MarysLibrary

"They heard about them in the newspapers."

“Am I embarrassed to speak for a less than perfect democracy? Not one bit. Find me a better one. Do I suppose there are societies which are free of sin? No, I don’t. Do I think ours is, on balance, incomparably the most hopeful set of human relations the world has? Yes, I do. Have we done obscene things? Yes, we have. How did our people learn about them? They learned about them in the newspapers.” -- Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Ambassador to the United Nations: 

Don't let her shred your heart . . .

When Lula Carson Smith graduated from high school in Columbus, Georgia, she went off to study at the Julliard in New York City, an immensely different sort of place from her hometown. Back in the late '60s I lived for a time in Columbus, Georgia, and when I left there I, too, moved to the NY City area and I can attest that even then, 30 years after McCullers arrived it was a sharp culture shock to go from a little city on the Chatahoochee, a place of urban blight whose primary industry appeared to be prostitution, to the Big City on the Hudson, humming with life and art.

She struggled to adapt and before long she gave up music, married, became Carson McCullers, and wrote The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, a classic of what became known as Southern Gothic. All of her work is about the sadness and loneliness of outsiders and she is one of the - perhaps THE best - Southern novelist before William Faulkner came along, though the other well known Georgia novelist of Southern Gothic, Flannery O'Connor, was a stiff critic of her novels, calling one of them the worst book she had ever read.

McCullers' books are hard to read. I find I either dislike the characters and have trouble empathizing with their troubles - and believe me all of her people have troubles. Or I find myself liking somebody and being brokenhearted because everybody comes to grief. As did McCullers. She had rheumatic fever and became an alcoholic, suffering a series of strokes from an early age, and living the last 20 years or so in a wheelchair. 

So if you decide to read The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter be forewarned. It's best to back off from her novels - sort of like watching a horror movie in the middle of the day with all the windows open and lots of people in the house. She is a skilled writer and she will shred your heart if you let her.

My first library card

When I got my first library card, this is the first book I borrowed. It was in Acushnet, Massachusetts. That library card changed my life.

The book was The Bartletts of Box-B Ranch by Camilla Campbell.

I was nine years old and this was my first visit to a library. I went each week after our Girl Scout meeting with my friend, Elaine Craven, climbing the many steps to the front door of the Russell Memorial Library on Main Street. I was allowed to borrow one book each week and I chose this first book because Elaine had liked it and I loved cowboys. 

I read every book I borrowed the day I got it home and then re-read it every day for the rest of the week.

So often we don't remember the beginning of life changing experiences, but that day is clear in my mind.