The Ballad of the Sad Cafe: and Other Stories
by Carson McCullers
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Book Summary Information
Author: Carson McCullersEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-04-05
ISBN: 0618565868
Number of pages: 160
Publisher: Mariner Books
Book Reviews of The Ballad of the Sad Cafe: and Other Stories
Book Review: A Meditaiton on Unrequited Love
Summary: 5 Stars
The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories collects Carson McCullers's classic novella with the unfortunately small number of short stories that she wrote in her short life.
The novella is set in a small Georgia town and McCullers sets the tone of the place right away, with her first words: "The town itself is dreary;..." We are introduced to Miss Amelia, a hard-nosed and solitary woman who owns a general store. Miss Amelia was married once, long ago, to a man named Marvin Macy. Marvin was town's trouble-maker, but his love for Miss Amelia transformed him. He turned into a kind and gentle soul with her. But the marriage only lasted ten days, after which she ran him off. He then reverted to his old ways, running around the state robbing and stealing, until he ends up in the penitentiary.
In the present day, a hunchback named Lyman walks into town and tells Miss Amelia that he's her cousin. To the surprise of the town's residents, she takes in Cousin Lyman. Soon, the town begins to see changes in her. Like her ex-husband under the influence of love, she too becomes a kinder and gentler person. She turns her store into a café where the townspeople can meet. A sense of pride develops in the small town. But then one day a bitter Marvin Macy returns to town for his revenge.
This meditation on love is wonderful, McCullers's writing clear and poetic. I love how she often pauses to muse on a theme to better ground her story in them. She writes openly and beautifully of love, ("Often the beloved is only stimulus for all the stored-up love which has lain quiet within the lover for a long time hitherto....The beloved fears and hates the lover, and with the best 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 pain.") the value of human life, ("What is it (life) worth? If you look around, at times the value may seem to be little or nothing at all. Often after you have sweated and tried and things are not better for you, there comes a feeling deep down in the soul that you are not worth much.") and the isolation of living alone. (Once you have lived with another, it is great torture to have to live alone. The silence of a fire lit room when suddenly the clock stops ticking, the nervous shadows in an empty house--it is better to take in your mortal enemy than face the terror of living alone.) McCullers has a deep understanding of life, and it seems sometimes as if she wrote solely to share her revelations of pain and isolation.
The novella is a gem on its own, but this collection also contains six short stories. Two of the first three ("Wunderkind" and "Madame Zelinsky and the King of Finland") use music as a motif, which is another trait of McCullers that I love. (She was a promising pianist and was even enrolled in Julliard, though she never attended. Her classic novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was structured after the form of a fugue.) My favorites were "The Sojourner" and "A Domestic Dilemma". In the first, a single man approaching forty realizes how empty his life is when he visits his ex-wife and meets her new husband and child. Again, McCullers writes beautifully and with deep intelligence: "His own life seemed so solitary, a fragile column supporting nothing amidst the wreckage of years." In the second, a man comes home from a hard day's work to find his alcoholic wife drunk and their two children uncared for. His anger builds as he feeds and bathes and puts his children to bed while his wife is passed out drunk. Yet as he lies down next to her to go to sleep, his mood changes. As he watches her sleep peacefully, he remembers his love for her: "His hand sought the adjacent flesh and sorrow paralleled desire in the immense complexity of love."
This is a short collection--just over 150 pages--but it is filled with so much. This is a must buy for anyone who loves literature, especially the kind that reaches for the deepest understanding of human emotions.
Summary of The Ballad of the Sad Cafe: and Other Stories
A classic work that has charmed generations of readers, this collection assembles Carson McCullers?s best stories, including her beloved novella “The Ballad of the Sad Café.? A haunting tale of a human triangle that culminates in an astonishing brawl, the novella introduces readers to Miss Amelia, a formidable southern woman whose café serves as the town?s gathering place. Among other fine works, the collection also includes “Wunderkind,? McCullers?s first published story written when she was only seventeen about a musical prodigy who suddenly realizes she will not go on to become a great pianist. Newly reset and available for the first time in a handsome trade paperback edition, The Ballad of the Sad Café is a brilliant study of love and longing from one of the South?s finest writers.
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