Ooh, thanks for sharing this! I really enjoy odd, quirky stories like this that have the feel of something almost true but with a bit of folklore woven into them, like the morbid tales that get handed down in families and small towns. What a great find!
I am struck by all the threads, both true and imaginary, that make this story whole in the end. And those other threads that led you to present the story here, that we add to our own conscious knowledge, that if we all should step back holding those threads, what a tapestry of life we could / would see...
Thank you so much for your comment, Frank. There are so many haunting aspects of this story, and the historical context in which it was written in makes a piece worth revisiting. In the course of my readings I thought it was fascinating that White actually raised the issue of the atrocities being committed in Georgia in 1918 to President Wilson, stressing that for something like that to be happening in the States while WWI was in full swing, did not exactly make the U.S. look morally superior than the Germans.
Cotter was working in the same supernatural bag of tricks that Charles Chesnutt sometimes used in his own "Negro" stories and Zora Neale Hurston would later use in hers.
Ooh, thanks for sharing this! I really enjoy odd, quirky stories like this that have the feel of something almost true but with a bit of folklore woven into them, like the morbid tales that get handed down in families and small towns. What a great find!
Thank you very much, Jacquie. I was surprised by how odd this piece was. It felt so experimental and 20th century. A sort of proto-surrealist piece.
I am struck by all the threads, both true and imaginary, that make this story whole in the end. And those other threads that led you to present the story here, that we add to our own conscious knowledge, that if we all should step back holding those threads, what a tapestry of life we could / would see...
Thank you so much for your comment, Frank. There are so many haunting aspects of this story, and the historical context in which it was written in makes a piece worth revisiting. In the course of my readings I thought it was fascinating that White actually raised the issue of the atrocities being committed in Georgia in 1918 to President Wilson, stressing that for something like that to be happening in the States while WWI was in full swing, did not exactly make the U.S. look morally superior than the Germans.
Cotter was working in the same supernatural bag of tricks that Charles Chesnutt sometimes used in his own "Negro" stories and Zora Neale Hurston would later use in hers.