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26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
AS DARK AS DARK CAN BE, I CERTAINLY MUST SAY..., February 1, 2003
The edition of this novel that I own is the one with the introduction written by Tennessee Williams - and that introduction makes a lot of valid points about the novel itself, the darkness that it contains (or attempts to contain - this depth of darkness burns through boundaries), and the reception it received upon its original publication. On this last topic, it should be noted that the novel (her second) was not nearly as well received as McCullers' debut masterpiece, THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER. Williams points out - and rightly so - that `...in her second novel the veil of a subjective tenderness...was drawn away.' What readers and critics were left with was a chilling - and compelling - portrait of six people wrecking together at a fog-shrouded emotional intersection in their lives. It's not a pretty sight - but McCullers' incredible writing simply will not allow us (or her characters) to turn away. The characters slam together completely out of emotional control - mainly because none of them really know themselves deeply enough to understand what they're feeling or experiencing. It's excruciating - and fascinating - to watch. The book may not have been well received critically when it was new - but time has shown McCullers' talents to be long lasting. She is truly one of the giants of 20th century literature.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Poetry of Menace, April 26, 2005
This review is from: Reflections in a Golden Eye (Paperback)
This novella is a brave, bald exploration of homosexuality and infidelity in the military. It presents itself as a rare event that disturbs the routine dullness of peacetime military life. The small circle of characters is individually and collectively self-destructive. There's Captain Penderton, who comes to nurse ambivalent homosexual yearnings for Private Williams, who fancies his wife. Meanwhile, Mrs Leonora Pederton is sleeping with General Langdon, whose wife, Alison, eventually succumbs to a complete breakdown of sanity. Got that? Good. It's compulsive stuff. In this narrow social circle, author McCullers sets "normal" domestic events such as cooking delicious Southern dinners, and card evenings, against sexual episodes (both overt and latent). These range from Private Williams crouching in Mrs Penderton's room all night long to observe her sleeping naked, through to the tormentedly homosexual Captain Pemberton wrecking the body and spirit of his wife's horse on a particularly brutal ride. In some ways, the strangest character is the Langdons' Filipino houseboy, Anacleto. Effete, devoted and fastidious to a "T", a would-be dancer and artist, he provides tragic Mrs Langdon with a kind of love. And it is Anacleto's artistic vision of a peacock with grotesque reflections in its golden eye that explains the title. Typically of McCullers's Southern Gothicism, the writing infuses poetry with a feeling of utter menace. At times it's scarily bald, yet lyrical: "In the sky there was a white brilliant moon and the night was cold and silvery." Some have found it too short, but I don't see that as a problem. It's a quick, chillingly stylish read that plumbs hidden psychological depths and doesn't shrink from uncomfortable truths.
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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Strange but Effective Story, May 20, 2005
This review is from: Reflections in a Golden Eye (Paperback)
Written in 1941, Carson McCullers' second novel probably qualifies as a novella or long short story. Surely it was light years ahead of its time as Ms. McCullers takes on homosexuality-- latent and the other kind, masochism, adultery, voyeurism, self-mutilation, a nervous breakdown and animal cruelty in fewer than a hundred pages. In the hands of a lesser writer, this tale would have degenerated into a trashy detective story. Ms. McCullers, however, manages to make the characters, with all their warts, believable, and for the most part, sympathetic. Captain Penderton, for example, is tormented by his hidden feelings for other men-- he is simultaneously attracted to both Private Williams as well as Major Langdon and hates Williams, even though he ought to despise the Major since he is cuckolding the Captain who, along with everyone else, knows about it. But Penderton is a real person, unhappy, lonely but capable of murder. Ms. McCullers keeps this story first class with her spare, though poetic language. "An army post [the story is set on a military post in the 1930's in the South] in peacetime is a dull place. Things happen, but then they happen over and over again. . . At the same time things do occasionally happen on an army post that are not likely to re-occur. There is a fort in the South where a few years ago a murder was committed. The participants of this tragedy were: two officers, a soldier, two women, a Filipino, and a horse." With those opening lines, the story begins and never slows down. I never had an English professor who would give Carson McCullers the time of day. Her novels were too gothic, her plots unbelievable, there were too many kinks in her characters. Could it have been that her stories were too close to home or were they jealous of her popularity with the reading public from the publication of her first novel THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER? REFLECTIONS IN A GOLDEN EYE holds up well on a second reading. Made into a movie by John Houston in 1967 starring Marlon Brando-- in one of his best roles-- and Elizabeth Taylor, this novel is ripe for a remake now by someone with the talent of Mike Nichols.
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