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Wunderkind

In April of 1938, Carson submitted an outline and six chapters of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter to Houghton Mifflin and was offered a contract and five-hundred dollar advance. The book was published in June 1940. The story of a deaf mute to whom the lonely and isolated people of a southern town turn for silent solace, the novel included the themes of loneliness and isolation that recur in much of McCullers' work. The novel was an immediate and much praised success. Rose Feld's New York Times review was typical of the positive response to the power of the young author's work: "No matter what the age of its author, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter would be a remarkable book. When one reads that Carson McCullers is a girl of 22 it becomes more than that. Maturity does not cover the quality of her work. It is something beyond that, something more akin to the vocation of pain to which a great poet is born. Reading her, one feels this girl is wrapped in knowledge which has roots beyond the span of her life and her experience."

Reflections in a Golden Eye, McCullers' second novel, first appeared in Harper's Bazaar in August 1940, and was published in book form by Houghton Mifflin in 1941. Readers who expected a book like the author's first novel were shocked by the troubling story of voyeurism, obsession, repressed homosexuality, and infidelity set on a peacetime army base. Reflections in a Golden Eye received a mixed critical reception, and its author faced ridicule from the people of her hometown who saw negative reflections of themselves in the maladjusted characters of the novel.

Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians, 1519 Stark Avenue, Columbus, Georgia, 31906

(706) 568-2054

Created By Patricia Gilbert