The Lonely Hunter: A Biography of Carson McCullers

by Virginia Spencer Carr

Book Overview

The Lonely Hunter is widely accepted as the standard biography of Carson McCullers. Author of such landmarks of modern American fiction as Reflections in a Golden Eye and The Ballad of the Sad Caf ,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385040288
• ISBN13: 9780385040280
• Release Date: January 1975
• Publisher: Doubleday Books
• Length: 600 Pages
• Weight: 2.20 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Standout biography!

If one wants to start reading bios this is the one to start with,and if you can't find this book in your local library please buy it because this book by Virginia Spencer Carr is well written she knows her subject. Carson Mccullers came alive for me I love that she wrote blacks with dignity when other's writers at that time wrote nothing but falsehoods and myths but I also couldn't stand how she treated her husband and siblings after their mother's death but as well she was brave facing her illness and death. In my humble opinion this book should be given ten stars. Mrs Carr really dove into her subject and not flinch from her faults and didn't judge her either that's for me a mark of an excellent biography and this is a excellent bio. If you have the time to read it front to back do so it will be time well spent! PLEASE READ THIS BOOK! NOT TO BE UNREAD!

598 pages of a Unique Talent & Troubled Life

Impressively detailed account of the life of one of America's great southern writers. In her lifetime, Carson McCullers was many things to many people, and the conflicting accounts are fascinating. She could be very charming and attentive, a soft-spoken original with deeply engaging, large eyes. But she was a difficult friend to many, becoming obsessively clingy and demanding of attention. A bitch and an angel; as unshakably sulky or as light-hearted as a child. Her hair she always carefully brushed, and yet sometimes she wore outfits so outlandish, she was mistaken for a tramp. (that's hobo, not slut). She was a sensitive and imaginative author who touched many hearts with her unsentimental writings about human longing. Reading this book has been a strange ride. As impartial as the text is, it is next-to-impossible to avoid getting emotional as the reader, as I will explain in a moment. The biographer has done a fantastic job of getting those who knew Carson to come forward with their various memories. It is very well-written, with family trees, thorough footnotes, many voices, interesting photos, an appendix consisting of summarized events in McCullers' life, and an excellent index. A generally well-edited and constructed biography, I find no fault with the biographer. It's the life of Carson McCullers that is so twisted and sour. That said, there are fun stories about living with Gypsy Rose Lee and of staying at Yaddo, the famous writers' retreat. But Carson's life was not easy. Tales of her drinking and near-delusional imagination, of her horrendous fights with husband Reeves McCullers, of lingering ill health, and of her leeching on friends has made reading this quite impartial book a considerably saddening adventure. Nestled in the text is the rather interesting nugget stating that, soon after McCullers hit the literary big time with her The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, she was told during a psychiatric Rorschach evaluation that if her neuroses were to be cured, she would lose her ability to write so sensitively. (!) Increasingly, McCullers lived her life with a disturbing mix of exaggerated suffering, of need and meanness, along with what the biographer saw as an irresistible love of love itself. But this reviewer is sure that some of her friends must have felt like flies caught in a puddle of spilt honey. It has been interesting to read about how McCullers worked, and how she drew inspiration from real life events, acquaintances and their own tales. This haunting biography could be of interest to other writers, if only as a kind of caveat. The thoroughness of Carr's work allows an observant reader to glean lessons about the power of the human spirit and the destructiveness of the attitude that insanity fuels talent.