There are some books that just speak to you, that make you want to meet the characters. I think that is this book for me, I empathize with the girl Mick and the feeling of escapism that occurs with her music. For me in my life I would escape to books or poetry. The feeling that you are tied down to a life that is not your choosing. That is how I felt around her age, you want to see so much, but family circumstances keep you from that choice.
All the characters in this book seemed to find their center around Mr. Singer, but Mr. Singers center was always around his friend Spiros Antonapoulos, even when this friend was taken away and put in a home. Mick was infatuated with Mr. Singer, following him around and thinking he was the best thing in her whole world. Jake Blount also befriended him because he would pay attention to what he was saying. Jake Blount was a communist and believed that there should be no division of classes. All the people in the bar he frequented made fun of him and his first meeting with Mr. Singer, he felt here was someone who could listen. He did not realize he was a deaf mute, but even when he did learn this he still would visit and express his ideals. Then there was Dr. Copeland, a black doctor in a time when black people were still very much oppressed and thought of as less than human. He also believed that something should happen to elevate the human condition and would frequent Mr. Singer's apartment just to talk things out. The final character in the book centered on Mr. Singer was the bartender Biff Brannon, especially after his wife died. I think he was trying to figure out who he was throughout the book.
All these characters live in the 1930's. The book was initially published in 1940's and yet there are some freaky references, in part two chapter 13: Dr. Copeland is talking to Jake Blount about equality. He has a solution that is shot down by Jake Blount. He says on page 303, "I have a program. It is a very simple, concentrated plan. I mean to focus on one objective. In August of this year I plan to lead more than one thousand Negroes in this county on a march. A march to Washington. All of us together in one solid body." This sounds very much like what Martin Luther King does on August 28,1963, he leads 250,000 to the Lincoln Memorial, yet this is written by a woman in the 1940's. I wonder if Martin Luther King ever read this book. Another eerie description comes in the form of a dream by Jake Blount on page 348, he describes this scene: " He was walking with a great crowd of people... there was something Eastern about the people... There was a terrible bright sun and the people were half naked. They were silent and slow and their faces had a look of starvation." For some reason when I read this all I could think about were photo's of holocaust victims.
I will not reveal the ending of the book, but I did not want it to end, I wanted to know what became of the characters, especially Mick. Did she ever get to follow her dreams? What happens to the others, Jake, Dr. Copeland, Portia, Willy and Biff? A really good read and I agree with the back cover a book to reread.
A little about the author, according to the back page she was 23 when she published the book and died at the age of 50. That means she would have died in 1967, I wonder if she was associated with Martin Luther King. Things I learned from Wikipedia, McCullers went to Julliard to study piano, Mick in the book is writing music and longs for a piano. McCullers father is a watchmaker, Mick's father is a watchmaker. So apparently she did write what she knew. She died from a brain hemorrhage. She had multiple famous friends, but unless I read her autobiography, they do not mention her meeting Martin Luther King. I wonder if I can find that biography. I will have to find her other books, glad that this one was suggested by the reading challenge.
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