The early stories of Carson McCullers and what they reveal

Let's face it - if Shakespeare hadn't written Hamlet, would anyone have ever heard of Titus Andronicus? Similarly, in a much diminished way, if Carson McCullers hadn't written The Member of the Wedding and The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, would there be any reason to read the short stories she wrote when she was a teenager in Columbus, Georgia, or a sophomore at NYU? No, the only reason we read them is to get a more full picture of the life and mind of the creator of these beloved and seminal novels. I picked up McCullers's "Complete Stories" mainly to read Ballad of the Sad Cafe, but now am going back to read the stories, which are obviously of uneven quality but, still, all things considered, pretty astonishing: The first 5 or so in the collection were unpublished for many years though one or two were published late in her life and others published in posthumous collection. The first, Sucker, about a teenage boy his is heartlessly mean to an adopted younger brother, is very powerful and gives a window into McCullers's sensibility: a strong identification with the outsiders and the lonely - putting her in the mainstream of American literary fiction, short stories in particular, in that regard - and an unflinching ability to look at psychological cruelty. Another one, Bright Sky?, seems quite autobiographical, about a teenage girl, deathly ill, more or less ignored by a self-involved mother. These stories would not stand up all that well on their own - but they don't have to; they do help us get a full picture of the mind of a fine writer, in the early stages of finding her voice and figuring out her world.