Reading Again...

I'm re-reading The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McClullers once more. No wonder she wrote a book with that title, here's her picture.

Woof! Woof!

To be just, she was a wonderful writer who did speak to the mass of humanity that goes through life alone, lonely. To be fair also, she had a series of strokes in her life that slowly paralyzed her and destroyed her looks.

There's a passage she wrote that rang so true. Here it is:

“It is for this reason that most of us would rather love than be loved. Almost everyone wants to be the lover. And the curt truth is that, in a deep secret way, the state of being beloved is intolerable to many. The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best of reasons. For the lover is forever trying to strip bare his beloved. The lover craves any possible relation with the beloved, even if this experience can cause him only pain.”

All of us, have been the intent of someone who loved us too much and what a encumbrance that is, huh? And at the same time, we too have swamped another and made them unhappy. We all have been through it, no matter which side of the fence we were on, and there was nor will there be any resolution to this problem. People are lopsided and anything they do will be lopsided as well.

I can count times when I didn't want the attention of a particular girl and other times when my similar affections were snubbed by another. There is no way to let down the other easily when they're sick with love. There is no other answer they want to hear but a Yes!

Messy, messy, messy are relationships. I know. I've torpedoed several and have had them sunk on me as well.

And yet we plunge directly down into them time and again.

Here's an interesting excerpt from Graham Greene on McClullers.

“McCullers and perhaps Mr. Faulkner are the only writers since the death of D. H. Lawrence with an original poetic sensibility. I prefer McCullers to Mr. Faulkner because she writes more clearly; I prefer her to D. H. Lawrence because she has no message.