On the “Sad, Happy Life” of Carson McCullers

June 4, 1940. Publication day of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. Carson McCullers, twenty-three years old, was alone in a cheap boardinghouse on New York’s West Side. Her husband of almost three years was elsewhere, on a sailboat with a friend; a new note seemed to be sounding in her marriage since her book was, after more than two years of writing, finally seeing the light of day.