The Crazy Epperson Sisters

The Epperson sisters, Eustace, Cora, and Annie were "genuinely not right."(pg 16) One day in spring the Epperson sisters decide that they are triplets and go to the county clerck to declare themselves as triplets. When they get to the county clerck, Mr. Woodley, he notices that one is considerably older than the other two, and that they do not look alike. Eustace the oldest looking one, asks the clerck to check to check the records and find a document that certifies their triplethood. After Mr. Woodley researches the Eppersons, he discovers that the three are not triplets and one, Cora, is not even an Epperson sister, but a cousin of the Eppersons. All of the Eppersons start to cry out that the statement is a lie. Because Mr. Woodley wants some peace, he offers to declare Cora and Annie as twins. They do not seem happy about that so the sheriff, Sheriff Browner, decides to let the three women legitimize their triplethood if they can get fifty adults to sign a petition that verifies their triplethood. They claim "that they have been victimized by somesort of terrible prenatal injustice."(pg 21) Everyone that is asked signs because they see no harm in making them triplets. After getting fifty people to sign the petition, The Epperson sisters take the petition to Sheriff Browner. Three days after the legalized triplethood, two men who work for the state, come and take the three Epperson sisters away. They take them to Dix Hill mental facility where they are declared to be "disoriented as to reality."(pg 23)

Something must have happened to contribute to their insanity. The death of their parents at a very early age could have been a factor to their insanity. It is also very weird that Cora does not remember being a cousin since she was brought to the Epperson's when she was five years old. These three women are not the only insane people in this book, but they appealed to me for strange many reasons and now we will have to see what crazy people do next int the town of Neely.

Works Cited for image study

Works Cited

"1920s fashion on Flickr - Photo Sharing!" Welcome to Flickr - Photo Sharing. Web. 23 Nov. 2009. http://www.flickr.com/photos/34476659@N02/3550956558/.

"Apparently Useless Software: Fancy Chimpanzee Friday." PerversionTracker. Web. 07 Dec. 2009. http://www.perversiontracker.com/oldarchives/000298.html.

"Google Image Result for http://graphic-design.tjs-labs.com/pictures/tareyton-post-06-04-1960-005.jpg." Google Images. Web. 23 Nov. 2009. http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://graphic-design.tjs-labs.com/pictures/tareyton-post-06-04-1960-005.jpg&imgrefurl=http://graphic-design.tjs-labs.com/gallery-view%3Fyear%3D1960&usg=__-sp-dQZgRlQlGduCJp22AvCf16s=&h=1250&w=975&sz=205&hl=en&start=15&sig2=tAR-YRHQbCSVoyS48Sbpkw&tbnid=a7ro9a8LlgO7RM:&tbnh=150&tbnw=117&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dtareyton%2Bcigarettes%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX&ei=IY4dS7ruAdPR8AbAoqXqAw.

Welcome to the Village of Arroww. Web. 23 Nov. 2009. http://www.villageofarrowwood.ca/.

Personal Response 1

I have read less than half of A Short History of a Small Place, and have found it to be very interesting so far. Things are starting to develop throughout the novel and I decided that this would be a good time to give my personal response on what I have read so far.

Louis Benfield is a young boy in the town of Neely in North Carolina. In his little town, there are a lot of weird things happening. There does not seem to be a plot in the story so far, but there seems to be a reoccuring theme of people commiting suicide, deaths, and insanity, which is srtange since the book is meant to be funny. So far three sisters who were totally insane get shipped off to a mental asylum, the mayor chokes on a turnip and dies, the elegant Miss Pettigrew commits suicide by falling off a water tower, and an old lady is slaughtered. Even with all the deaths and crazy people the book is enjoyable and easy to read. The deaths and insanity contribute to the books enjoyablity because of the way that it happens.

T.R. Pearsons way of writing is still confusing at this point. He writes extremely long sentences that are very hard to understand because he does not clearly state who "she" or "he" is. One example of his long confusing sentence is, "He said Everet Little, the jailer's boy, was riding the iron gate in and out of the yard and half the town was standing up snug against the fence watching her jig on the lawn and cut capers on the oak stump where the geraniums should have been. Aunt Willa Bristow was up on the porch, he said, but she never came down to retrieve her, never even came out from the shadows hard up against the house, and he said she danced as tireless and light as a child all across the yard and up onto the stump and off again, and she brought the hem of the bedsheet up under her nose and played out what Daddy called the siege of Thebes, taking all of the voices herself and making the likes of a swordfight by beating together a hickory branch and a piece of a staub." (Pg 10 - 11) Those two sentences are basically what the whole books reads like. It is very hard to distinguish which character Pearson is talking about, and it makes the things more confusing. These sentences are run ons and it makes it drag on. Other than the extremely long confusing sentences, the book is entertaining and never boring.

As I continue to read the story, weirder things happen, which I happen enjoy. I hope that things will continue to go into weird matters because those events encourage me to keep reading. As I continue to see Pearson's way of writing, I hope that I will get used to it and be less confused on matters. I am very excited to keep reading so that I can figure out the plot of the story. I look foward to finding out the short history of a small place.

Quotes

Throughout the book, I picked out a few quotes that I found interesting. Now, I will explain to you why they caught my attention and what they mean.


"Then Mr. Small told how he bolted across the street and discovered that Miss Pettigrew, although noticeably dead, did not appear disfigured or brutalized at all except for the scratches from the rose thorns, and he said it was next to miraculous to him how Miss Pettigrew’s hat had managed to remain in its proper place atop her head." Pg. 57

Right after Miss Pettigrew falls off the water tower, Mr. Small discovers that she is dead. Mr. Small tells of Miss Pettigrew’s condition to Louis Benfield and his father when they come to check out the scene. It is weird that Miss Pettigrew is found in this condition after such a hard and brutal fall from the tower. I believe that her condition after the fall shows how elegant and glorious she actually is. Throughout the beginning of the book, Pearson describes the Pettigrew family as fancy, rich, and elegant. By making Miss Pettigrew “presentable,” when she should be mangled and disfigured, he is showing that even after inflicting such a horrible death upon herself, she is and always will be the elegant Miss Pettigrew of the Pettigrew fortune because it is what is was born into.


"Most people suppose you have to be weak and cowardly to take your own life; Daddy said that you had to be brave. He didn’t see any other way for a man to bugger fate except by his own hand, and I always got the feeling Daddy would have tried it himself if he didn’t have to die from it. The idea was really all he was warm to." Pg. 54

This is being thought by Louis Benfield after a lot of the people of Neely commit suicide. He remembers of how Daddy “had a soft spot for suicide” and how daddy would tell him stories of Romans and Greeks killing themselves. With all the people dying in the town of Neely, Daddy thinks about how brave all these people are. Others in town think it is a weakness and a breaking point after losing sanity. I think that this quote shows that Daddy is different from others in the way that he thinks and that he understands things about people that others do not.


“I didn’t think the old girl had it in her.” Pg. 55

Daddy says this to Momma and Louis right after Miss Pettigrew commits suicide. Daddy always thought someone had to be brave to kill themselves. It seems to me that Daddy is actually very proud of Miss Pettigrew, who was sort of insane yet very elegant. He probably never expected someone of that much class and grace to do something of that matter. He actually seems very happy for Miss Pettigrew, not because he wanted her dead but because he now knows that Miss Pettigrew was a strong and brave person, willing to do something about her life by taking it herself.

"Miss Pettigrew had been beautiful until she got old and wasn’t beautiful anymore and then she had become merely elegant. That’s where she was when she took the pot of geraniums off the stump and climbed up onto it herself, and Momma and all the women of Neely suffered a kind of defeat that afternoon because they themselves were not elegant, did not lead elegant lives, and required for their own satisfaction that miss Pettigrew do it for them." Pg. 29

This is the quote that starts to tell of Miss Pettigrew's insane behavior. Miss Pettigrew was the most elegant person in the town and other women envied her elegance. Then one day when Miss Pettigrew ties a bed sheet around her neck and stands on a stump, people start to realize that she has become insane and is no longer the elegant aristocrat that people once knew her to be. All the women relied on Miss Pettigrew to be elegant for the whole town and an insane lady can not be someone who is looked up to for elegance. Therefore all the women's hopes in having someone elegant enough for the whole town dwindle.

Image Study

This picture reminds me of the Epperson sisters. The book says that they dress similarly so that pretending to be triplets comes more easily. When I imagine the Eppersons, I think of three women who dress funny and act strangely. These women in the picture are not particularly being weird, but when I look at this picture, I imagine that they are weird and insane just because of the connection of three women being together like the Eppersons.

The first description of Daddy by Louis in A Short History of a Small Place is "Daddy was afflicted by what Momma called an involvement with tobacco, which seemed to mean that he was always either smoking, had just smoked, or was preparing to smoke a Tareyton."(Pg. 10) Daddy is said to be a heavy smoker who smokes Tareytons one after another. This image reminds me of Daddy because these cigarettes are something that I associate him with. The book says that he pops cigarettes into his mouth and most likely has one in his mouth at any given moment. I felt that smoking is such a big part of his life that when I imagine Daddy, I imagine a man whose face is unclear with smoke around it. Even though the face is unclear, I always imagine him with a cigarette in between his fingers.

In A Short History of a Small Place, Miss Pettigrew owns a chimpanzee who wears clothes named Mr. Britches. He is named Mr.Britches because he wears everything but pants. Although this chimpanzee is wearing pants, it reminded me of Mr. Britches because he is wearing a hat and a shirt like in the book, and because he is a chimpanzee that I imagine all look the same. Mr.Britches also likes to sit atop of things and this image, I thought, was almost perfect in representing what Mr. Britches would be like.

This is what I pictured in my head when I read about the water tower that Miss Pettigrew fell off of. The author describes the water tower to be huge, silver, and able to be seen by motorists traveling through Neely. Pearson describes it as a gem. This picture does not represent it as a gem but this is what I imagined it to look like since I have never seen a beautiful water tower before. This image makes me cringe because with this image comes the image of an old lady falling off of a water tower.

Introduction of author/ book

I have just started reading A Short History of a Small Place by T.R. Pearson. I started to read it because the description of the book was funny, all the reviews for the book were great, and because the back of the book said that it is "marvelously funny, bittersweet, and beautifully evocative." I am less than half way done with the book, so at this time I decided that I should look into the author to understand why he chose to write a book about the south, death, and insanity.

It turns out that T.R. Pearson was born and raised in Winston-Salem, North Carolina which is located near the imaginary town of Neely, North Carolina in his book A Short History of a Small Place. Pearson also mentions Winston-Salem a couple of times in the novel. His writing captures the unique social order, outlook, and voice of the South.

Pearson now lives in Virginia, so he likes to write about the Appalachain areas in Virginia. Some books that he has written recently are Blue Ridge and Polar which were New York Times notable books.

Pearson is a great writer that is enjoyable to read because of all the new, crazy, unexpected events that occur. Although some sentences are confusing because he does not distinguish who "he" or "she" is, the book is still easy to read. I look foward to learning more about Pearson's style and how the book will turn out.