Now, a Literary Moment...

A man named John Singer is a central character in Carson McCullers' The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. The novel is set in a Georgia mill town during the 1930s. Singer is deaf and mute. Yet people are drawn to him to speak their innermost thoughts.

Actor Alan Arkin: What I loved about the character was his goodness and his complexity. Everybody uses him as a sounding board, and of course he's not hearing what he's being told. Each person's got a different need, but it's basically everybody's crying out to be heard and to be understood, and then they come to someone who can't hear them – which is a wonderful kind of irony.

Actor Alan Arkin. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of Singer in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers.

This Literary Moment was created by the National Endowment for the Arts.