Book Review: Clock Without Hands, a novel by Carson McCullers (1961)

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.  

Book Review: Reflections in a Golden Eye, by Carson McCullers (1941)

Carson McCullers burst onto the literary scene in June 1940, with the publication of her first novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. McCullers was only 23 years old when the novel was published, and she quickly followed it up with a second novel, Reflections in a Golden Eye, published in February 1941, just eight months after The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.  

Reflections in a Golden Eye is a short novel, just 127 pages in my Mariner Books paperback, and it could even be considered a novella. Despite the low page count, there’s a LOT going on in it. Captain Penderton seems to be attracted to men, but he is definitely in the closet. His wife Leonora is having an affair with Major Langdon, who lives next door. Major Langdon’s wife Alison is in frail health, and she recently cut off her nipples with a pair of gardening shears. Ouch.  

And then there’s Private Williams, who has never seen a woman before and falls in love with Leonora as soon as he sees her. His obsession leads him to sneak into the Penderton household at night and watch Leonora sleep. You know, like you do.  

I didn’t especially like any of the characters in Reflections in a Golden Eye. That’s not a deal breaker for me with fiction; I don’t have to love the characters. But I usually need to identify with one of the characters, or be rooting for some specific outcome to happen. But with this novel I didn’t identify with any of the characters, and I didn’t especially care what happened to them. I guess I’d say that I wanted Alison to leave Langdon. And for the Pendertons to get a divorce, so then Leonora could keep shagging Langdon and Captain Penderton could find himself.  

McCullers doesn’t let the reader into the head of any of the characters in the novel. That’s an artistic choice, but ultimately the characters remain somewhat distant and mysterious because of this.  The characters seem clueless as to their own motivations for acting the way they do, and McCullers doesn’t feel the need to expand and expound on their motivations. And maybe that’s the point she’s making artistically and stylistically, that these characters don’t really know why they’re acting as they do, but it’s unsatisfying in some ways. 

Part of the reason Reflections in a Golden Eye isn’t a more detailed novel was surely because of the censorship that existed at the time. McCullers wouldn’t have been able to go into more detail about what was really happening with these characters behind closed doors. The novel is so close to high camp Southern Gothic, but it just can’t quite get there. That being said, I’d love to read an X-rated fan fiction version of the novel that dives into those details—where Penderton is actually having gay relationships, where Williams is masturbating as Leonora sleeps, where Alison is sleeping with the much older Lieutenant Weincheck that she hangs out with all of the time. All of this depravity is hinted at in the novel but not shown. The novel promises more kinky doings than it actually delivers, as Leonora says to her husband, “Son, have you ever been collared and dragged out in the street and thrashed by a naked woman?” (p.15) Well, that would be interesting to read about. But it never happens.  

My copy of Reflections in a Golden Eye features an Afterword by Tennessee Williams, which originally appeared as an Introduction to a 1950 New Directions reprint of the novel. (Not a 1971 reprint, as the text tells us.) Williams wrote “In her second novel the veil of a subjective tenderness, which is the one quality of her talent which she has occasionally used to some excess, was drawn away.” (p.130) Williams was right: The Heart is a Lonely Hunter has a wonderful tenderness and big-hearted empathy for all of its characters—it’s one of the remarkable qualities of the book. Williams is also right that the tenderness seems missing from Reflections in a Golden Eye. And to me, that’s one of the failings of the novel.  

Reflections in a Golden Eye is a fascinating novel that feels like a bit of a missed opportunity. But it’s an interesting book for fans of McCullers and Southern Gothic.