Book Review: Reflections in a Golden Eye, by Carson McCullers (1941)

Carson McCullers burst onto the literary scene in June 1940, with the publication of her first novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. McCullers was only 23 years old when the novel was published, and she quickly followed it up with a second novel, Reflections in a Golden Eye, published in February 1941, just eight months after The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.  

Reflections in a Golden Eye is a short novel, just 127 pages in my Mariner Books paperback, and it could even be considered a novella. Despite the low page count, there’s a LOT going on in it. Captain Penderton seems to be attracted to men, but he is definitely in the closet. His wife Leonora is having an affair with Major Langdon, who lives next door. Major Langdon’s wife Alison is in frail health, and she recently cut off her nipples with a pair of gardening shears. Ouch.  

And then there’s Private Williams, who has never seen a woman before and falls in love with Leonora as soon as he sees her. His obsession leads him to sneak into the Penderton household at night and watch Leonora sleep. You know, like you do.  

I didn’t especially like any of the characters in Reflections in a Golden Eye. That’s not a deal breaker for me with fiction; I don’t have to love the characters. But I usually need to identify with one of the characters, or be rooting for some specific outcome to happen. But with this novel I didn’t identify with any of the characters, and I didn’t especially care what happened to them. I guess I’d say that I wanted Alison to leave Langdon. And for the Pendertons to get a divorce, so then Leonora could keep shagging Langdon and Captain Penderton could find himself.  

McCullers doesn’t let the reader into the head of any of the characters in the novel. That’s an artistic choice, but ultimately the characters remain somewhat distant and mysterious because of this.  The characters seem clueless as to their own motivations for acting the way they do, and McCullers doesn’t feel the need to expand and expound on their motivations. And maybe that’s the point she’s making artistically and stylistically, that these characters don’t really know why they’re acting as they do, but it’s unsatisfying in some ways. 

Part of the reason Reflections in a Golden Eye isn’t a more detailed novel was surely because of the censorship that existed at the time. McCullers wouldn’t have been able to go into more detail about what was really happening with these characters behind closed doors. The novel is so close to high camp Southern Gothic, but it just can’t quite get there. That being said, I’d love to read an X-rated fan fiction version of the novel that dives into those details—where Penderton is actually having gay relationships, where Williams is masturbating as Leonora sleeps, where Alison is sleeping with the much older Lieutenant Weincheck that she hangs out with all of the time. All of this depravity is hinted at in the novel but not shown. The novel promises more kinky doings than it actually delivers, as Leonora says to her husband, “Son, have you ever been collared and dragged out in the street and thrashed by a naked woman?” (p.15) Well, that would be interesting to read about. But it never happens.  

My copy of Reflections in a Golden Eye features an Afterword by Tennessee Williams, which originally appeared as an Introduction to a 1950 New Directions reprint of the novel. (Not a 1971 reprint, as the text tells us.) Williams wrote “In her second novel the veil of a subjective tenderness, which is the one quality of her talent which she has occasionally used to some excess, was drawn away.” (p.130) Williams was right: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter has a wonderful tenderness and big-hearted empathy for all of its characters—it’s one of the remarkable qualities of the book. Williams is also right that the tenderness seems missing from Reflections in a Golden Eye. And to me, that’s one of the failings of the novel.  

Reflections in a Golden Eye is a fascinating novel that feels like a bit of a missed opportunity. But it’s an interesting book for fans of McCullers and Southern Gothic. 

Book Review: The Ballad of the Sad Cafe by Carson McCullers (1951)

Carson McCullers’ novella The Ballad of the Sad Cafe was first published in the magazine Harper’s Bazaar in 1943, then collected in a 1951 book that also collected McCullers’ other novels as well. Currently, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe is most often collected with six of McCullers’ short stories.  

The Ballad of the Sad Cafe tells the story of Miss Amelia, who opens a cafe in her small Southern town. The opening of the novella describes the bleak setting: “The town itself is dreary...the town is lonesome, sad, and like a place that is far off and estranged from all other places in the world.” (3)  

Miss Amelia is a fascinating character. She is perhaps the wealthiest person in the small town, and something of an outcast and loner. “She was a dark, tall woman with bones and muscles like a man. Her hair was cut short and brushed back from the forehead...There were those who would have courted her, but Miss Amelia cared nothing for the love of men and was a solitary person.” (4) As we can see from this excerpt, Miss Amelia is described as subverting the gender expectations of her time. Are we meant to interpret Miss Amelia as a queer character? I’m not sure, since we’re not given any clues that Miss Amelia is attracted to women.  

Everything changes in Miss Amelia’s life when a hunchback named Lymon Willis comes to town, claiming he’s a distant relative of hers. To the surprise of all, she welcomes Lymon in and lets him live in her house. She also turns her store into a cafe, and Miss Amelia becomes a most unlikely hostess.  

I read The Ballad of the Sad Cafe in high school, for a class on Short Novels, and I really enjoyed it at the time. One of the passages that has always stayed with me are four paragraphs about love. “First of all, love is a joint experience between two persons—but the fact that it is a joint experience does not mean that it is a similar experience to the two people involved. There are the lover and the beloved, but these two come from different countries...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.” (25-6) That idea has always fascinated me, that couples are comprised of a lover and a beloved. I’m not sure how accurate I find that idea to be in practice, but it’s a very interesting thesis.  

The conflict in the novel occurs when Marvin Macy returns to town after serving time in prison. He was briefly married to Miss Amelia, but suffice it to say, their marriage was a disaster.  

I enjoyed The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, but I have some notes on it. It’s told by a third-person omniscient narrator, and the narrative voice is very intrusive. I’m not sure if the narrative voice needed to be so intrusive—it feels very different from the third-person narrative voice in McCullers’ novels The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and The Member of the Wedding.  

The Ballad of the Sad Cafe was adapted as a play by Edward Albee in 1963, and I can understand why someone would want to adapt it to a different medium, as there is so much in the novella that goes unsaid, or could be expanded upon.  

The six short stories are a mixed bag, as short stories usually are. The first story, “Wunderkind” was my favorite, and it was McCullers’ first published short story, written when she was just seventeen years old. It shows a young writer effectively harnessing her talents. “The Sojourner” was effective, and it reminded me a lot of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s work—McCullers must have read Fitzgerald’s short story “Babylon Revisited.” The final short story in the book, “A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud,” felt like a pastiche of Thomas Wolfe’s style. Even the title was reminiscent of Wolfe’s often-repeated phrase “A stone, a leaf, a door,” which he used in his debut novel Look Homeward, Angel. Perhaps the story was meant as an affectionate tribute from one Southern writer to another.  

I’d recommend The Ballad of the Sad Cafe; it’s a story that will stick with you long after you finish reading it.