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The Density of The Lonely Hunter
Jan. 20th, 2019 10:04 pmMy grandson recently asked how long it would take me to read Virginia Spencer Carr's The Lonely Hunter, her bio of Carson McCullers. I think he asked because, at 600 pages, the book looks like a brick and feels like a concrete block, lol.
I told him I wasn't sure because, in my experience, books have different densities. By that I meant that some books take longer to read because they contain more information or because what they contain is less readily accessible due to the writer's style, approach to the material, etc. Or for other reasons, including my own density.
A hundred and fifty pages in, I would call Carr's book a fairly "dense" read. Not because her writing style is difficult but because there's so much detail and because McCullers herself packed so much life and so many people into such a short time. And because her relationships with people were invariably complex, if not problematic.
And so, at 150 pages we're only up to her second year as a published writer; she's spent the summer of 1940 at the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference and she's about to spend the summer of 1941 at the Yaddo artist's confab in Saratoga Springs.
My goal, when I first picked up Carr's bio, was to have reached the point in McCullers' career, in her life's narrative, where she'd written and published The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. To have gotten there by the time our book club would be meeting to discuss this work.
I seem to have done that, since our meeting is this coming Thursday. But really, there's so much to this, so much that I'd like to be able to read and share about this remarkable writer and human being.
What I really wish is that we were all taking a college-level class together, all reading Carr's biography of McCullers, and that we were reading and discussing the totality of her works. As it is, I'll be going to the meeting, sharing what I can, and then continuing afterwards on my own.
Which, as I'm finding out, is how McCullers herself lived her remarkable life...
LPK
Dreamwidth
1.20.2019
I told him I wasn't sure because, in my experience, books have different densities. By that I meant that some books take longer to read because they contain more information or because what they contain is less readily accessible due to the writer's style, approach to the material, etc. Or for other reasons, including my own density.
A hundred and fifty pages in, I would call Carr's book a fairly "dense" read. Not because her writing style is difficult but because there's so much detail and because McCullers herself packed so much life and so many people into such a short time. And because her relationships with people were invariably complex, if not problematic.
And so, at 150 pages we're only up to her second year as a published writer; she's spent the summer of 1940 at the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference and she's about to spend the summer of 1941 at the Yaddo artist's confab in Saratoga Springs.
My goal, when I first picked up Carr's bio, was to have reached the point in McCullers' career, in her life's narrative, where she'd written and published The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. To have gotten there by the time our book club would be meeting to discuss this work.
I seem to have done that, since our meeting is this coming Thursday. But really, there's so much to this, so much that I'd like to be able to read and share about this remarkable writer and human being.
What I really wish is that we were all taking a college-level class together, all reading Carr's biography of McCullers, and that we were reading and discussing the totality of her works. As it is, I'll be going to the meeting, sharing what I can, and then continuing afterwards on my own.
Which, as I'm finding out, is how McCullers herself lived her remarkable life...
LPK
Dreamwidth
1.20.2019
