Now, a Literary Moment...

Growing up, writer Carson McCullers wanted to be a concert pianist. A serious illness helped put an end to those dreams. Yet the experience of music animates her novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. One character especially: a schoolgirl named Mick Kelly.

Blake Hazard: I love the way that McCullers writes about Mick experiencing music, and how physical it is, and how un-intellectualized, and how just down-to-earth it is, and you really feel it, you know, when she writes about Mick sitting out there in the backyard listening to someone else's radio."

That's Blake Hazard. She's part of a musical duo called "The Submarines." She says McCullers' writing has special resonance during Mick's most private moments …

Blake Hazard: What I related to the most, musically, in the book was her little notebook of compositions -- her unfinished compositions -- and the frustration she had at not understanding it. And yet this music kept playing back to her, again and again in her head, and she just wanted to get it down and understand it. And it was so secret to her, you know, it just wasn't something she wanted to share with anyone."

Songwriter Blake Hazard, talking about Carson McCullers's first novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

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