2015: The Year of Reading Women discussion

Discussion thread for The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers; starting February 22, and running into March - tentatively March 20.

Hello, I will be joining this one.

Me too, the book is on hand = )

Looking forward to it!

Just to be clear, I haven't read this before, this will be my first time, and even now I haven't even started *sweat* - I have two other books to finish still... has anybody here read it yet?

Traveller wrote: "Just to be clear, I haven't read this before, this will be my first time, and even now I haven't even started *sweat* - I have two other books to finish still... has anybody here read it yet?"
I have read it, but many years ago. I think you will find it a quick read once you start.

It will be the first time for me, too.

I just want to mention that although I started the thread I'm not "in charge" of this discussion, so it would be nice if anybody who has already read it, would perhaps sort of start us off and perhaps give us bits of background or insight here and there once we really start. (That would be the 22nd of Feb).

If you don't mind... :)

I will be joining this one. I've already started reading the book, and I'm on chapter three. I will abandon it on my desk until the starting day. The only copy I've got is in spanish, I hope that's not a problem.

Traveller wrote: "I just want to mention that although I started the thread I'm not "in charge" of this discussion, so it would be nice if anybody who has already read it, would perhaps sort of start us off and per..."

I so wish I could help! But I really don't know the book or the author, and to add to that, will read in translation.

I can only offer this: http://www.neabigread.org/books/lonel...

Thanks, Bloodorange!

I found a series of questions at Houghton/Mifflin/Harcourt, perhaps these would spark the conversation as we go:
http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/r...

Sara wrote: "I found a series of questions at Houghton/Mifflin/Harcourt, perhaps these would spark the conversation as we go:
http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/r..."

What an excellent idea! Thank you! ^_^

Gin, Cigarettes, and Desperation: The Carson McCullers Diet

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/20...

I wonder - seeing that we seem to have a leader-less group read (until something changes) - whether it would be more convenient to, say, divide the book into sections (so that we don't spoil one another's fun - we would know the section for the week and spoiler tags would be reserved for whatever comes after that), or just have a free conversation? I could divide the material (without knowing the book, though, so I cannot promise that would be an optimal division).

Bloodorange wrote: "I wonder - seeing that we seem to have a leader-less group read (until something changes) - whether it would be more convenient to, say, divide the book into sections (so that we don't spoil one an..."

Well, since the book has three parts, do you think dividing the discussion into 3 parts would make for too large bits per block of discussion?

Traveller wrote: "Well, since the book has three parts, do you think dividing the discussion into 3 parts would make for too large bits per block of discussion? "

Nope, this wouldn't work - the third part constitutes some 9% of the novel.

Okay. Shall we divide it up by percentage? How long are we going to take - 3 weeks? Longer?

If we do it over 4 weeks, then it will be 92 pages per section. How does that sound?

If over 3 weeks, 122 pages, I suppose it all depends on how dense the book is.

How about we start the first bit up to just before:

"BY MIDSUMMER Singer had visitors more often than any other person in the house. From his room in the evening there was nearly always the sound of a voice. After dinner at the New York Cafe he bathed and dressed himself in one of his cool wash suits and as a rule did not go out again.

...which should be around page 90.

So, in other words, we start the discussion up to : Doctor Copeland held his head in his hands and from his throat there came the strange sound like a kind of singing moan. He remembered the white man’s face when he smiled behind the yellow match flame on that rainy night--and peace was in him.

Traveller wrote: "How about we start the first bit up to:

"BY MIDSUMMER Singer had visitors more often than any other person in the house. From his room in the evening there was nearly always the sound of a voice. After dinner at the New York Cafe he bathed and dressed himself in one of his cool wash suits and as a rule..."

OK, so this is the end of chapter five (I read in translation, so my page numbers can be completely off). I'm fine with that :)

Okay, up to the end of Chapter 5.

Sounds fine to me. Spoiler tags on anything contained after chapter 5, discussion beginning Sunday, Feb 22nd.

Sara wrote: "Sounds fine to me. Spoiler tags on anything contained after chapter 5, discussion beginning Sunday, Feb 22nd."

Sounds good!

For, excepting drinking and a certain solitary
secret pleasure, Antonapoulos loved to eat more than anything else in the world.

I couldn't help chuckling at that. I love how elegantly that is sort of sneaked in.

I am reminded that I admire rather than enjoy McCullers' style...

I'm enjoying its elegant economical simplicity. Nothing is really superfluous, and yet it not coarse. I'm finding it easy to read and it's flowing nicely for me.

I was wanting to ask if anybody knows which composer's music it is that touches Mick so deeply:

she would sit on the steps every Sunday afternoon and listen in on the programs.
Those were probably classical pieces, but they were the ones she remembered best. There was one special fellow's music that made her heart shrink up every time she heard it.
Sometimes this fellow's music was like little colored pieces of crystal candy, and other times it was the softest, saddest thing she had ever imagined about.

It's Mozart (of course!), as we find out a little later

I am in love with Mick

Mozart, the composer that composers most love to point out their indifference to. Not a feeling I share entirely, I'll point out.

I'm reminded that despite this being my first read of this book, her style has clearly been copied again and again by others. I'm enjoying it so far, but it's so...open? Lacking pretense? I'm not yet sure that this is a good thing or a bad thing just yet.

Hi All, yes I agree, Will about the "openness". On the back of my copy there is a quote from Graham Greene which says in part, "I prefer Miss McCullers to Mr Faulkner because she writes more clearly; I prefer her to D.H.Lawrence because she has no message." I do not yet know what to make about that.

Hmph. patronising...

I'm still very early on in the book, so I'm still trying to suss it out.
I'd agree with Will, that for piano, I wouldn't have chosen Mozart, myself - rather Chopin, Liszt, or Rachmaninoff? But ok, that's just me - different strokes (notes?) for different folks.

I can't help commenting on all the choking hazards that the baby is given... first a jelly bean and then beads... I suppose you need to be a mother or someone caring for babies to know, so I'm just quietly shuddering a bit. ;) At least she knew not to give him pebbles! :D

Zanna wrote: "
I am in love with Mick"

I can identify with her so strongly in some respects it's scary - I have felt exactly the way she has felt after she climbed to the roof top, for example. (Plus I (used to) play piano) .... I have always adored babies though, so perhaps not too close to her. XD But the tomboy parts most definitely - as a kid i was also always in trees and on rooftops (loved to get to rivers rocks and cliffs too, when possible -loved visits to a relative's farm).

Haha perhaps I should not confess that I totally identify with her feeling about babies...

I love Mick's refusal to conform to the little pigeonhole society has allocated for her, when Etta tries to push her into that pre-allocated shape:

'Are you just going to tramp around the room all day? It makes me sick to see you in those silly boy's clothes. Somebody ought to clamp down on you, Mick Kelly, and make you behave,' Etta said.

'Shut up,' said Mick. 'I wear shorts because I don't want to wear your old hand-me-downs. I don't want to be like either of you and I don't want to look like either of you. And I won't."

Exactly, and it's so subtly done

I'm hoping to join in on this, but have been having computer problems, so won't be able to adhere to the schedule. But I look forward to seeing what everyone thinks and to embarking on the book in the near future. I saw the movie with Alan Arkin when it came out in 1968 (yikes, dating myself!). It had a profound effect on my young, impressionable mind, although I remember only a few details.

In some ways it reads like a play script, it's very visual and dialogue driven... The scene between Dr Copeland and Portia felt like it was on stage

Traveller wrote: "I was wanting to ask if anybody knows which composer's music it is that touches Mick so deeply:

she would sit on the steps every Sunday afternoon and listen in on the programs.
Those were probably classical pieces, but they were the ones she remembered best. There was one special fellow's music that made her heart shrink up every time she heard it.
Sometimes this fellow's music was like little colored pieces of crystal candy, and other times it was the softest, saddest thing she had ever imagined about."

On the subject of music in the book from the NEA Big Rid Reader's Guide (I haven't read more than two chapers yet, so I spoiler-tag all references to events (I think they all come after chapter 5, anyway):

Music in the Book

Carson McCullers once compared The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter to a three-part fugue—a technique in musical composition that evolved during the seventeenth century. A fugue begins with a single voice expressing a theme, which other distinct voices restate as they enter one at a time. Like a skilled conductor, McCullers understood that each voice must define itself while simultaneously enhancing those around it.

In the novel, Mick Kelly's voice most skillfully reflects McCullers's own passion for music. Mick's tenacious, yet failed attempt to construct a violin, and her determination to play piano despite "any amount of knocks and trouble" are apt symbols of McCullers's early, frustrated dreams of becoming a composer.

Mick's secret summertime pleasure is to find a house with a radio, tuned in to classical music, so she may sit below its open window and listen. (view spoiler)[On the evening of her ruined party, (hide spoiler)] the program begins with Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 (Eroica). Mick is spellbound: "She could not listen good enough to hear it all. The music boiled inside her." When the symphony finishes, Mick is left with only a throbbing heart and "terrible hurt."

The novel's rhythmic language is sometimes harmonious—as in the sweet, sad duets between Mick and Singer—and at other times cacophonous (view spoiler)[, as in Jake and Dr. Copeland's final argument (hide spoiler)]. But McCullers's prose also gives us silence—in Singer, and in what she leaves to our imagination.

In addition to most pieces composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Franz Schubert, McCullers also loved:

Franz Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2
Frédéric Chopin's 12 Études, Op. 25; particularly No. 11, The Winter Wind
Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125
Gustav Mahler's Songs of a Wayfarer and Symphony No. 2
"But all the time—no matter what she was doing—there was music. Sometimes she hummed to herself as she walked, and other times she listened quietly to the songs inside her. There were all kinds of music in her thoughts."
—from The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

(So she liked Liszt and Chopin, Trav! :)

Source: http://www.neabigread.org/books/lonel... (caveat lector - the character descriptions contain some _major_ spoilers!)

Also from the same guide:

- a brief intro do the Depression-Era South (it really helped me, a non-American, put certain things in context): http://www.neabigread.org/books/lonel...

- author biography: http://www.neabigread.org/books/lonel... (speak of an interesting life one would not necessarily want for oneself).

Unfortunately, this is about all this guide has to offer - it's weaker than the ones from this series I previously used.

Bloodorange wrote: "Traveller wrote: "I was wanting to ask if anybody knows which composer's music it is that touches Mick so deeply:

she would sit on the steps every Sunday afternoon and listen in on the programs.
T..."

Ooh, thanks for this, Bloodorange! I was actually going to mention Beethoven too in my post, but somehow forgot (Don't like Mahler, btw)
..and i totally understand her feelings about Beethoven's Eroica.

Though, if I'd wanted to symbolize a fugue with a specific composer, i think i would have chosen Bach for that. I love this musical side-conversation! ^_^

This is wonderful! Thank you Bloodorange
I'm completely in love with the book now, I'm much prefering it to The Ballad of the Sad Cafe

(I do like Mahler)

Bloodorange wrote: A fugue begins with a single voice expressing a theme, which other distinct voices restate as they enter one at a time. Like a skilled conductor, McCullers understood that each voice must define itself while simultaneously enhancing those around it."

What a perfect expression of what McCullers does so well. Each character enters and we are introduced to them, adding to the overall feeling of individual isolation that is so beautifully personified in Singer.

It is helpful to have a true understanding of the dynamics of the time period she is writing in and the culture of the South. As a southern girl, much of the terrain is familiar to me from my childhood. For instance, attitudes toward children were quite different then. The older kids took care of the younger ones, without adult intervention...so a baby being given beads to play with wouldn't have raised an eyebrow. The freedom Mick has to roam the town (and walk the roof line) is a deep contrast to what we would see today. On the other hand, she has the responsibility of the younger children and the disdain of the older ones to deal with. I really related to her changing relationship with her brother, Bill. She is evolving into one of the "girls" for him and he doesn't "begin tussling with her like he used to do."

Ooh thanks for this context Sara...

@Sara - another thanks!:)

And here - if just for laughs - is Oprah Bookclub's reading guide:
http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/T...

The section on Southern Gothic looks interesting:
http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/S...

Bloodorange wrote:

"And here - if just for laughs - is Oprah Bookclub's reading guide:
http://www.oprah.com/oprahsbookclub/T...

Thank you, Bloodorange. I'm not laughing. This is good.

Thanks, David! I haven't read the OB guide on Part I, since I was afraid of spoilers, so I couldn't judge. Good to know it's of use.

Lovely resources - thank you. Hmm, i did a course on Gothic including Southern Gothic, but with Poppy Z. Bright as focus for the Southern Gothic.
So far, this seems a lot more "normal", but i suppose worse is coming.

I had wanted to remark on the art and paintings that Mich had done - anybody here had the thought that they might be foreshadowing, or at the very least, the pictures of things breaking and shipwrecking and crashing in stormy weather does create almost a sense of foreboding for me.
Also the fire burning things down, bust boiler, people lying dead in the streets and so on.

One wonders what this tells you about Mick's state of mind?

This description of Singer is at the end of Part One, Chapter 1: “In his face there came to be a brooding peace that is seen most often in the faces of the very sorrowful or the very wise.”

This one is in Part Two, Chapter 7: “His gray eyes seemed to take in everything around him, and in his face there was still the look of peace that is seen most often in those who are very wise or very sorrowful.”

Traveller wrote: "Lovely resources - thank you. Hmm, i did a course on Gothic including Southern Gothic, but with Poppy Z. Bright as focus for the Southern Gothic.
So far, this seems a lot more "normal", but i suppo..."

I have always wondered what Southern Gothic meant to describe.