Houses tell the stories of people who have loved and suffered there, done their work and moved on.
But few houses tell them as eloquently and insistently as the white Victorian, with the gauzy curtains at the windows, shutters a bit askew and tall hedges out front, where Carson McCullers, literary prodigy and tortured invalid, lived for nearly half her 50 years. With McCullers's death in 1967, of a brain hemorrhage, the house might have been turned into a museum, like Edward Hopper's childhood home down the street. Instead, it lives on as an artists' colony, a miniature Yaddo, which reverberates with the spirit of its longtime owner. Its five apartments are home to a performance artist, a sculptor, an essayist and two poets, who know they are keepers of the flame. In fact, two of them, Constance DeJong, a performance artist, and Jeanne Atkin, a sculptor, have explicitly honored McCullers's memory by collaborating on an art exhibit, which opened May 6 at the Hopper Art Center here.