From Moira about Carson

from my dead sister Moira

 From Moira about Carson 

Dear Ted,
     I have just escaped from a lengthy conversation with your old girlfriend, Trudy Monae. I mentioned to her at some point, days and ages ago, that you were reading Carson McCullers. She’s a big fan apparently, and she rushed off immediately to re-read The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Reflections in a Golden Eye, The Member of the Wedding, and Ballad of the Sad Café, and she was full of each part and overflowing with the sum of the parts, and . . . “conversation” is the wrong word. She had prepared a lecture.
     Fortunately, she is a good lecturer. Still, I only pretended to take notes. But you can imagine her at the rostrum and me in my school desk with enthusiastically inviting smile, enthusiastically nodding head, enthusiastically wrinkled brow, and the rest. I am the model student I never was (nor, frankly, wished to be).
     The sum of the lecture, as I understood it: McCullers is the master, or she is the mistress — in both senses, of head and of illicit lover — of the ridiculous. Her children are ridiculously gifted, as children tend to be, and her adults are ridiculously one-sided, even monomaniacal, as gifted children tend to become. So, they behave ridiculously. We all do, when it comes down to it, so much so that even ridiculously gifted children can’t figure us out. Again, that is as I understand it; I didn’t take notes.
     There was the lecture. And then there was an opportunity for questions; and one girl asked a ridiculously long hypothetical: you know, if so and so and this and that and if this and that and the other and if all the tea did come from China, then wouldn't it follow that . . . ? And Trudy said, “No, not at all,” and there were no more questions. The bell rang. Several sighs. And it was time for lunch.

Do I remember correctly that “ridiculous” comes from the Latin for laugh or laughter? Hmmm. Ridicule suggests derision to me, almost scornful (not even almost, just scornful-period) mockery. But when we call something ridiculous, we aren’t scorning it; we are only thinking it is funny, curious, absurd, preposterous — some combination of those. Am I right? And am I right about this(?): There is, not only in McCullers’ fiction but in the “real world,” an odd nobility in being ridiculous. We respect people for being ridiculous, especially openly ridiculous, because we are all secretly ridiculous. I except politicians, pundits, and preachers. Prigs. (I am tempted to except stand-up comedians as well though I am not sure I can say why. I am probably something you said to me at some point.)
     Anyway, that was my “morning.” Then I met some people you knew and some people you don’t know in the park for a picnic lunch. We had bologna sandwiches with plenty of mayonnaise because eating “badly” isn’t going to kill us. Lots of sweet white wine, the cheaper the better. And white cake with white icing for dessert. Then, we all lay down on the grass to take a nap, and when we woke up, everyone was gone.

But we are getting back together tonight to go see Reflections in a Golden Eye, the movie, since you so highly recommended it. [Not true!] I think we’re going to see the original “golden” version, and we’re going to a theater where we can turn the music off if we want to. We can even watch it simultaneously with music and without — also golden and in technicolor — if we want. Don’t ask me how that works, I can’t explain it (though something to do with the expansion and contraction of time).
     So, that is it! Write me soon. Love,
                                                                Moira
                                                                      06.22.23