“There's
nothing that makes you so aware of the improvisation of human existence as a
song unfinished. Or an old address book.” – Carson
McCullers
Born Lula Carson
Smith on this date in 1917 (in Columbus, GA, a place I “hung out” in for a time
during my Army days at nearby Ft. Benning), McCullers was an American novelist,
short story writer, playwright, essayist, and poet whose stories not only were
successful in print but also successfully adapted into stage or film versions.
Among her biggest
sellers were The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter,
The Member of the Wedding and Reflections In A Golden Eye, all adapted
into highly popular stage or screen productions. While writing was her ultimate passion, she
had planned to be a professional musician and was accepted to study at the prestigious
Julliard School of Music in New York City.
But en route to enroll, she lost her tuition money and decided instead to work
in New York. After meeting and marrying a young soldier named Reeves McCullers, she decided to try her hand at writing using her middle name and new last name as a pseudonymn. Her first effort was the wildly successful "Heart," and the rest, as they say . . . 
McCullers, who suffered from a number of illnesses and died at age 50, is often described as a “Southern Gothic” writer, indicative of both the settings and style of her stories and her tendency toward depression and loneliness
despite her popularity as a writer.
“But,” she said, “I live with the
people I create and that has always made my essential loneliness less keen.”
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