Carson McCullers

Born 1917 in Columbus, Georgia. Has every illness under the sun. Marries, divorces, marries again. Same bloke too. Tries suicide. Fails. Husband tries suicide. Fails. Has series of strokes plus pleurisy, paralysis and depression. Cancerous breast removed. Wheelchair bound. Dies 1967.

When not ill, she wrote great books.

Heh, I didn't know she was in Sleater-Kinney.

The Charlotte Gainsbourg film "L'effrontee" seems to be uncannily similar to "Member of the wedding" although I don't think it's credited as such.

(what is this: maeumeun wiroun sanyangun (trans: 'the heart is a lonely hunter')?).

xpost - good morning, midnight is one of my all-time most loved books.

I might start with short stories.

All of a sudden I want Gary Larson to draw a panel entitled "Salad of the Bad Cafe."

There was some off-B'way thing titled that a few years ago.

I did, finally, read her - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, last summer, around August, a Penguin from the library. It was a little long, and very gloomy at times (yes, yes, like life) - but serious, a piece of work, with at least three elements that seem worth recalling:

1. a genuine, profound, shattering vision of loss, heartbreak, melancholy;

2. politics - to a degree that is probably overlooked, the book is serious and impassioned about politics, though it (she) recognizes how difficult and desperate the struggle for progress is (primarily black emancipation / racial equality, perhaps, but here that is very much considered in tandem and in connection with socialism and class struggle);

3. a touch of youthful joy, the girl (Mick Kelly - what a name, that's practically like a boy named Sue) who listens to music and wants, I think, to be a composer - here is the mildly proto-Salingeresque element, the sweetness and possibility of youth, though amid squalor and struggle.

I just read The Member of the Wedding about a week ago, one of those books that you slip into in a dangerous way, afterwards it's tough to get out, the whole world seems loose and spinning very fast. The inner monologue of Frankie (F. Jasmine) is so delicately preserved and the whole thing feels so precarious, as though the slightest slip could bring it all tumbling down. It is a remarkable piece of elegant writing. Unlike this post, obv.

The fate of John Henry is devastating. Why does he have to suffer?

the original 1952 movie version of the member of the wedding is so great. julie harris!

but i love the movie version of the heart is a lonely hunter too. sondra locke!

and i love john huston's reflections in a golden eye. totally true to the mad tone of the book! plus, julie harris!

and i even loved merchant/ivory's ballad of the sad cafe. vanessa redgrave!

i can't think of another author i like who has been honored so faithfully by film people. she got lucky.

now we just need some sympathetic genius to take a crack at clock without hands.

The adaptation of Reflections is batshit in a good way.

She is one of those authors whose appeal is heightened by photographs of.

She looks how she writes (?)

I think I know what you mean -- the Cartier-Bresson photos of her are great.

guys do you see at the end of the heart is a lonely hunter war is about to break out do you see DO YOU SEE

o the loneliness ~

haha thomp

was thinking of "the way i need you is a loneliness i cannot bear" & how intensely felt a novel the heart is a loner hunter is, what depth of feeling she brings to bear

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