CARSON MCCULLERS ON PAIN
How much can one person bear? “More” would be the answer of Carson McCullers, the novelist who was described at her death as having a “vocation of pain.” “Much of her art,” a critic related, “seemed to have flowed from her own tortured life.” Before she was twenty-nine, Mrs. McCullers had suffered three strokes which paralyzed her left side. Discouraged, she imagined she could never write again. But gradually, a page a day, she resumed her work. The ever-present pain intensified in her later years. Her husband committed suicide, and illness left her a virtual cripple. In a rare mention of her troubles, she said, “Sometimes I think God got me mixed up with Job. But Job never cursed God, and neither have I. I carry on.” From Contemporary Illustrations for Speakers and Teachers, by A. D. Dennison, Jr., published by Zondervan Publishing, Grand Rapids, 1976
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