It seems a fitting end to Carson McCullers Week 2010 that this week’s loot includes a McCullers book. I’ve discovered a British publisher that re-released her novels with the release of the Mortgaged Heart in the early 1970s, and they all have classic typographical hardcovers. And so, in typical obsessive mode, I’m working on collecting myself a complete set, starting with The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, with Clock Without Hands [review] making its way to me from France, and pining for the rest of them.

I even had the first pick of a huge box full of outdated trade proofs at work and only came home with E.L. Doctorow’s Homer and Langley. I think my attitude to book buying/hoarding has shifted, I’m just not sure when/why/how this shift occurred. Working in the bookstore hasn’t weakened my resolve, the only books I’ve bought there so far have been as presents for others. Although I do have my eye and heart eagerly set on a delicious looking Penguin reference box set.

Simon Caterson’s Hoax Nation: Australian Fakes and Frauds, from Plato to Norma Khouri is a review copy kindly sent from Arcade Publications, and I’m really looking forward to getting stuck into it. They also sent me their Melbourne by the Book pamphlet of “Literary Hot Spots, Bookstores, Festivals and More” which is going to give me a lot of new bookish places to explore around town, giving me approximately 451283 more reasons to love Melbourne.

In addition to these new reads, I’ve also been borrowing from the library a lot. And I really mean a lot. I’m too embarrassed to post a photo of exactly what I have borrowed over the past week or so because it displays the sheer audacity of my ambitious approach to reading. I’ve got some young adult fiction, a lot of books by authors from the Gala Night last week, and some books I’ve just haven’t yet gotten around to reading or have found impossible  to find elsewhere. It’s almost daunting, it would be impossible for anyone to read the stupid amounts of books I have out on loan, but goddamnit if I’m not going to try.

• Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow
• The Ginger Man by J.P. Donleavy
• The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene
• The Rainbow by D.H. Lawrence
• The Violent Bear It Away by Flannery O’Connor
• The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck
• Consider the Lobster and Other Essays by David Foster Wallace
• A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace
• Native Son by Richard Wright

This week I found a link on tumblr to the handmade bags of Olympia le Tan (incidentally, my parents planned to name me Olympia – because I was born during the 1984 Olympics, gimmicky I know  … anyway! sometimes I still wonder whether life would have turned out differently if I’d been named Olympia. Would my nickname be Oly? Pia? Lympy?) via the We Love You So blog, and was intrigued with the idea of a purse embroidered with the first edition cover of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Then I found the price tag. You, too, can pick up one of these little darlings for $1,500. Let me just repeat that for you. $1,500. Honey, you could get an actual first edition of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – possibly even signed by Carson herself – for that kind of money, and let’s face it that’s surely going to be more of investment in the long run.

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”

This week went by so fast! I didn’t have too many book-buying opportunities this week – some might say that’s a good thing. Here’s what my rummaging about at book sales scored me this week:

• The Sea by John Banville
• Les Enfants Terribles by Jean Cocteau
• The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy
• Faces in the Water by Janet Frame
• Living in the Maniototo by Janet Frame
• Naming the World: And Other Exercises for the Creative Writer compiled by Bret Anthony Johnston
• February House: What Happened When W.H. Auden, Benjamin Britten, Paul & Jane Bowles, Carson McCullers and Gypsy Rose Lee Moved in Together by Sherrill Tippins

I was hugely, ridiculously pleased to find February House on sale for a couple of dollars, mainly due to my rampant obsession and admiration for Carson McCullers. A signed copy of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was sold on ebay for US$500 this week, I’d been following it out of interest for a while now. It was originally listed at a couple of thousand but didn’t sell. The seller relisted it as a normal auction but with a reserve price. People bid on it, but it didn’t reach the reserve so the seller relisted it with the Buy It Now price of US$500 and it was snapped up almost instantly. Alas, not to me!

Reading: I have spent a lot of time reading short stories this week. Mainly short stories on the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die List – Edgar Allen Poe, Nikolai Gogol and my favourite of the lot, Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The Yellow Wallpaper is suitably creepy and frightening, amazing that a story of just over 6000 words can explore so many themes so richly. I’m still reading the Flannery O’Connor short stories, but as I’ve said before, I am in no hurry to finish them all quickly. I read “Greenleaf” on the bus this week, and it was horrifying as I slowly realized where it was going. I started reading John Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent today, enjoying it so far, but more on that later. Next week I’ll also be starting Jane Austen’s Lady Susan as part of the Austenprose group read.

What’s the best book you’ve read recently?

In terms of fiction, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers has affected me profoundly, and in so many ways. It reminded me of the places a novel can take you. When I was reading it I was transported to two places at once: 1. to some distant nostalgic place in my childhood, of getting lost in books and tales of other people, of sitting curled up and reading for hours and hours. 2. to the place evoked in the story. McCullers’ use of language is so deceptively sparse, yet manages to contain and convey all elements of human experience within it. There were times when I was just totally knocked out by how wonderfully she expressed particular things, but most of all, loneliness. This woman just seemed to understand it and able to sum it up in such a succinct way that makes you feel, maybe, a little less alone. It is a book about how we see people as we want to, as we need to, we endlessly project our needs and desires onto them, however far removed from reality that may be. Everything is misunderstood, miscommunicated. Human frailty and strength. The hopelessness and necessity of hope. I know that this is a book that I will frequently return to.

Likewise, the best non-fiction book I’ve read recently would have to be The Lonely Hunter: A Biography of Carson McCullers by Virginia Spencer Carr. I make no secret of the fact that I am slightly obsessed with Ms. McCullers. Discovering her work has been one of my highlights of this year. It is inspiring, sad, beautiful and strong. Evocative, poetic, humane. There aren’t enough words for how I feel about her work. Then there was the haunting dark-eyed woman that stared out at me from the Google Image Search. She looked so child-like and yet she wrote of these eternal human struggles in such a powerful way. I was hooked, I was intrigued and I had to know more. This biography was really, really thorough. All the scandalous aspects of her life are examined in details – of particular interest is her tumultuous relationship with Reeves McCullers. She married him quite young, divorced him a few years later, then after he’d gone to fight in the war and she was a hugely successful writer, remarried him. This marriage ended in Reeves’ suicide, intended to be a double suicide, which Carson narrowly escaped from. It has all the makings of salacious gossip, but it is treated with such careful respect for all involved, while not afraid to look at the really messy, horrible parts of their relationship. Her instant success at such a young age, her endless struggle with the creative process, her spiritual loneliness, her unrequited loves. I think she was a beautiful and sad individual, troubled and talented. Through all she went through, she seemed to maintain a really strong sense of self and spark. Her life story was terribly melancholic, but I also found it hugely inspiring.

One of my favourite parts was when McCullers and Tennessee Williams got their revenge on an interfering neighbour by pouring good scotch into their pig trough; they spent the evening sitting and laughing at the pigs getting drunk. Williams said of the event: “It was an expensive amusement – all that scotch – but we both felt better afterwards.”