On this day 42 years ago, September 29th 1967, the writer Carson McCullers died at the age of 50.

Carson McCullers photographed by Louise Dahl-Wolfe in Central Park, April 1941

I only discovered her writing this year, something which I am eternally grateful for. I think reading this incredibly talented author at any other time in my life would have lessened the impact her writing had on me. The sparseness of her words, her evocative descriptions of the minutiae of every day life, her complete understanding of being outcast, of loneliness, and most importantly, of the struggle toward love. Her work, and the story of her life, continue to provide me with endless inspiration.

If you’ve yet to experience McCullers devastatingly perceptive prose, here is a link to a full text copy of one of my favourite of her short stories “A Tree. A Rock. A Cloud.” originally published in 1942, and available in print with the novella The Ballad of the Sad Café. I also strongly recommend her first novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, published when she was just 23. I am going to be reading, writing about and re-reading a lot more of McCullers in the future but in the meantime, here’s a small sample dedicated to the responsible (!) number of whiskeys I threw down last night in her honour:

And that is not all. It is known that if a message is written with lemon juice on a clean sheet of paper there will be no sign of it. But if the paper is held for a moment to the fire then the letters turn brown and the meaning becomes clear. Imagine that the whisky is the fire and that the message is that which is known only in the soul of a man – then the worth of Miss Amelia’s liquor can be understood. Things that have gone unnoticed, thoughts that have been harboured far back in the dark mind, are suddenly recognized and comprehended. [...] Such things as these, then, happen when a man has drunk Miss Amelia’s liquor. He may suffer, or he may be spent with joy – but the experience has shown the truth; he has warmed his soul and seen the message hidden there.
(from The Ballad of the Sad Café)

And as Charles Bukowski in his eponymous poem about her wrote;

“all her books of
terrified loneliness

all her books about
the cruelty
of loveless love

[...]

and everything
continued just
as
she had written it”