis Pinkney
  • Stella by Starlight by Sharon Draper
  • Moon over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool
  • Sounder by William Armstrong

• Deaf Culture/Deaf Characters
  • Dovey Coe by Francis O’Roark Dowell
  • El Deafo by Cece Bell
  • Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick
  • Feathers by Jacqueline Woodson

Nonfiction

• • Children of the Great Depression, by Russell Freedman
  • The Great Depression: an Interactive History Adventure by Michael Burgan
  • Find books on communicating with ASL under a subject search for American Sign Language.