The Optimist's Daughter, Part 1, Chapters 1 - 4

I confess, I was disappointed when I first saw that The Optimist's Daughter, by Eudora Welty, was number one on the list. I have never really gotten into Southern fiction as a literary genre. On top of that, I had read this book before, the summer before I went to college, and it hadn't really made a huge impression on me. In fact, just last winter, I sold my copy to a used bookstore. But here I am, having bought it back from the same used book store, reading it.

It begins in New Orleans, in a hospital. (As an aside, reading about hospital rooms in New Orleans reminds me of those who were stranded there - both in the city and in the hospitals - during Katrina). Laurel McKelva has returned to the South to help her father, Judge McKelva, who is having trouble with his eye. Judge McKelva is the optimist of the book's title. Laurel's mother is dead and her father has married Fay, a classic gold-digger if ever one was presented in literature. The first section of the book presents the reader with the aftermath of the Judge's operation.

His recovery takes place during the period leading up to Mardi Gras, and throughout the chapters, the reader is well aware of the contrast between the revelry outside and the somberness inside the hospital.

The Judge, the optimist, is failing and his failing appears to be somewhat willful. That is certainly the impression that Fay, who wants to join the party outside, has. This part of the book culminates with Fay attacking her husband in his hospital bed. While waiting to see what happens - both to the Judge and to Fay - we are also treated to a family straight out of Southern caricature but one with whom Fay feels a kinship, while Laurel does not. Chapter 4 closes with the Judge's death and with Laurel and Fay returning his body, by train, to Mississippi.

Hello and welcome

The goal of this blog? To read the Pulitzer Prize winning novels since the year of my birth, 1973. I am choosing to blog because, the older I get, the less likely I am to retain information if I don’t discuss what I am reading. This will give me a chance to discuss my observations of these works.


If you’d like to join, the list of books are, as follows:

Pulitzer - Fiction
1973 The Optimists Daughter by Eudora Welty (Random)
1974 (No Award)
1975 The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara (McKay)
1976 Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow (Viking)
1977 (No Award)
1978 Elbow Room by James Alan McPherson (Atlantic Monthly Press)
1979 The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever (Knopf)
1980 The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer (Little, Brown)
1981 A Confederacy of Dunces by the late John Kennedy Toole (a posthumous publication) (Louisiana State U. Press)
1982 Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike (Knopf), the latest novel in a memorable sequence
1983 The Color Purple by Alice Walker (Harcourt Brace)
1984 Ironweed by William Kennedy (Viking)
1985 Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie (Random House)
1986 Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry (Simon & Schuster)
1987 A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor (Alfred A. Knopf)
1988 Beloved by Toni Morrison (Alfred A. Knopf)
1989 Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler (Alfred A. Knopf)
1990 The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
1991 Rabbit At Rest by John Updike (Alfred A. Knopf)
1992 A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley (Alfred A. Knopf)
1993 A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler (Henry Holt)
1994 The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx (Charles Scribner's Sons)
1995 The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields (Viking)
1996 Independence Day by Richard Ford (Alfred A. Knopf)
1997 Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer by Steven Millhauser (Crown)
1998 American Pastoral by Philip Roth (Houghton Mifflin)
1999 The Hours by Michael Cunningham (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
2000 Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri (Mariner Books/Houghton Mifflin)
2001 The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon (Random House)
2002 Empire Falls by Richard Russo (Alfred A. Knopf)
2003 Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
2004 The Known World by Edward P. Jones (Amistad/ HarperCollins)
2005 Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (Farrar, Straus & Giroux)
2006 March by Geraldine Brooks (Viking)
2007 The Road by Cormac McCarthy (Alfred A. Knopf)

There will not be any set schedule for the readings. I will be reading and posting as I go along. But you are certainly welcome to comment on any and all of these books.

Welcome and enjoy!