“Reflections in a Golden Eye” Carson McCullers

I was so excited the other day when I saw an e-mail from Blogger saying there was a comment to one of my posts. Finally, a reader! But, damn, it was just an ad. I’m glad I decided to moderate the comments and was able to delete it before it made it to the blog, not that anyone would have noticed anyway.

While on sabbatical seven years ago, I found a copy of “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” at my sister’s house and fell in love with Carson McCullers. When I was not buying books on this sabbatical trip, I decided to put McCullers on my list, but I was afraid that she had only written one book, like Harper Lee. Imagine my delight to find that Powell’s had several books by McCullers, and that her writing was a little controversial. “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” was her first book, “Golden Eye” her second and some critics were disappointed to see her move from a tender treatment of loneliness in the former to a more Southern Gothic story in the latter. They thought the content too dark for such an innocent, ladylike writer. The version of the book I have includes the 1971 afterword written by Tennessee Williams defending McCullers’s work, Williams holds an imaginary conversation with someone who thinks the work is too nasty.
His imaginary adversary complains, “But can’t a writer ever get to the same effect without using such God damn awful subjects?” Williams’ argument is that the subjects have to be strong in order to make the point in such a short work. Seventy years after the first printing of “Golden Eye,” I suspect there is a more general acceptance of and interest in these “dark” subjects.

Even if I tell you the main events of the book, I don’t think I can consider this a spoiler, because the book is so much about the inner workings of the characters that knowing what will happen will not spoil the reading. The action takes place at a military post in Georgia and involves the lives of 6 people. Leonora is married to Captain Weldon Penderton, but both she and Weldon are attracted to Major Morris Langdon. Leonora and Morris have a sexual relationship that Weldon and Morris’ wife, Alison, know about, yet all four of them often socially spend the evenings together. Alison Langdon wants to leave her husband and start up a shop with her Filipino houseboy, Anacleto, who is her most loyal supporter, but they do not have a sexual relationship. Private L. G. Williams begins stalking Leonora, and while Alison knows this, no one believes her, and Weldon begins a love/hate relationship with Private Williams. Are you confused yet? I had trouble keeping everyone straight and had to reread passages at times, but I think that is a problem I generally have and not a fault of the book. If you are thinking that relationships like this are not that extraordinary or macabre, trust me, there is a lot more to the story than I am telling.

I don’t remember all the details of “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter,” but I know I enjoyed reading about the motivations that drove people to certain actions and wanted more of that kind of writing. I read on-line that conformity is a major theme of “Golden Eye,” and I agree that each character is trying to be something outside of the traditional roles of wife, husband, soldier, man, woman, and servant. McCullers is able to show us the basic needs sometimes hidden behind the veneer of social niceties and makes me think that traditional roles may be only illusions. I have read that “The Member of the Wedding” and “The Ballad of the Sad Café” are even better, so I am eager to read more of McCullers.