Carson McCullers

By: Erik Rittenberry

Carson McCullers was born on this day in 1917 in Columbus, Georgia.

She was one of the great American writers of the 20th century. At the young age of 23 and the release of her first novel, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, the critics hailed her as the new Steinbeck. Her friend, Tennessee Williams, proclaimed her in his dramatic fashion the greatest living writer of our country, if not of the world.

Throughout her life, McCullers, despite her literary success, suffered from severe unhappiness and unrelenting lousy health. But she never lost that fierce urge to create literary art. Her incredible stories struck at the root of the human condition.

I first read “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter” about 15 years ago and immediately fell in love with her writing. She had a beautiful, unique voice that poetically and hauntingly captured how it was growing up in the South. I remember, quite vividly actually, sitting in the shade of an ancient oak on a summer afternoon, sipping on a cold beer, reading, and being totally enchanted by her novel. It haunted me for weeks.

May Sarton once said that when “one puts [this book] down, it is with… a feeling of having been nourished by the truth.” Indeed.

McCullers wrote about misfits and outcasts and spiritually isolated characters living in the small, rural towns of the deep South. As one article put it: “Carson’s fictional characters tend to show physical or psychological handicaps, but with amazing compassion and warmth. Her stories show a Southern Gothic world, where she portrays the disparities between the lovers, longingness for love and human connection.”

The novelist James Wright praised McCullers’s ability “to rise above the pressures of her environment and embrace white and black humanity in one sweep of apprehension and tenderness.”

September 29, 1967, at the age of 50, McCullers died of a brain hemorrhage. She once wrote: “How can the dead be truly dead when they still live in the souls of those who are left behind?”

Below is a brief poem that Charles Bukowski wrote about the bereaved and dejected yet profound and compassionate southern writer. Thanks for reading.

Carson McCullers

she died of alcoholism
wrapped in a blanket
on a deck chair
on an ocean
steamer.

all her books of
terrified loneliness

all her books about
the cruelty
of loveless love

were all that was left
of her

as the strolling vacationer
discovered her body

notified the captain

and she was quickly dispatched
to somewhere else
on the ship

as everything
continued just
as
she had written it