The Heart is a Lonely Hunter (1940) by Carson McCullers

Carson McCullers debut novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was written in 1940 when she was only 23-years old.  It was an immediate bestseller and routinely ranks as one of the top 100 English-language novels of the century.  It is set-in small-town Georgia in the “recovery” years after the Great Depression. It was explosively controversial when published and remains so today because of the issues raised in the book: the spread of communism, rising fascism in Europe, and income inequality and racism in America.

The main character in the book is a deaf mute named John Singer.  He carries a card he presents to people when he meets them explaining that he is deaf, but an expert lip reader, he will write out sentences when necessary.  It is to him that the other primary characters reveal themselves, routinely telling him everything that is on their minds, believing he understands and agrees with them because he rarely lets them know otherwise. They are: a girl going through adolescence, he lives at the bordering house run by her parents; the widowed owner of a café where much of the action takes place; a labor-organizer/budding communist, who works as a carnival barker and is an alcoholic; and an African American medical doctor.  Singer’s story is never clear even though his attachment to another deaf mute, Spiros, who has been forcibly committed to a mental institution by an Uncle, plays a major role in the novel.

   

Many reviewers of the book have zeroed in on “love” as being what motivates each of the characters. I don’t, at least not in the sense of a lonely hearts club romance.  Longing is a factor, but it is not necessarily a physical love.  Mick, the young girl, for instance longs for an escape from the town, a career as a composer – she is devastated when she must take a job at Woolworth's when she is just 16 to help her family.  She realizes the decision will likely end her education, end her ambitions.             

“Mick frowned and rubbed her fist hard across her forehead.  That was the way things were.  It was like she was mad all the time.  Not how a kid gets mad quick so that soon it is all over – but in another way.  Only there was nothing to be mad at.  Unless the store.  But the store hadn’t asked her to take the job.  So there was nothing to be mad at.  It was like she was cheated.  Only nobody had cheated her.  So there, just the same she had that feeling.  Cheated.”

The doctor, old and in poor health himself, encompasses the longing in the book most clearly.  He has struggled and longed to see his family, and his people, rise up and prosper, only to see them beat down by the South, and then beaten down further by their acceptance of those circumstances. He oddly shares the political philosophy of the labor organizer (and in fact even named one of his sons after Karl Marx).  He puzzles over his friendship with Singer, the only white man he feels understands him.

Near the end of the book, Singer will commit suicide.  He does so when he learns that his friend who was forcibly institutionalized has died. Spiros, a troubled young man on multiple fronts, as a fellow deaf mute, was the only one who Singer thought knew him.  He was to Singer, what Singer was to the other characters in the book.  This comes strikingly clear shortly after Singer learns of Spiros’ death.  He is passing a tavern/restaurant when he realizes there is a table of three deaf men signing away inside, he stops and joins them briefly, though doesn't feel welcome.  He departs to catch his train. Singer’s lonely heart is the lack of a community that understands his reality.

Recommendation:  Yes, and no.  This is not an easy read, if you are looking for pleasure reading, this is not it.  If you are looking for biting, often painful social criticism, this is a masterpiece.  The 1968 movie of the novel is, in a word, awful.

There There (2018) By Tommy Orange

Over the past few years, I’ve read and reviewed several books from the Native (American) Literature genre.  Almost exclusively, these titles have dealt with “Rez Life” -- the impact of growing up and living, permanently or seasonally, on a reservation.  Last year however author Tommy Orange added a new and often ignored topic to this literally canon with his book There There set in an urban “ghetto” in Oakland, California. 

Oakland, like most North American cities, has neighborhoods that are often the “first stop” when a Native individual or family arrives in town from a reservation. These neighborhoods, like first generation immigrant communities, are generally low-income neighborhoods where people learn about their new environments, and get their first jobs, all the while being able to connect with people who understand and respect the culture they are coming from.  The existence of these neighborhoods is part of a familiar, even predictable, pattern of urban settlement.  

   

When I began the book, I immediately guessed wrong. It is structured as a collection of intermingled short stories, each about a particular character.  After story #2 about a young man’s grant project, I thought I had the book figured out.  His idea was to produce a video of Native (full-blooded, or not) residents of Oakland, letting them talk on camera, without a script, of their life experiences -- much of the taping would take place at Oakland’s Pow Wow.  Because of this, I jumped to the conclusion that the book was a written version of the project. And, in a way it is.  There There could easily stand on its own as a sociology research study, the material is there, it’s a key part of the character development of the story.  And, it reads sort of slow at first, the way a study would.  And if it stopped there that would be fine, it’d still be a good book.

What is a Pow Wow?

But, as I eventually discovered, the book isn’t a textbook, it is essentially an action-thriller, masked as a sociological survey.  It seems the people whose lives we get to witness are often tangentially connected, and in many cases actually related. Their stories will come together at the Pow Wow.   Despite being a first-time novelist, Orange expertly takes us to the climax.  At about three quarters of the way through the book, the chapters start to get progressively shorter, with no digressions, yet lots of detail.  Reading speed picks up dramatically, and you are there, in person, holding your breath. And that, without a spoiler, is all I’m giving you. 

Recommendation:  Yes.

Clock Without Hands (1961) By Carson McCullers

I am finding retirement to be a time for tackling authors I always meant to read, but never could find the time to do so. One of those authors is Carson McCullers.  Her classic The Heart is a Lonely Hunter has been on my reading list for a long time.  I’ve just started reading the Library of America collection of her Complete Novels.

I did not begin with Lonely Hunter however, I picked her last novel instead, Clock Without Hands, published in 1961.  It is a “Southern Gothic” text set in the town of Milan, Georgia. The selection was made because of its relevance to current (2019) political events.  Clock Without Hands has four main characters, one of whom is a proud segregationist former Congressman.  The former Congressman is called “Judge” by everyone, as a title of respect.  He’s routinely referred to as one of the South’s “leading citizens.” 

The plot revolves around the differing world views of the Judge, his grandson Jester, and a young African American, Sherman Pew – so named because he was abandoned at birth, left in a church pew.  Today we look at this debate and wonder how the Judge’s “old South” world view was ever tolerated, rather on accepted as politically tenable in the halls of Congress, and we question the excuse of “that’s the way it was back then.”

The book’s end coincides with the Supreme Court decision ordering the integration of public schools, a KKK meeting convened by the Judge & the local Sheriff, and a bombing.

The fourth main character in the book is the town pharmacist, J.T. Malone.  While he is involved in the main plot, his subplot (inserted for symbolism) is heart wrenching, in Chapter 1 he is diagnosed with leukemia.  He dies in the book's final paragraph.

McCullers’ writing is incredible, flawless. Her status as a cutting-edge author is secured by a pantheon of stories with plots and characters that remain controversial today, and were definitely taboo in the 50’s and into the 60’s.  Her depiction of the small-town South of that era is frightening, and I dare say on target.

My only prior exposure to McCullers is the movie adaptation of Reflections in a Golden Eye, starring Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor.  I will definitely read it, as well as the other seven novels in the collection. 

In her personal life, McCullers was friends with Tennessee Williams, another author identified with the South.  I did not know that until reading the Wikipedia post on her when I finished Clock Without Hands.  That friendship is apparent however because as I was reading the book, the similarities between the Judge, and “Big Daddy,” a character in Williams’ classic Cat on a Hot Tin Roof had occurred to me – not as a plagiarism issue, but one of character construction in Southern literature. 

Recommendation:  Yes, absolutely.

The Spy: A Tale of the Neutral Ground (written 1821) By James Fenimore Cooper

In the early decades of the United States, book publishing was by no means a path to sudden fame or fortune, yet James Fenimore Cooper’s historical fiction The Spy was a commercial success.  While Cooper is best known to future generations as the author of the “Leatherstocking” series  (The: Deerslayer, Pathfinder, Last of the Mohicans, Pioneers, and Prairie), he was known in his time for his works set in the American Revolution.  The Library of America has gathered two of those works in a new publication, copyrighted earlier this year, pairing The Spy with Lionel Lincoln.

The Spy is cast in what is now Westchester County, north of New York City.  It was rural and sparsely settled at the time of the Revolution.  It was also “neutral ground,” its residents’ positions on the war varied, some loyal to the King, while others favored the newly declared independent States, former colonies.  Caught between the British stronghold of New York, and the American stronghold in the interior of the country, this neutrality was also a necessity.  Located in this no-man’s land is The Locusts, the country farm of the Wharton family, itself with divided loyalties, whom are attempting to ride out the storm of war.  Their attempt is far from successful with Henry, the son of the clan, serving as an officer in the King’s service, while his sister is a strong advocate of the new country and is in love with a Major on the American side of the fighting. Complicating life for all, were the Skinners, a rogue element of bandits who victimized residents of the neutral ground, they operated with allegiance to either the Americans or the British, as circumstances warranted.

Readers are able to determine who the title character is fairly early in the book, he is a neighbor of the Wharton’s, a peddler who travels between American and British lines selling his wares.  He is thought by many to be a spy for the English and is captured by the Americans and sentenced to death twice, strangely escaping both occasions.  It is only late in the book that readers are able to determine his exact loyalties.  Spoiler alert: he is in the service of General George Washington.  The story told here is thought to be a true story, that such a spy did exist.  Cooper’s work of historical fiction has kept that story alive.

Lionel Lincoln will be a future read.

Recommendation:  Yes, for both students of American history, and of American literature.

Shortest Way Home (2019) By Pete Buttigieg

On a Saturday morning one late summer day in 1967, I got on my bicycle and rode it to the library off the “jungle hallway” at Portage High School, in Indiana. I was 14-years old, an incoming freshman.  I chose that day because I knew next to no one would be at the library.  The purpose of the trip was to look up the term “homosexual.” I found three references, two were in psychiatric journals, the third was in a text on criminal law.  It would be another five years before I revisited this subject. When I did, I made the decision to leave Indiana.

I tell this highly personal story as my way of pointing out just how monumental is the presidential campaign of Pete Buttigieg, Mayor of South Bend, Indiana (57 miles east of Portage) and a veteran of the endless war in Afghanistan. A generation younger than me, he is a gay man who came out while Mayor and was resoundingly re-elected.  In office, he met, fell in love, and married another man. 

To take the historic nature of this campaign one step further, in the latest round of polling, Buttigieg is running ahead of the incumbent President of the United States.  Regardless of the current president’s negative job approval rating – just think about that.  Think about the amount of social and cultural change that has had to occur to make it possible for a gay person to be considered a politically viable candidate for President.  What a way to mark the 50-year anniversary of Stonewall!  The police raid on the Stonewall when the patrons fought back is considered the start of the modern-day gay rights movement, an event that occurred the summer before my junior year of high school … unbeknownst to me at the time.

More remarkable is that Buttigieg hasn’t been cast as a “fringe” candidate.  He is in fact the civil pragmatist in the room, a 37-year old who speaks passionately, yet calmly; respectfully, even when that’s not called for; and shares not only his opinions, but his thought process, how he came about forming those opinions. In an era of political volume, he speaks softly and is not a bomb-thrower.    

Like all (smart) presidential candidates, Mayor Pete kicked off this race with a compelling campaign autobiography: Shortest Way Home.  It touches me on multiple levels: as a gay man, as someone who grew up in rust belt America, and most significantly, as someone who has lived the personal, professional, and political pluses & minuses of being “openly” gay.  Life isn't always easy, but it gets better.

The Importance of Pete

The visibility of Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, regardless of its outcome, speaks to the next generations of LGBTQ youth, nationally and even internationally. Fifty years ago, a gay person could be declared “mentally ill” and branded & prosecuted criminally.  Fifty years ago, gays were hounded by the police for meeting for drinks at the Stonewall Inn. Today, we are examining a gay man’s platform planks on job creation, healthcare and the environment.  We are beginning to witness a “normality” about gay people that American history has always shoved into the shadows.  We pay taxes, we mow our lawns, go grocery shopping, root for the home team, some of us raise families ….

It is argued that today “the love that dare not speak its name” never shuts up. I will make no apologies for that. For every silence you may wish, I can give testimony – often first person -- to a slight, a snicker, bullying, an out-an-out insult, a lost job, an abandonment, a child fleeing or being kicked out of what should be a safe home, a bout of homelessness, an incident of  blackmail, police harassment and/or brutality, a queer-beating, a murder, and even genocide whether through violence or through gross negligence in addressing a health crisis, all committed in the name of “morality.”
 

Harvey Milk’s Hope Speech

Our “normality” has been denied by many religious leaders.  They have preached, and still preach, horror stories, and sanction policy-phrases like “intrinsically evil” to describe human beings.  Some have gotten even louder, as their flocks have gotten smaller (seemingly unable to make the connection).  These religious “leaders” and the political-right politicians who use them, have a vested, albeit hypocritical, interest in driving people back into the closet.  They scream about the oppression of “political correctness” – unable to acknowledge the decades, centuries, of real blood & guts oppression they have committed. 

No, having arrived here, we will not now shut up and step back.

There is nothing quite so visible in America as a presidential campaign.  Pete Buttigieg with his husband Chasten Glezman Buttigieg – in a quest proudly made possible by 50 years of activism -- are now on the big stage, as the role models we never had, providing hope for a better next 50 years. 

Recommendation:  If you are gay, this is required reading.  If you are a Hoosier, or from any Midwestern rust belt town, you will recognize a lot in the book. If you are a millennial you will definitely identify with this book.  If you are longing for a politics that is both progressive and civil, you will learn from the book.  Yes.

The Wrinkle in Time Quartet (1962 - 1986) By Madeleine L'Engle

A Wrinkle in Time is one of those young adult books I somehow never managed to read when I met the age range.  Last year however, the Library of America published The Wrinkle in Time Quartet, the first of two volumes of Madeleine L’Engle’s works intermingling science fiction and theology.  As a not-so-young adult, I’ve now done my remedial reading of these works.

The Quartet features the Murray family: a Dad and Mom who are both scientists, a daughter named Meg, twin boys named Dennys and Sandy, and a youngest son named Charles Wallace (two names, always) who holds special powers of intelligence beyond human, and telepathic abilities.

The first book, A Wrinkle in Time, 152 pages, involves space travel.  The father, Dr. Murray, has learned how to “tesseract” (years ahead of Star Trek and worm holes) to another planet and galaxy.  On his adventure, Dr. Murray has discovered a universe of good and evil, in endless battle between El (God) and It (the Devil).  Dr. Murray has been gone on his adventure for four years and feared captured.  No one knows where.  Enter into the story three iconic good “witches” for lack of a better term – Mrs. Who, Mrs. Whatsit, and Mrs. Which.  They will assist Meg and Charles Wallace, and a teen neighbor named Calvin, in finding and bringing back Dr. Murray. 

While A Wrinkle in Time is the most famous and best read of the quartet, the other installments in the series are also worth a read:  A Wind in the Door, 159 pages published in 1973; A Swiftly Tilting Planet, 202 pages published in 1978; and perhaps the most controversial one, Many Waters, 233 pages, published in 1986, about the twins accidentally traveling back in time to just before the biblical flood.

Disney Version of A Wrinkle in Time

Movies, and a television series, have been made of A Wrinkle in Time, the most recent of which was a Disney production that was universally (and deservedly) panned by critics -- perhaps because the "Disney treatment" was just too much, or perhaps because the science the story required was too complex for a general audience.  L’Engle is quoted in Wikipedia explaining why young adults are better able to grasp the science in her work, “the child will come to it with an open mind, whereas many adults come closed to an open book.” 

Recommendation:  Definitely skip the movie; but read the books, in their chronological order.

Shanghai Grand: Forbidden Love, Intrigue, Decadence in Old China (2016) By Taras Grescoe

In the past year or so I’ve been on an “all about China” reading binge.  I’ve found it fascinating because I know next to nothing about Chinese geography, culture, or politics. What I’ve learned, perhaps more so than anything about China, is that “the truth” very much so depends on who you talk to.   In Shanghai Grand, by Taras Grescoe, one gets the full western version viewpoint, and an opening glimpse of a native Chinese version. 

What makes that distinction important is that during the  mostly pre-World War II time period covered in this book, there was little firsthand reporting appearing in the West about what was happening in China.  Into this void stepped a small group of journalists who would make their everlasting fame with their reporting on China, though most would wander no further inland than the international settlements of Shanghai.

In that cadre of reporters was Emily “Mickey” Hahn, a New Yorker magazine regular with a society background, and a St. Louis-Chicago origin. In her years in China, she would scandalize the Anglo-community in the Treaty Port of Shanghai and give the New Yorker some of its first “other” China reporting.  Her tale of two cities, two cultures, is fascinating. 

The “scandal” is her long-term affair with poet Zau Sinmay, a married man, and native Chinese.  And then of course there is the side issue of her (and seemingly everyone else’s) usage of opium.

Surprising Jewish Links Abound in Shanghai Grand

The movie version of the book, if one is made, will most certainly focus on high society life in Shanghai, the “Paris of the East, “ a city and nightlife overseen by Sir Victor Sassoon, the phenomenally rich merchant who moved his business empire from Bombay (Mumbai) to Shanghai after World War I, well in advance of the predictable and inevitable “loss” of India by the British Empire.  Much of the movie will be set in Sassoon’s famous Cathay Hotel, and of course will zero in on the “scandal." 

Lost in the movie script will be the extensive reporting done by Hahn and others on what was beginning to happen outside of Shanghai, a political revolution of lasting significance, and unknown to the clueless policy makers in the U.S. and Europe.  Hahn made her journalism fame with the literary “Mr. Pan” series which appeared in the New Yorker which was in actuality a biography of Sinmay.  Later she would land an interview with Madame Chiang Kai-shek, cementing Hahn's status as a leading China-authority.  It would be another of the western journalists in Shanghai, Edgar Snow, who would land an interview with Mao Tse-tung, encamping with Red Army forces after The Long March, a reporting-coup that would provide the west with its first in-depth look at the rise of Chinese Communism (my current read).

Recommendation:  For history buffs, absolutely.