SOURCE: Rubin, Jr., Louis D. “Carson McCullers: The Aesthetic of Pain.” Virginia Quarterly Review 53, no. 2 (spring 1977): 265-83.

In the following essay, Rubin asserts that many of the main thematic concerns in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter are drawn from McCullers's own life.

I think it is not without importance that the all-night restaurant in Carson McCullers's first novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, is called The New York Cafe. In the small-sized Southern city in the late 1930's, when the story takes place, there is little doing at night and none of the people involved in the story is either very contented or very hopeful; the New York Cafe is the only place for them to go, and its forlorn hospitality is indicative of what is barren and joyless about the lives of those who go there. From Columbus, Georgia to New York City is a...