Re: RARA-AVIS: Willeford and Thompson and what's for dinner
From: Maura McMillan (
mmcm@azstarnet.com)
Date: 02 Jan 2001
i've given the matter more thought, and see a pattern
emerging here.
kip mentioned that willeford was from arkansas. this is true,
but he left as an infant, involunatrily, and moved to
california, where, as we all know, the climate is far more
temperate and the vegetation lusher than in the hostile wilds
of oklahoma, that bleak and unforgiving landscape etc etc.
thompson had to make it out of the region under his own power,
and his work shows it. where thompson is embittered, willeford
is tolerant. yes, it could very well be the climate.
but not JUST the climate. after very limited research this
morning i found that thompson's mother, according to polito,
was not much of a cook: "she inherited an aversion to the
kitchen, and for family meals raided the prepared-food counter
of her local market. 'she tried to keep everyone going on junk
food,' harriet says. since she often sent the children to the
store themselves, 'everything we ate was full of sugar.'" tsk,
tsk.
compare that to page one of 'i was looking for a street,' the
first volume of autobiography of willeford's, where he
discusses family dinners prior to the death of his mother, when
he was seven, and the consequent dissolution of their
household: "we had a full-time negro cook, and we ate big
dinners at night -- huge roasts, turkeys, chicken and
dumplings, and i don't remember what all. except for joe
cassidy, who had moved to los angeles from new york, mattie,
mama, and roy were from greensville, mississippi, so southern
cooking predominated. because i was the only child, and a boy
at that, i was indulged. i liked jell-o, for example, and
regardless of the desserts the others had, i was always served
jell-o, usually the red kind with chopped bananas in it."
okay, maybe it's the only child thing -- thompson had siblings
-- but i can't be sure. it's hard to say what the real
consequences of having a mother who's a bad cook are, in terms
of life-long influence. all i know for sure is that willeford
was well fed, and he turned out to be a friendly and
compassionate nihilist, whereas thompson remained ill at ease
with himself in the world and was way too thin. coincidence? i
think not.
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