Clock Without Hands, published in 1961, was Carson McCullers’ final novel. McCullers died in 1967, at the young age of 50. Rheumatic fever had weakened her heart, and it was clear from early in her life that she would most likely not live out her full “three score and ten” years. McCullers left behind a substantial bibliography.
Clock Without Hands received excellent reviews when it was published. The New York Herald Tribune proclaimed, “It may be too strong, too frank for many. But not a word could be added or taken away from this marvel of a novel.” (Quoted on the back cover of the 1963 Bantam paperback.) The Atlantic Monthly said it was “The most impressive of her novels.”
Gore Vidal wrote in a review: “McCullers is marvelous to read, and her genius for prose remains one of the few satisfying achievements of our second-rate culture.” As any Gore Vidal fan knows, this praise is all the more impressive because Vidal was not known to express his enthusiasm very often. As Frasier Crane said in an episode of Frasier, “Gore Vidal? He hates everything!”
The novel begins with pharmacist J.T. Malone learning that he has leukemia and only has about a year and a half to live. Malone is a quiet, unobtrusive Everyman. He is friends with the Judge, who is 85 years old, a former member of the House of Representatives, and a leading citizen of the small Georgia town in which the novel takes place.
The Judge is really the main character of the novel, as most of the action revolves around him, his 17-year-old grandson Jester, and Sherman Pew, a young Black man with blue eyes who becomes the Judge’s secretary.
The Judge still has dreams of getting back into politics, and he tells Jester of his idea to have Confederate currency redeemed by the U.S. government, including adjustments for inflation. It’s a truly bizarre idea, like a reverse reparations. It’s also evidence of how the Judge is living in the past and still adhering to the myth of the “Lost Cause.”
The Judge is a larger-than-life character, and he dominates the novel. He is a convincing character, and I can picture him clearly in my mind. Jester and Sherman, not so much. Although Jester became slightly clearer in my mind when I imagined him being played by a young Anthony Perkins.
Jester and Sherman are intrigued by each other, and they carry on a lot of homoerotic hate flirting that never turns into anything more serious.
Clock Without Hands is an example of a novel that tackles an Important Issue in society, but the points the novel wants to make are achieved through cardboard characters who are archetypes and not fully fledged people.
There are no major female characters in Clock Without Hands, and I think that’s a weakness of the novel. I would like to know more about Malone’s wife, and her Coca-Cola stock she owns that’s mentioned so many times. What is she like? How is she negotiating life in this small town? She would like to be an entrepreneur, but her husband doesn’t like the idea of her working outside of the home. And I wonder what the point was of having Malone in the story at all? I feel as though he could easily be taken out of the novel, and it wouldn’t be affected very much.
As realistic as I found the Judge to be, I was skeptical when the Judge says to Sherman, “No, I’m not a bit religious.” (p.173) The Judge is so conventional in all of his thoughts and actions that we see, and so conservative. Why wouldn’t he be a churchgoer? This was a man who was a Judge, who was a member of the esteemed House of Representatives of the United States, and man who was born around the year of our Lord 1868, in a small town in Georgia, and he says he’s not religious? Well, I bet you as sure as anything that if he wasn’t religious, he was the only freethinker in that there whole town! No, I picture the Judge attending one of those fine old solid Baptist churches. I reckon that he could even give a fine sermon some Sunday if’n he’d put his mind to it.
I found Clock Without Hands to be the weakest of Carson McCullers’ novels. That being said, it’s still full of fine writing, but it pales in comparison to her masterpieces The Heart is a Lonely Hunter and The Member of the Wedding.
