The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Set in 1930s Georgia, the novel centers around a deaf and mute man, John Singer. Singer has been devastated by the loss of his dear friend, Antonapoulos, who was committed to an asylum for bad behavior
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What Hacker News says
- Communication was mostly lost before the rise of social media—assuming we ever had anything more than isolated pockets of actual communication, which I am not convinced we have. Literature has been exploring this for a good many decades, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is a good example and even shows how our relation to it has changed in the 80 odd years since its release; these days when it comes up the interpretation/discussion about it is more often than not, about social causes, which is depressingly ironic, it is using the novel in the same way the characters of the novel use Singer.
- Various "bests" based purely on feelings - They're Going to Love You - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Roadside Picnic - To Kill a Mockingbird - Catch 22 - Blindness - No Country for Old Men (various McCarthy books could rotate into this slot)
- “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” is among my all time favorite works.
It’s not as simple as stories about lonely people or marginalized people. She writes stories about people with invisible lives. Especially if you’re familiar with the aching sadness of small towns in the American South, McCullers is a must read.
She’s somewhere between “if Hemingway was a woman” and “if Denis Johnson lived in the 1940s”
- This has been a year of re-reading for me, so this is a timely question. I can't pick just one at the moment, but I'll split a couple of top choices via genre. (Also worth noting that in the end, my final choice would probably be the Bible.)
Fiction: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers
Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner
Non-fiction: In Good Company - Stanley Hauerwas
Into the Silent Land - Martin Laird
- Carson McCullers?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Heart_Is_a_Lonely_Hunter to start
- Try somewhat off-beat American novels:
1. Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurty
2. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers
3. A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole
They are great novels, and sadly, are less known than they should be. If you are into movies, there are great ones like "Paris, Texas" by the German director Wim Wenders, or "A River Runs Through It" by Robert Redford.
