Choices, Plus McCullers

I'm going to Austin on Thursday night to visit the seminary there and coming back Saturday. I am very happy about this. Very.

Until I check a Seagrove blog and am reminded that this weekend is the Celebration of Spring in Seagrove, when many of the potteries have kiln openings on the same day, which I might be at if I were in North Carolina instead of Texas. I would have been like, "Eh, you can't win 'em all," until the blogger said his wife would be making chocolate bread and leek and potato soup for his kiln opening. I have had this chocolate bread. Now my happiness about Austin is tinged with a distinct undertone of "Dang it!"

It's hard to accept that I can't do every fun thing ever. Quelle travestie! At least this one is kind of a no-brainer. Following God's call to seminary and the related trips, paperwork, and activities take precedence, chocolate bread or no chocolate bread.

I just finished listening to The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. Let me tell you something. This book is a masterpiece. I do not use that term lightly. Well, I do that sometimes, once in reference to 8 Mile, but this time I am serious. I haven't been so touched by a novel in a long time. It's about a deaf and mute man named John Singer in a small Southern town and the people who are drawn to him--a girl who's just entering adolescence, a restaurant owner whose wife dies in the course of the book, a new guy in town with political dreams, and the only black doctor around. They all talk to him as they talk to no one else. He understands because he reads lips but only rarely answers. The other people in town like and respect him, but these four hold him particularly close. Only once do they all meet in his room, and then only by accident.

I like the book for many reasons--the writing style, the very real characters, the way it is full of dramatic events but lacks drama--but one of the main reasons is Singer's status as a God figure. I don't know to what extent McCullers intended this, but the way the people talk to Singer is so much like prayer. It's private, unlike talking with others, intensely personal, and not usually done in hopes of a response. The black people talk of him as one of the few white people who can be trusted, and white folks also see him as respectable and trustworthy. He buys a radio so his guests can listen to it--something that's completely useless to him as a deaf man but that he knows will make them happy. Maybe someday I will read the book and keep track of the parallels, because these are only a few, and I missed a lot of the book on CD while paying attention to the road or just singing to myself or thinking of something else. I love it when literature has something to do with faith, the more subtle the better. I'm thinking it's not a book for everyone, but if you like to read literary novels, and especially if you like Southern Gothic style (like Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, and Harper Lee), then you should definitely give The Heart is a Lonely Hunter a try.