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The Ballad of the Sad Cafe
Ballad of the Sad Cafe and Other Stories includes six stories that accompany the novella about shattered dreams in a small Southern town.
Amelia, the proprietor of the Sad Cafe, throws her new husband out of their bedroom on their wedding night. Torn between anger and desire the husband finally leaves town only to return some years later to find Amelia showering all her affection on a dwarf cousin who has come to live with her. The day of reckoning soon arrives and the husband and wife meet to settle their differences with their bare hands.
Amelia, the proprietor of the Sad Cafe, throws her new husband out of their bedroom on their wedding night. Torn between anger and desire the husband finally leaves town only to return some years later to find Amelia showering all her affection on a dwarf cousin who has come to live with her. The day of reckoning soon arrives and the husband and wife meet to settle their differences with their bare hands.
160 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 1963
26 people are currently reading
1102 people want to read
About the author
Edward Albee
185 books578 followersNoted American playwright Edward Franklin Albee explored the darker aspects of human relationships in plays like
Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
(1962) and
Three Tall Women
(1991), which won his third Pulitzer Prize.
People know Edward Franklin Albee III for works, including The Zoo Story , The Sandbox and The American Dream .
He well crafted his works, considered often unsympathetic examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflected a mastery and Americanization of the theater of the absurd, which found its peak in European playwrights, such as Jean Genet, Samuel Barclay Beckett, and Eugène Ionesco. Younger Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel credits daring mix of theatricalism and biting dialogue of Albee with helping to reinvent the postwar theater in the early 1960s. Dedication of Albee to continuing to evolve his voice — as evidenced in later productions such as The Goat or Who Is Sylvia? (2000) — also routinely marks him as distinct of his era.
Albee described his work as "an examination of the American Scene, an attack on the substitution of artificial for real values in our society, a condemnation of complacency, cruelty, and emasculation and vacuity, a stand against the fiction that everything in this slipping land of ours is peachy-keen."
People know Edward Franklin Albee III for works, including The Zoo Story , The Sandbox and The American Dream .
He well crafted his works, considered often unsympathetic examinations of the modern condition. His early works reflected a mastery and Americanization of the theater of the absurd, which found its peak in European playwrights, such as Jean Genet, Samuel Barclay Beckett, and Eugène Ionesco. Younger Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel credits daring mix of theatricalism and biting dialogue of Albee with helping to reinvent the postwar theater in the early 1960s. Dedication of Albee to continuing to evolve his voice — as evidenced in later productions such as The Goat or Who Is Sylvia? (2000) — also routinely marks him as distinct of his era.
Albee described his work as "an examination of the American Scene, an attack on the substitution of artificial for real values in our society, a condemnation of complacency, cruelty, and emasculation and vacuity, a stand against the fiction that everything in this slipping land of ours is peachy-keen."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 89 reviews
October 29, 2022
"Be gay, do crime." - cousin Lymon, 1951.
This is definitely a ballad written of a very sad cafe. That's for sure. I feel a lot of pity towards Miss Amelia, hatred towards Martin Macy, and disgust towards cousin Lymon.
This is definitely a ballad written of a very sad cafe. That's for sure. I feel a lot of pity towards Miss Amelia, hatred towards Martin Macy, and disgust towards cousin Lymon.
March 4, 2015
I started reading this because I wanted some 'light reading' in between the heavier Henry James stuff.
Baaaaaaad idea.
This is grotesquely dark and bitter. If I wasn't already depressed, this would instantly throw me into the pits of despair where bleak and broken souls reside.
Baaaaaaad idea.
This is grotesquely dark and bitter. If I wasn't already depressed, this would instantly throw me into the pits of despair where bleak and broken souls reside.
August 20, 2012
This was totally weird. It was like no Carson McCullers I've ever read. I mean it was beautifully written of course, and I really enjoyed the description passages. But the plot was totally strange, and seemed like a total anomaly from the rest of her work. I did not gel with the character of Miss Amelia, she was this ballsy, amazonian woman whose motivations were super unclear. Also Cousin Lymon just turned on her! Why did he do that!? Anyway, something kind of interesting was that most of her other works focuses on children who are wise beyond their years and terribly depressed, but this one focused on these very childish innocent adults, who were perfectly fine living their day to day in this podunk little town where nothing ever happens. And as a result, it felt very light, much lighter than Member of the Wedding for example. Anyway, the fight scene was utterly bewildering and Miss Amelia's deterioration just seemed trite, a little too Miss Havisham/Boo Radley. Also the last passage, about the chain gang, was incredibly beautifully written but had nothing to do with the rest of the novella. Strange.
January 11, 2017
Yes, I am actually reviewing Edward Albee's adaptation for the stage, which nobody else seems to notice that they're NOT reviewing - this is not the page for McCullers' collection of stories with the same title/basis for this play!
Anyway, I've been devouring Carson's work these past few months, so I had to read this play. I used to love Edward Albee but haven't read him in so long, for some reason. I think he did a very admirable job adapting this play. It would be hard to figure out how to make some of it work, but overall I think he definitely succeeded: the action and tone is there, the poignancy, (sometimes) humor, the bleakness and desolation and everything else. At times the narration is just a tinge clunky, and there are a couple moments where the narration stops, 20 seconds of acting ensues, and then there's the narrator breaking in again. Those two or three instances sort of give the impression of this story being put on fast forward, but in generally he managed to avoid that.
I think, in lieu of Carson herself adapting this novella like she did with her The Member of the Wedding, Edward Albee was certainly the next best option at that time, and possibly very few could have done it as well since then.
I'd love to see it performed someday.
Anyway, I've been devouring Carson's work these past few months, so I had to read this play. I used to love Edward Albee but haven't read him in so long, for some reason. I think he did a very admirable job adapting this play. It would be hard to figure out how to make some of it work, but overall I think he definitely succeeded: the action and tone is there, the poignancy, (sometimes) humor, the bleakness and desolation and everything else. At times the narration is just a tinge clunky, and there are a couple moments where the narration stops, 20 seconds of acting ensues, and then there's the narrator breaking in again. Those two or three instances sort of give the impression of this story being put on fast forward, but in generally he managed to avoid that.
I think, in lieu of Carson herself adapting this novella like she did with her The Member of the Wedding, Edward Albee was certainly the next best option at that time, and possibly very few could have done it as well since then.
I'd love to see it performed someday.
December 22, 2013
Carson McCullers, where have you been all my life? My only previous connection with McCullers was having to have some idea of who she was for my English (MA) comprehensive exam. So I memorized a couple of lines describing her...A few months later, I picked up a copy of "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" and it has been on my bookshelf for the past 20 years, unread.
I did not expect to like this...the South, outsiders, undiscovered women writers (who have perhaps fallen by the wayside now that we read fiction by women all the time.) But this short novel is fantastic...something about the characters, mood, and the voice...which is both simple and completely profound at the same time, to wit: "All useful things have a price, and are bought only with money, as that is the way the world is run. You know without having to reason about it the price of a bale of cotton, or a quart of molasses. But no value has been put on human life; it is given to us free and taken without being paid for..."
The plot is strange, the ending haunting. Strange and haunting and for that reason, I plan to read this one again before book group. And then maybe finally pick up The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
I did not expect to like this...the South, outsiders, undiscovered women writers (who have perhaps fallen by the wayside now that we read fiction by women all the time.) But this short novel is fantastic...something about the characters, mood, and the voice...which is both simple and completely profound at the same time, to wit: "All useful things have a price, and are bought only with money, as that is the way the world is run. You know without having to reason about it the price of a bale of cotton, or a quart of molasses. But no value has been put on human life; it is given to us free and taken without being paid for..."
The plot is strange, the ending haunting. Strange and haunting and for that reason, I plan to read this one again before book group. And then maybe finally pick up The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.
November 14, 2024
118 pages summed up in three words: men ain’t shit. This story simultaneously broke my heart and enraged me.
June 17, 2025
وای. آواز کافهٔ غمبار. قطعا نسخه فیزیکیش رو میخوام.
January 16, 2019
The town itself is dreary; not much is there except the cotton mill, the two-room houses where workers live, a few peach trees, a church with two colored windows, and a miserable main street only a hundred yards long. On Saturdays the tenants from the near-by farms come in for a day of talk and trade. Otherwise the town is lonesome, sad, and like a place that is far off and estranged from all the other places in the world.
I've never been to the American Deep South, but often, reading The Ballad of the Sad Café, I felt not only like I was there, but as if I had lived there my whole life and knew it intimately. I could hear the locals murmuring together in their Southern twang; I could feel the sticky heat of the long summer days, and hear the chain-gang singing as they worked in the fields. I could also feel it, an atmosphere as rich and profound as it is stifling: the isolation, the poverty, the subdued desire, and the melancholy – all of which make this area, to the outsider at least, so enchanting and unnerving. (Of course, I'm speaking as someone whose knowledge of the Southern States of the USA was gleaned primarily from novels and films, and is therefore at best saturated with cliché, and at worst wildly inaccurate. If anyone who actually knows the place would like to set me straight on any of the above, please feel free...)
It would not be inaccurate to describe this novella as "Southern Gothic", that sub-genre that explores the spiritual longings and loneliness of the South, usually with a variety of odd, poignant and grotesque characters. They don't get much more grotesque than in The Ballad of the Sad Café. The highly unconventional protagonist, Miss Amelia, is a woman whose very appearance betrays her oddness. She is over six feet tall, and has muscles like a man. She stumps around in swamp boots and overalls. Fiercely independent, she runs a number of business interests in the small Georgia town that is her home, and devotes most of her free time to suing people. She also has an unconventional past: ten years ago, she shocked the townsfolk with a dramatic ten-day marriage to the local bad boy, Marvin Macy.
Now, with Macy long gone (to prison, in fact), Miss Amelia has returned to her proudly self-reliant lifestyle. Then, one day, a strutting little hunchback turns up in town, claiming to be her distant relative. This is Cousin Lymon, who in due course achieves the seemingly impossible by winning Miss Amelia's affections. Together, they begin to run a small café, which in turn brings something of life and colour to the area. The town itself is in a sense not unlike an enchanted castle in a fairytale: it is asleep, isolated from the remainder of the world, a place of secrets and sorrow. The arrival of Cousin Lymon, and the opening of the café, are the equivalent of the kiss that wakes the place from its slumber. But nothing lasts forever, and one day Miss Amelia's past begins to catch up with her, in the form of her ex-husband.
Ultimately, this is a book about love. McCullers, in her beautiful, fluid prose, explores the nature of love: its intricacies, its mystery, its betrayals. In every relationship, McCullers suggests, one partner is the lover, the other the beloved. "If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me," wrote Auden, and this sentiment finds a poignant echo in The Ballad of the Sad Café:
It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being loved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is for ever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.
Love, McCullers suggests, is not simply, or even primarily, pleasure and passion. It is pain and torture: powerful, inscrutable, and with dim and dangerous depths that nobody can really sound. And just as you begin to get an idea where the love relationships explored in The Ballad of the Sad Café are leading, McCullers turns the tables and springs a surprise on the reader, in a way that makes lines like the above all the more haunting.
In addition to the novella, there are a number of short stories in the collection – The Wunderkind, The Sojourner, A Domestic Dilemma – all of which pack a punch, and perhaps owe much to McCullers' own tortured life. Despite the success she enjoyed as a writer, her short existence was marred by ill heath and general lucklessness; it is unsurprising, then, that her writing should be saturated with such pain. I've only just discovered her writing, and I'm dismayed that it took me so long. This in turn leads me back to one of my great concerns. There are so many fine authors, living and dead, and so many wonderful books to explore: how will I ever find the time to read even a tenth, a fiftieth, a thousandth, of all that I should?
I've never been to the American Deep South, but often, reading The Ballad of the Sad Café, I felt not only like I was there, but as if I had lived there my whole life and knew it intimately. I could hear the locals murmuring together in their Southern twang; I could feel the sticky heat of the long summer days, and hear the chain-gang singing as they worked in the fields. I could also feel it, an atmosphere as rich and profound as it is stifling: the isolation, the poverty, the subdued desire, and the melancholy – all of which make this area, to the outsider at least, so enchanting and unnerving. (Of course, I'm speaking as someone whose knowledge of the Southern States of the USA was gleaned primarily from novels and films, and is therefore at best saturated with cliché, and at worst wildly inaccurate. If anyone who actually knows the place would like to set me straight on any of the above, please feel free...)
It would not be inaccurate to describe this novella as "Southern Gothic", that sub-genre that explores the spiritual longings and loneliness of the South, usually with a variety of odd, poignant and grotesque characters. They don't get much more grotesque than in The Ballad of the Sad Café. The highly unconventional protagonist, Miss Amelia, is a woman whose very appearance betrays her oddness. She is over six feet tall, and has muscles like a man. She stumps around in swamp boots and overalls. Fiercely independent, she runs a number of business interests in the small Georgia town that is her home, and devotes most of her free time to suing people. She also has an unconventional past: ten years ago, she shocked the townsfolk with a dramatic ten-day marriage to the local bad boy, Marvin Macy.
Now, with Macy long gone (to prison, in fact), Miss Amelia has returned to her proudly self-reliant lifestyle. Then, one day, a strutting little hunchback turns up in town, claiming to be her distant relative. This is Cousin Lymon, who in due course achieves the seemingly impossible by winning Miss Amelia's affections. Together, they begin to run a small café, which in turn brings something of life and colour to the area. The town itself is in a sense not unlike an enchanted castle in a fairytale: it is asleep, isolated from the remainder of the world, a place of secrets and sorrow. The arrival of Cousin Lymon, and the opening of the café, are the equivalent of the kiss that wakes the place from its slumber. But nothing lasts forever, and one day Miss Amelia's past begins to catch up with her, in the form of her ex-husband.
Ultimately, this is a book about love. McCullers, in her beautiful, fluid prose, explores the nature of love: its intricacies, its mystery, its betrayals. In every relationship, McCullers suggests, one partner is the lover, the other the beloved. "If equal affection cannot be, let the more loving one be me," wrote Auden, and this sentiment finds a poignant echo in The Ballad of the Sad Café:
It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being loved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is for ever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.
Love, McCullers suggests, is not simply, or even primarily, pleasure and passion. It is pain and torture: powerful, inscrutable, and with dim and dangerous depths that nobody can really sound. And just as you begin to get an idea where the love relationships explored in The Ballad of the Sad Café are leading, McCullers turns the tables and springs a surprise on the reader, in a way that makes lines like the above all the more haunting.
In addition to the novella, there are a number of short stories in the collection – The Wunderkind, The Sojourner, A Domestic Dilemma – all of which pack a punch, and perhaps owe much to McCullers' own tortured life. Despite the success she enjoyed as a writer, her short existence was marred by ill heath and general lucklessness; it is unsurprising, then, that her writing should be saturated with such pain. I've only just discovered her writing, and I'm dismayed that it took me so long. This in turn leads me back to one of my great concerns. There are so many fine authors, living and dead, and so many wonderful books to explore: how will I ever find the time to read even a tenth, a fiftieth, a thousandth, of all that I should?
July 3, 2012
A complicated love story set in a cold, dreary town.
Certainly one of the kookiest novels I have read
Certainly one of the kookiest novels I have read
September 13, 2012
Hermosa novelita, de prosa sencilla, elegante y sin pretensiones incumplidas. Muy disfrutable.
August 7, 2014
Another classic McCullers story offering her take on the human condition. The Cousin Lymon character and his relationship with Miss Amelia is McCullers at her most bizarre.
Read
May 1, 2025this was my first borrow from the gay library at the william way lgbt community center in philly. they have a whole shelf of gay plays and i will be a frequent visitor. this was great. i attempted to read a carson mccullers novel earlier this year and didn't finish it because i got annoyed with the slow pacing. but this is a play so it's driven by action—it was the perfect vehicle for me to actually enjoy mcculler's voice. southern lit is making itself a special place in my heart.
May 8, 2023
šta je ovo bilo
September 24, 2024
sad yet realistic
October 15, 2020
Onvan : The Ballad of the Sad Cafe - Nevisande : Edward Albee - ISBN : 0743225317 - ISBN13 : 9780743225311 - Dar 160 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 1963
February 24, 2017
This is a collection of stories in which McCullers casts a clear eye on relationships and dreams, and how both come apart under the stress of being human.
In the title story, Miss Amelia lives alone in her house and store, making liquor in the swamp and selling that along with other essentials of a rural life in a town where nothing happens. One day a hunchback man, almost a dwarf in size, arrives in town claiming to be the son of her distant aunt. Miss Amelia, who has never been known to let sentiment enter into any transaction, studies the newcomer and to everyone’s surprise invites him to stay with her. The town watches in amazement as the little man insinuates himself into her life and that of the town. He is the inspiration behind the café, which displaces much of her store, and the change in her character. She is a woman in love, as strange as it seems. And then her ex-husband, released from prison, returns home to the family he despised.
Other stories include “Wunderkind,” about a young girl whose facility at the piano suddenly leaves her; “The Jockey,” about a fading jockey whose close friend is seriously injured in a riding accident; “Madame Zilensky and the King of Finland,” about a music teacher whose oddity suddenly becomes uncomfortably clear to her patron; “The Sojourner,” about a man living in Paris who returns home for his father’s funeral and on impulse calls his ex-wife, who invites him to dinner; “A Domestic Dilemma,” about a man who begins to realize how serious his wife’s drinking situation is; and “A Tree, a Rock, a Cloud,” about a young boy trapped by an old man in a café who insists on telling him how he learned to love. The last story calls to mind “The Ancient Mariner.”
McCullers gets to the heart of each character swiftly, and unfolds the crucial twists and turns of their lives. Her language is spare and sharp, and she depicts human frailty with both compassion and a clear eye. Things do not get better, if they do, by accident, and often the pain of experience almost kills a character.
The first story, which is more a novella, is by far the best in the collection. I found the story haunting, one of those that will linger and return year after year.
In the title story, Miss Amelia lives alone in her house and store, making liquor in the swamp and selling that along with other essentials of a rural life in a town where nothing happens. One day a hunchback man, almost a dwarf in size, arrives in town claiming to be the son of her distant aunt. Miss Amelia, who has never been known to let sentiment enter into any transaction, studies the newcomer and to everyone’s surprise invites him to stay with her. The town watches in amazement as the little man insinuates himself into her life and that of the town. He is the inspiration behind the café, which displaces much of her store, and the change in her character. She is a woman in love, as strange as it seems. And then her ex-husband, released from prison, returns home to the family he despised.
Other stories include “Wunderkind,” about a young girl whose facility at the piano suddenly leaves her; “The Jockey,” about a fading jockey whose close friend is seriously injured in a riding accident; “Madame Zilensky and the King of Finland,” about a music teacher whose oddity suddenly becomes uncomfortably clear to her patron; “The Sojourner,” about a man living in Paris who returns home for his father’s funeral and on impulse calls his ex-wife, who invites him to dinner; “A Domestic Dilemma,” about a man who begins to realize how serious his wife’s drinking situation is; and “A Tree, a Rock, a Cloud,” about a young boy trapped by an old man in a café who insists on telling him how he learned to love. The last story calls to mind “The Ancient Mariner.”
McCullers gets to the heart of each character swiftly, and unfolds the crucial twists and turns of their lives. Her language is spare and sharp, and she depicts human frailty with both compassion and a clear eye. Things do not get better, if they do, by accident, and often the pain of experience almost kills a character.
The first story, which is more a novella, is by far the best in the collection. I found the story haunting, one of those that will linger and return year after year.
June 2, 2023
As the name suggests, this was so sad. Our class discussion was so good. See my notes from class.
“What sort of thing, then, was this love?
First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons – but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which has lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world – a world intense and strange, complete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring – this lover can be man, woman, child, or indeed any human creature on this earth.
Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. A man may be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he saw in the streets of Cheehaw one afternoon two decades past. The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as dearly as anyone else – but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.
It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being be loved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.”
AKA. James Potter. AKA. Me. AKA. Reckless Driving by Lizzy McAlpine and Ben Kessler.
It made me so sad, the description of “Marvin Macy and the hunchback must have left the town an hour or so before daylight. And before they went away this is what they did:
They unlocked the private cabinet of curios and took everything in it.
They broke the mechanical piano.
They carved terrible words on the café tables.
They found the watch that opened in the back to show a picture of a waterfall and took that also.
They poured a gallon of sorghum syrup all over the kitchen floor and smashed the jars of preserves.
They went out in the swamp and completely wrecked the still, ruining the big new condenser and the cooler, and setting fire to the shack itself.
They fixed a dish of Miss Amelia's favorite food, grits with sausage, seasoned it with enough poison to kill off the county, and placed this dish temptingly on the café counter.
They did everything ruinous they could think of without actually breaking into the office where Miss Amelia stayed the night. Then they went off together, the two of them.”
And then
“There were rumors that Marvin Macy used him to climb into windows and steal, and other rumors that Marvin Macy had sold him into a side show. But both these reports were traced back to Merlie Ryan. Nothing true was ever heard of him”
Rumors are rumors and still
The title is so pretty
The intro starts off so strong with call the town “lonesome.” That word. Adam Parrish.
PLEASE TOO MANY SIMILES AND METAPHORS (although to be fair they were very good similes) (at times it felt like I was reading Anne of Green Gables):
- It is a face like the terrible dim faces known in dreams with two gray crossed eyes which are turned inward so sharply that they seem to be exchanging with each other one long and secret gaze of grief”
- “It is known that if a message is written with lemon juice on a clean sheet of paper there will be no sign of it. But if the paper is held for a moment to the fire then the letters turn brown and the meaning becomes clear. Imagine that the whisky is the fire and that the message is that which is known only in the soul of a man – then the worth of Miss Amelia's liquor can be understood. Things that have gone unnoticed, thoughts that have been harbored far back in the dark mind, are suddenly recognized and comprehended.”
The narrator pretends to be objective but loves to sprinkle in little bits of sexism/antisemitism/racism etc
- “early in youth she had grown to be six feet two inches tall which in itself is not natural for a woman”
“People, unless they are nilly-willy or very sick, cannot be taken into the hands and changed overnight to something more worthwhile and profitable. So that the only use that Miss Amelia had for other people was to make money out of them.”
She’s so valid for that
She’s actually so valid for everything poor girl
“Some eight or ten men had convened on the porch of Miss Amelia's store. They were silent and were indeed just waiting about. They themselves did not know what they were waiting for, but it was this: in times of tension, when some great action is impending, men gather and wait in this way. And after a time there will come a moment when all together they will act in unison, not from thought or from the will of any one man, but as though their instincts had merged together so that the decision belongs to no single one of them, but to the group as a whole. At such a time, no individual hesitates. And whether the matter will be settled peaceably, or whether the joint action will result in ransacking, violence, and crime, depends on destiny. So the men waited soberly on the porch of Miss Amelia's store, not one of them realizing what they would do, but knowing inwardly that they must wait, and that the time had almost come.”
“the hearts of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in this world can twist them into curious shapes. The heart of a hurt child can shrink so that forever afterward it is hard and pitted as the seed of a peach. Or again, the heart of such a child may fester and swell until it is a misery to carry within the body, easily chafed and hurt by the most ordinary things.”
“The soul rots with boredom.”
“It is music that causes the heart to broaden and the listener to grow cold with ecstasy and fright.”
She’s so strange for keeping Marvin around for so long and then agreeing to marry him and then beating him up like slay but also why not just steal his money in a less convoluted way.
Why is she ashamed of helping women with “a female complaint”?
It kept describing the girls “tender sweet little buttocks” and it made me want to vomit
I WAS SO SURE CANNIBALISM WAS GOING TO BE AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS
- Marvin carried an ear around with him
- The tender buttocks
- The chicken body parts??
“Who but God can be the final judge of this or any other love?”
“There is no stillness like the quiet of the first cold nights in the fall”
“All useful things have a price, and are bought only with money, as that is the way the world is run. You know without having to reason about it the price of a bale of cotton, or a quart of molasses. But no value has been put on human life; it is given to us free and taken without being paid for. What is it worth? If you look around, at times the value may seem to be little or nothing at all. Often after you have sweated and tried and things are not better for you, there comes a feeling deep down in the soul that you are not worth much.”
“And Miss Amelia continued to do the worst thing possible: that is, to try to follow several courses at once.”
Lymon is childish the whole time
Amelia said Marvin has split hooves which makes him kosher and that’s when I really committed to the cannibalism bit I think
Taylor Swift has been cosplaying as Marvin with his red lips and guitar this ENTIRE TIME
OKAY BUT DID THEY KNOW EACH OTHER??? besides for how much sense it would make, “like the look of two criminals who recognize each other.” Like it says it straight out.
“He liked to watch others hard at work, as do all born loafers.”
So me
Why doesn’t Marvin sweat
Loved the descriptions, like of the train in the distance or Amelia sweating so much she leaves wet footprints…
OKAY HE DESCRIBED IT AS MYTHOLOGICAL which is interesting cuz Simi described it as biblical… and then the whole 7 thing:
“Seven is a popular number, and especially it was a favorite with Miss Amelia. Seven swallows of water for hiccups, seven runs around the millpond for cricks in the neck, seven doses of Amelia Miracle Mover as a worm cure – her treatment nearly always hinged on this number. It is a number of mingled possibilities, and all who love mystery and charms set store by it. So the fight was to take place at seven o'clock. This was known to everyone, not by announcement or words, but understood in the unquestioning way that rain is understood, or an evil odor from the swamp. So before seven o'clock everyone gathered gravely around the property of Miss Amelia.”
“What sort of thing, then, was this love?
First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons – but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries. Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which has lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto. And somehow every lover knows this. He feels in his soul that his love is a solitary thing. He comes to know a new, strange loneliness and it is this knowledge which makes him suffer. So there is only one thing for the lover to do. He must house his love within himself as best he can; he must create for himself a whole new inward world – a world intense and strange, complete in himself. Let it be added here that this lover about whom we speak need not necessarily be a young man saving for a wedding ring – this lover can be man, woman, child, or indeed any human creature on this earth.
Now, the beloved can also be of any description. The most outlandish people can be the stimulus for love. A man may be a doddering great-grandfather and still love only a strange girl he saw in the streets of Cheehaw one afternoon two decades past. The preacher may love a fallen woman. The beloved may be treacherous, greasy-headed, and given to evil habits. Yes, and the lover may see this as dearly as anyone else – but that does not affect the evolution of his love one whit. A most mediocre person can be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the object of a love which is wild, extravagant, and beautiful as the poison lilies of the swamp. A good man may be the stimulus for a love both violent and debased, or a jabbering madman may bring about in the soul of someone a tender and simple idyll. Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself.
It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being be loved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.”
AKA. James Potter. AKA. Me. AKA. Reckless Driving by Lizzy McAlpine and Ben Kessler.
It made me so sad, the description of “Marvin Macy and the hunchback must have left the town an hour or so before daylight. And before they went away this is what they did:
They unlocked the private cabinet of curios and took everything in it.
They broke the mechanical piano.
They carved terrible words on the café tables.
They found the watch that opened in the back to show a picture of a waterfall and took that also.
They poured a gallon of sorghum syrup all over the kitchen floor and smashed the jars of preserves.
They went out in the swamp and completely wrecked the still, ruining the big new condenser and the cooler, and setting fire to the shack itself.
They fixed a dish of Miss Amelia's favorite food, grits with sausage, seasoned it with enough poison to kill off the county, and placed this dish temptingly on the café counter.
They did everything ruinous they could think of without actually breaking into the office where Miss Amelia stayed the night. Then they went off together, the two of them.”
And then
“There were rumors that Marvin Macy used him to climb into windows and steal, and other rumors that Marvin Macy had sold him into a side show. But both these reports were traced back to Merlie Ryan. Nothing true was ever heard of him”
Rumors are rumors and still
The title is so pretty
The intro starts off so strong with call the town “lonesome.” That word. Adam Parrish.
PLEASE TOO MANY SIMILES AND METAPHORS (although to be fair they were very good similes) (at times it felt like I was reading Anne of Green Gables):
- It is a face like the terrible dim faces known in dreams with two gray crossed eyes which are turned inward so sharply that they seem to be exchanging with each other one long and secret gaze of grief”
- “It is known that if a message is written with lemon juice on a clean sheet of paper there will be no sign of it. But if the paper is held for a moment to the fire then the letters turn brown and the meaning becomes clear. Imagine that the whisky is the fire and that the message is that which is known only in the soul of a man – then the worth of Miss Amelia's liquor can be understood. Things that have gone unnoticed, thoughts that have been harbored far back in the dark mind, are suddenly recognized and comprehended.”
The narrator pretends to be objective but loves to sprinkle in little bits of sexism/antisemitism/racism etc
- “early in youth she had grown to be six feet two inches tall which in itself is not natural for a woman”
“People, unless they are nilly-willy or very sick, cannot be taken into the hands and changed overnight to something more worthwhile and profitable. So that the only use that Miss Amelia had for other people was to make money out of them.”
She’s so valid for that
She’s actually so valid for everything poor girl
“Some eight or ten men had convened on the porch of Miss Amelia's store. They were silent and were indeed just waiting about. They themselves did not know what they were waiting for, but it was this: in times of tension, when some great action is impending, men gather and wait in this way. And after a time there will come a moment when all together they will act in unison, not from thought or from the will of any one man, but as though their instincts had merged together so that the decision belongs to no single one of them, but to the group as a whole. At such a time, no individual hesitates. And whether the matter will be settled peaceably, or whether the joint action will result in ransacking, violence, and crime, depends on destiny. So the men waited soberly on the porch of Miss Amelia's store, not one of them realizing what they would do, but knowing inwardly that they must wait, and that the time had almost come.”
“the hearts of small children are delicate organs. A cruel beginning in this world can twist them into curious shapes. The heart of a hurt child can shrink so that forever afterward it is hard and pitted as the seed of a peach. Or again, the heart of such a child may fester and swell until it is a misery to carry within the body, easily chafed and hurt by the most ordinary things.”
“The soul rots with boredom.”
“It is music that causes the heart to broaden and the listener to grow cold with ecstasy and fright.”
She’s so strange for keeping Marvin around for so long and then agreeing to marry him and then beating him up like slay but also why not just steal his money in a less convoluted way.
Why is she ashamed of helping women with “a female complaint”?
It kept describing the girls “tender sweet little buttocks” and it made me want to vomit
I WAS SO SURE CANNIBALISM WAS GOING TO BE AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS
- Marvin carried an ear around with him
- The tender buttocks
- The chicken body parts??
“Who but God can be the final judge of this or any other love?”
“There is no stillness like the quiet of the first cold nights in the fall”
“All useful things have a price, and are bought only with money, as that is the way the world is run. You know without having to reason about it the price of a bale of cotton, or a quart of molasses. But no value has been put on human life; it is given to us free and taken without being paid for. What is it worth? If you look around, at times the value may seem to be little or nothing at all. Often after you have sweated and tried and things are not better for you, there comes a feeling deep down in the soul that you are not worth much.”
“And Miss Amelia continued to do the worst thing possible: that is, to try to follow several courses at once.”
Lymon is childish the whole time
Amelia said Marvin has split hooves which makes him kosher and that’s when I really committed to the cannibalism bit I think
Taylor Swift has been cosplaying as Marvin with his red lips and guitar this ENTIRE TIME
OKAY BUT DID THEY KNOW EACH OTHER??? besides for how much sense it would make, “like the look of two criminals who recognize each other.” Like it says it straight out.
“He liked to watch others hard at work, as do all born loafers.”
So me
Why doesn’t Marvin sweat
Loved the descriptions, like of the train in the distance or Amelia sweating so much she leaves wet footprints…
OKAY HE DESCRIBED IT AS MYTHOLOGICAL which is interesting cuz Simi described it as biblical… and then the whole 7 thing:
“Seven is a popular number, and especially it was a favorite with Miss Amelia. Seven swallows of water for hiccups, seven runs around the millpond for cricks in the neck, seven doses of Amelia Miracle Mover as a worm cure – her treatment nearly always hinged on this number. It is a number of mingled possibilities, and all who love mystery and charms set store by it. So the fight was to take place at seven o'clock. This was known to everyone, not by announcement or words, but understood in the unquestioning way that rain is understood, or an evil odor from the swamp. So before seven o'clock everyone gathered gravely around the property of Miss Amelia.”
September 29, 2012
Apart from the title story and "Madame Zilensky," I don't know how many of these pieces will really stick with me (and the latter is mainly because I read it for a class). I didn't find myself connecting with any of the characters in any of the stories, apart from Miss Amelia in "Sad Cafe" and to some extent, Madame Zilensky, and not enough happened in any of the stories to really be engaging beyond that. In particular I want to focus on "Madame Zilensky and the King of Finland" because we just discussed it in my writing class, and the issue I had with the story is that I couldn't find a reason for Brook's actions—his calling out Zilensky seemed to be more of a moment to say "Aha! Gotcha" than out of any actual interest or concern, and this made him the villain of the story, but he wasn't interesting enough to make him a villain I had any investment in. Many of the other characters evoked similar emotions, or in this case, lack of emotions. Still, the writing in the book was nice, and there were some beautiful turns of phrase (particularly one passage about love in "Sad Cafe").
July 30, 2015
I supposed the quote "if you have to ask, you'll never get it" applies here. Well I guess I don't. This great writer manages to create odd stories that are so very weird (ie The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and Reflections on the Golden Eye), misfit characters, gender identity questions, strange sex implications all in a somewhat metaphysical isolated enviornment but why? what? I just can't find any meaning here. I have tried to look online for the meaning of The Ballad of the Sad Cafe and I can't even find one. Still the writing style is great and a compelling read but in the end I am totally befuddled and frustrated. The ending page about the chain gang is either brilliant or a total nonsense but "if you have to ask, you'll never get it".
After reading this story I have since found a paper called "The Introspective Narrator" and it helps explain the final passage of the chain gang and the perpective of the book which makes me want to reread this story more closely.
After reading this story I have since found a paper called "The Introspective Narrator" and it helps explain the final passage of the chain gang and the perpective of the book which makes me want to reread this story more closely.
December 12, 2022
I was quite disappointed by the ending. I don't really get the author's message - we have a powerful female protagonist, but she is defeated by two dishonest men. A man whom she gave comfort to abandoned her for a bandit and a life of crime - after making sure she stays devastated, and that everything she took so long building is destroyed. Maybe the the point of the story is to see of twisted and sick human nature can be - destroying someone's life - and make a town miserable, but the earth remains turning. Life is going on. The wickness of the darw is linked to his physical appearance - he is of twisted nature, far more than her former lover - because as awful his actions are, you can find a motivation. However this is not possible for the drawf who has only been cared for, but in the end, longs for a life of crime. It is indeed a sad ballad - about love and hate, and the destruction of something beautiful that served the common good out of sheen malice.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 20, 2012
I picked up this at a used bookstore - I'd never read any Carson McCullers, but had heard of "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe". I didn't read it right away. As it happens, the book I read just before this one was The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Notre Dame de Paris). I just think it's really weird that I ended up reading two novels, back to back, that involved hunchbacked characters and unreturned love.
The McCullers book I read was actually a collection of her short stories. I really enjoyed The Ballad, a complex bit of Southern Gothic. The other stories were rather flat.
The McCullers book I read was actually a collection of her short stories. I really enjoyed The Ballad, a complex bit of Southern Gothic. The other stories were rather flat.
July 20, 2012
I decided to read this because 'The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" and "The Member of the Wedding" are two of my favourite novels. The Ballad of the Sad Cafe is similar in several ways (desolate Southern nowhere-town, achingly lonely misfits as main characters, shockingly sad ending). I've given this only three stars though because the story is undermined a little by some clunky narration e.g. "So compose from such flashes an image of these years as a whole. And for a moment let it rest".
August 7, 2012
"First of all, love is a shared experience between two persons-but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. . . Often the beloved is only a stimulus for all the stored-up love which has lain quiet within the lover for a long time. And somehow every lover knows this...Therefore, the value and quality of any love is determined solely by the lover himself."
Read
January 10, 2014I decided to stop reading this book simply because I didn't get that hooked feeling. I only finished the main title and to me, that was....strange? Why did Amelia wanted to fight PHYSICALLY with her ex-husband? I tried to think of so many possible reasons, but couldn't find one.
I believe, for many people, this book probably will give them joy, but, unfortunately, that's not the case for me. Blame me, please :)
I believe, for many people, this book probably will give them joy, but, unfortunately, that's not the case for me. Blame me, please :)
January 2, 2020
I listened to this from Audible in preparation for a course in women's literature. I didn't realize until the first selection ended that this is a collection with "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe," a novella, followed by six short stories. My rating may be affected by the expectation of more to come when the novella finished; it felt like it was over too soon. Published in 1951, this book consists of excellently crafted character sketches from the time period.
August 18, 2014
Well, I am disappointed with this book and loving it all at the same time. For a while, I thought they were going to cook Macey and eat him, but that did not happen. At first, I thought the book was going to be a supernatural thing, dark and foreboding like the Twilight Zone, especially when Cousin Lymen flew like a bird...
Then there was the fist-fight, and the soul of a woman broken....
Five stars! damn well deserved. Quick read too.
Then there was the fist-fight, and the soul of a woman broken....
Five stars! damn well deserved. Quick read too.
April 23, 2015
This was an interesting story and in the end I'm not entirely sure how to feel about it. I mean, I completely loved it and it was so interesting and there was so much depth to the characters and the plot and even the setting, and yet there's just something about it, not in a "I didn't like it" manner, but just in the way that it was so different from what I'm used to reading, there were so many questions and so many things that weren't answered in the end.
Read
July 22, 2012I read this in junior high voluntarily. I wanted to absorb all the supposedly good writing of "famous" American novelists. I have forgotten as to what it is all about. It did not leave me with an impression like "Great Expectations" or "Woman in White", both of which were high school assigned books for book reports. (I refrain from reading non-American novels, if I can).
April 26, 2013
A highly original tale that contains, as do most of McCullers's other words, a fine cast of eccentric characters. The narrative voice in this work is especially engaging--sometimes funny, sometimes, candid, sometimes irreverent, always strong. The plot works well, and, although I saw the ending coming, it was still appropriate and satisfying.
August 10, 2013
As a collection of short stories, I did not read them all. I read the title selection and loved it.
The story tells of the misfit patrons at the Sad Cafe and the ill-fated loved affair of two clients. McCullers brings all the elements of Greek tragedy to the country Southern environment. When I get a craving for Southern Gothic fiction, I'll return to this book and read another selection.
The story tells of the misfit patrons at the Sad Cafe and the ill-fated loved affair of two clients. McCullers brings all the elements of Greek tragedy to the country Southern environment. When I get a craving for Southern Gothic fiction, I'll return to this book and read another selection.
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