“Naturaleza es el mejor cirujano.”: Eudora Welty.

This novel was first published in The New Yorker on March 15, 1969. It has a style that serves a story that follows its nose with the instincts of a good house dog without ever losing the scent of its prey. It is a novel with all the qualities proper to short novels, where the thematic nuances and suspense make it unique. Considering that the author, a Southern regionalist, her fiction has demonstrated two intertwined notions: the ease with which the ordinary becomes legend and the firmness with which the exotic is based on the banal.

Eudora Welty, the winner of the prestigious Pulitzer Prize in 1973, adhered to the traditional list of brilliant Southern novels, where we find writers of the caliber of Truman Capote, Carson McCullers, William Faulkner, and Robert Penn Warren. With "The Optimist's Daughter", we are once again in the South, in that South where real distinctions are made between Texas and Mississippi, and Mississippi and West Virginia.

"The Optimist's Daughter" is the battle of values between Laurel McKelva Hand, the daughter of Judge Clint McKelva, and Wanda Fay. But it is also a battle that takes place internally in Laurel as she examines what she believes. Two types of people, two versions of life, two rival forces. A judge who dies after undergoing a surgical operation, leaving an orphaned daughter, already clearly of age, but at the mercy of the second wife, younger than the daughter, who indulged the father's whims and indirectly had something to do with the father's death. A proud woman, with the already concluded view of material life after McKelva's death. The house will be the scene of remembering childhood, the memories that saw her grow up on its walls, but these memories will be truncated by Fay. The house will be the scene of confrontation between Laurel and Fay. The discovery of an old plaque, a carved piece of wood made by McKelva for his mother, now scratched, worn, and stained by cigarette butts, this provokes Laurel's uprising against Fay's insults and condescension. Fay almost hits Laurel's mother, but Fay tells her that she doesn't know how to fight. But Laurel realizes that Fay doesn't know why she is fighting to win this battle. Fay's victory is to inherit the house, but her human values and the meaning of life that she has lived in it elude her. While Laurel's victory is to have those values firmly before her. Let's leave it there……

Personally, it is a novel with an excellent theme, but not the ending I expected. And it is here that some may not give this novel a good score, because there is a cut at the end, where everything ends, and everyone goes home, without the greatest struggle to defend what is one's own, like a long goodbye to a very short space, not only to the dead but also to illusion and feeling. But nothing will stop you from navigating in its words.

The memory did not live in the initial possession but in the free hands, absolved and free.

It resided in the heart that was capable of emptying itself and then filling up again.

It also dwelt within the fantasies that were restituted by the dreams.

Memory is a mysterious and intangible thing. It is not bound by the physical act of possessing something at the beginning. Instead, it thrives in the realm of freedom. The hands that are free can hold onto memories in a different way, unburdened by the constraints of ownership.

The heart, too, plays a crucial role. It has the ability to let go of the past, empty itself, and then open up to new experiences and memories, filling itself once again.

And the dreams, they are the gateways to a world of fantasies where memories can be reimagined and redefined. In this way, memory lives on, not in the finite space of initial possession, but in the infinite possibilities of freedom, the heart, and the dreams.

I did not like this book at all.

I had the impression that I was compelled to finish it simply because it had won a Pulitzer. However, in truth, I had a strong urge to just stab my eyes out.

Have you ever sat in your closet and gone through your old things, smiling at the memories that came flooding back? Well, imagine having someone with you while you did this. Eventually, they would become quite bored.

And that's exactly how I felt - I was the someone who was extremely bored throughout the entire process of reading this book. It failed to capture my interest or engage me in any meaningful way.

I found myself constantly looking forward to the end, hoping that it would bring some sort of relief from the tedium.

Unfortunately, even after finishing it, I still didn't see the appeal that others seemed to find in it.

Beautifully written, as I always heard about Welty. I've never read anything by her before, but now I'm truly impressed. Laurel's father passes away, and his new wife, Wanda Fay, is younger than Laurel. Interestingly, they are both in their forties. It's a complex situation that Welty portrays with great skill. Oh yeah, this work did win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in the early 1970s. It's no wonder, considering the depth and nuance of the story. The relationship between Laurel and Wanda Fay is filled with tension and unspoken emotions. Welty's use of language and her ability to create vivid characters make this a truly remarkable piece of literature. I can't wait to explore more of her works.

“The mystery of the little we know about others is no greater than the mystery of the much we know about them.”

65

In this work by Welty, there is a macabre feeling that the beauty of Tim Burton would appreciate. In it, death and birth are treated as two points in time that define what is in the middle: life.

The castes, the classes, the privileges, the choices are problematic issues that it addresses, but that culminate in something greater, a root that is the justification for all of this: the knowledge of the other.

For Welty, affection and human relationships are the core of all things. Therefore, this short novel does not limit itself to the petty divergences between Laurel and her stepmother, superficial and petulant, and possibly the cause of her father's death; the novel goes further and explores the power of memory and the permanence of the dead, their life beyond death, through this memory; the ability to reconstruct, capture and fix the other through the exercise of dreams, of longing.

In “The Optimist's Daughter”, Welty suspends the time of action to capture this veil that is the recollection and the reconstruction of the memory of a loved one after their death. And in this aspect, the work is absolutely impeccable and worthy of the Pulitzer - which, as a rule, is an award with which I usually agree.

From the beginning of the narrative until it ends, a few short weeks pass in the life of a Mississippi family: the father, a former judge, in his seventies, married after the widowhood of his first wife (Laurel's mother), to a real shrew from the area with an age similar to that of his also widowed daughter, dies after a surgical complication for which, as we are able to judge, the behavior of the wife, who does not peacefully resist the pressure imposed by the situation, contributes.

After the gentleman's death, of course, the wife and daughter are left to sort things out and the matter cannot be peaceful. And it isn't. Or at least it isn't internally, psychologically and affectively, since Laurel, a kind of inverted gentleman, does not allow herself the same behavior that most of us would tend to: to give a couple of slaps and a few funeral shouts.

Laurel wages her battles at the level of emotions, at the level of memory, of the past and not of the present. What interests her is not the stepmother or the dead father, but the father who, while alive, was the receptacle of the permanence of the memory of the mother. With him dead, Laurel needs to find new ways to hold on to and in which to perpetuate the memories.

Condensed in very few pages, then, is the task of exploring the world of human relationships and the world of emotions after the death of another.

How she did it, I don't know, but Welty did it, and so well, that I would need to read and reread the work countless times to finally find the key that decodes the ultimate secret.

The action in The Optimist’s Daughter is indeed minimal and limited, and it can even be considered fairly inconsequential.

The novel's true path lies within Laurel's internal journey. It is a journey that involves deep soul searching and coming to terms with the profound aspects of death and grief.

Laurel returns to New Orleans to take care of her ailing father. However, upon her return, she is confronted with a multitude of challenges. She has to grapple with past childhood memories that resurface, former acquaintances she encounters, the overwhelming grief of both past and present losses, and one particularly antagonistic woman, Fay, who is her father's new wife.

As Laurel delves into her soul to understand the significance of these memories, she gains a new perspective on the painful events and the people close to her.

One significant character battle that unfolds is the simple battle of wills between Fay, the brash widow of the Judge, and Laurel, the Judge's daughter.

Ultimately, the fundamental difference between Laurel and Fay is that Laurel has the ability to see the value and significance in people and the memories they carry. In contrast, Fay only sees the immediate and superficial, as if there is a wall in front of her face that blocks her from seeing beyond.

Laurel is a quiet and reflective individual, while Fay is brash and often irrational. Although they both care about the Judge, their ways of expressing that care are clearly distinct.

Eudora Welty's The Optimist’s Daughter is a quiet, somber, and relatively short read. However, it carries a powerful message about how each of us copes with the difficulties and trials we encounter in life, such as death, isolation, and loneliness.

Welty has a remarkable talent for crafting vivid prose in thought-provoking ways. There is a wealth of depth and meaning beneath the surface level of this novel, making it a sort of cathartic experience for the reader.

It invites us to look within ourselves and reflect on our own experiences of dealing with life's hardships.

I don't know how to express my thoughts about this work. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 and is included on the 1001 Books list. I spent the entire morning attempting to figure out the reasons behind this.

I must admit, once more, that I'm not a lover of southern fiction. I keep making an effort because I truly adore Faulkner. Although Faulkner is from the South, in my opinion, there is a certain universality in his characters. However, I simply didn't discover that in The Optimist's Daughter. The daughter, who gives the book its name, remains an observer until the last 40 pages. By that time, it is already too late for the reader to become emotionally attached and engaged.

Perhaps I'm missing something crucial. Maybe there are deeper themes and meanings that I haven't yet grasped. But based on my initial reading, I'm left with a sense of dissatisfaction. I'll have to give it another chance and see if I can uncover the qualities that have made it so highly regarded.

4.5 stars.

This is a remarkable book that delves deep into the themes of loss, the enigma of family, and the ways in which we compartmentalize our lives and our pain. It explores the profound power of memory, the inevitability of death, and the art of letting go.

It also reveals the astonishing ability that even those nearest and dearest to us possess to surprise us. Or, to put it more accurately, it shows how we are only given the tiniest sliver of one another to contemplate. We hoard so much of ourselves from others, fearing to be understood too well.

The book poses questions about what is essential for survival - is it a second wife, a fresh start with a clean slate, or a return to the familiar childhood home? It delves into the intricacies of relationships, especially those that we wish we could do without. It showcases how reality varies for each of us, and how loss, even when shared, can be experienced differently.

Closing the door on the sweet and familiar past of a childhood hometown, we brace ourselves for the possibility of moving forward. We face the reality of becoming just a visitor in what was once our home. The bittersweet anguish of looking ahead, with only our memories to offer solace, is palpable.

This book is a thought-provoking exploration of the human condition, leaving readers with much to ponder and reflect upon.

I really missed American literature. After that, I continued and the second novel I chose was Eudora Welty's "The Optimist's Daughter". That is, among all these books, I found the novel about the father who was hospitalized for eye surgery and died before recovering, and his daughter. I'm congratulating myself.

The hospital part lasts more than three weeks, I think. It really bothered my nerves a lot because Judge McKelva, who describes himself as an optimist, is not optimistic at all. He can even be said to be on the verge of dying.

Laurel, our main character, has to stay in the same hotel as her 1.5-year-old stepmother while taking care of her father who was hospitalized for eye discomfort and is in a mess. Although Laurel is fond of her father, she is actually her mother's daughter. Her mother also died ten years ago, a little bit reluctantly.

Laurel is such a cold and distant character that when Fay (the stepmother) wants to comb her hair at the hospital, she stands there like ice. She doesn't argue, doesn't get angry. The same thing continues at the funeral in the second part.

The funeral part is, in my opinion, the most wonderful part of the novel because we understand one by one what Southern Gothic means and what these towns in the novels are like places. Mount Salus is also a typical Southern Gothic town. But the first people we see are the upper-class.

Then, when Fay's family comes from Texas, we understand what the lower class means. Here, the author makes a delicate juxtaposition. The similarity between a family in the hospital and Fay's family is presented before our eyes.

And our pure and good Laurel forms even more empathy with Fay this time. She understands that all of their lies, greed, and meanness are because of this family and continues to endure.

At the funeral, we also learn about Laurel's deceased husband, who the townspeople are so kind about. If they hadn't been there, neither Laurel nor the narrator would have talked about it. After the funeral, the charade ends and the real essence of the novel actually comes to light.

Where should the past be left, what is memory and when does it come into play, what does it mean to be an optimist, what should we do with memories... All of these, in my opinion, although sometimes overly didactic, pass through Laurel's mind.

The tension in the last few pages comes from a completely unexpected place. A breadboard. At the height of Fay's nastiness. Instead of putting the board on her head, Laurel feels sorry for her again and thinks that because she is an unempathetic and heartless person, she won't even be able to argue.

Here I'm getting involved in the conversation and saying you're very wrong, Laurel. Because I'm also one of those who wouldn't lower their head even if it was dropped. I don't argue. I don't lower my level. But unfortunately, in this life, the short-term winners are always mean people like Fay. If you had put the board on your head, I would have said "oh".

I read two wonderful American novels this month. I read both of them thinking of my father. Well, it's good. At least my stepmother is not here :))

Zeynap Baransel has translated that plain and distant narration skillfully. I was amazed.

A 154-page short novel consists of four parts.

The first part begins directly with the judge's eye discomfort. As stated in the blurb on the back cover, we are not witnesses to a process. There are only transmissions in between. In this 37-page first part, for the judge's eye, it goes to the doctor, then to the hospital for surgery, and finally the coffin goes home. I don't think the author managed to convey the hospital atmosphere and the process of dying well. This is also partly due to the author's distant attitude. The author uses the character of Laurel as an observer until the last two parts, and like Laurel, the author also seems indifferent to the end. Just as Laurel just looks, the author just relays. Except for one detail. The author is not at all distant towards the character of Fay. The author seems to use the character of Fay more than necessary to grip the reader's artery, going beyond the overall distant attitude of the novel. This, in my opinion, caricatures the character of Fay to some extent.

The 45-page second part relays the funeral home and the funeral ceremony. Here, the author has now moved away from the core family and turned to rural observations. If I read the book at the time it was published, my observations about rural people might have been interesting and/or satisfying for me, but in this form, it is as ordinary as the first part. It is said that it rose above this ordinariness with its themes, but I could not rise. To be honest, in the first two parts, I was expecting the hospital, the process of dying, and then the funeral to corner me. As a reader who has experienced a similar process, I felt distant from the novel in these two parts.

When we come to the 44-page third part, we witness a few days that Laurel spends at her father's house after the funeral ceremony. Since Fay has returned to her own family, she is not around. Thanks to her absence, I think we are reading the most effective part of the novel. Because there is no exaggeration that disrupts the setting of the novel. We witness the common moments with Laurel's family's friends and then, due to the bird that enters the house in the evening, the past is spilled out in Laurel's mind on a stormy night. The character of Laurel, who was almost non-existent except as an observer in the first two parts, is finally starting to be included in the novel slowly but surely. The novel is also reaching its peak. These must not be coincidences. Because in the 17-page fourth part, the novel returns to its old habits again and ends by creating a tension as if Fay and the character fall from the sky onto the cutting board. Actually, there is nothing that ends here either. Of course, this is the moment when the tension that has developed between the two characters until then (even if it doesn't end) ends, and in this sense, it is not like falling from the sky onto the cutting board, but the fact that it is on the cutting board is a bit like that and is again far from being satisfying. When the novel ends, the author does not neglect to say a few things about memory and memories (again, in my opinion, not touching the nerve). I cannot say that this strongly complements the third part. Again, I cannot refrain from referring to the back cover of the book. This is not a reckoning novel, but it is advertised as such. The passivity of Laurel in most of the novel is probably due not only to the author's way of using her but also to the inheritance of her father's character in her. The title of the novel also indicates this. At the beginning of the novel, there is an optimistic message directed at the father with a few sentences. In the following parts, it is understood that this is another situation. But I have doubts about whether this process is processed strongly enough. It can be said how deeply the short novel can process all these. Maybe it was not a good choice for me to read this after the sharp pen in the first volume of Lawrence Durrell's The Alexandria Quartet. Maybe I was also dragged into different expectations by the influence of the back cover and could not reconcile with the novel. I also could not find it reasonable to compare it with other southern gothic literature writers.

“Surviving, perhaps, is the most absurd fantasy.”

The people of Mount Salus, in Mississippi, have always liked Judge McKelva, a quiet, respected, and reassuring man, just as a judge should be.

Ten years after the death of his wife, on a whim, the judge marries a young Texan, the exuberant and frivolous Wanda Fay.

No one understands his decision, least of all his beloved daughter, Laurel.

Only a few years later, when circumstances bring her back to her childhood home (her father has to undergo a delicate eye surgery from which he will not recover), Laurel returns to her native land, that suffocating South she left as an adult for the cooler Chicago.

Her return awakens old memories that will help her understand her upbringing and the true relationship between her and her parents.

The difficult coexistence with Fay has the semblance of a muffled conflict that underlines the split between two opposite realities, a mirror of two Americas just as different, even in the way of living the same grief, but with a different pain.

What struck me about the narrative was the way the author created a story around a protagonist who is almost absent both in personality and in action for most of the novel.

The main character, normally, acts and reacts to drive the plot, not to suffer it, but Welty's novel adopts the opposite approach: Laurel's inaction leads to her emotional growth, to that human capacity to heal, freeing herself from the weight of the past, forgiving and liberating the memory.

“The memory will never be inaccessible. From time to time we can wound it, but perhaps its extreme mercy lies precisely in this. As long as it exposes itself, vulnerable, to the vital moment, it will be alive for us, and as long as it is alive, as long as we are capable of it, we will pay it what is due.”

Eudora Welty won the Pulitzer Prize for this novel. In her simple and wonderful writing (just as in photography, her second passion), she knew how to go to the heart and eyes of people, tirelessly questioning reality in the simplest and truest way, telling it as it is.

Eudora Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter is a concise yet profound novella that delves deep into the themes of grief and memories. Laurel McKelva Hand, having left her childhood home in the South years ago, returns upon learning of her father’s terminal illness. After his passing, Laurel is compelled to sort through the past and explore her memories of her parents and their relationship.

She is a rather composed and stoic woman, handling her grief in a reserved and sorrowful manner, as one would anticipate from a daughter who has lost her father. However, her father’s much younger second wife, Fay, is a polar opposite. She is vindictive, arrogant, and mean-spirited. Not from the small Mississippi town, she shows no concern for anyone or anything there. Welty masterfully portrays Fay’s selfish personality through her words and actions. For example, while her husband lies in a hospital bed in New Orleans, fighting for his life, Fay’s only preoccupation is experiencing Mardi Gras since it is her birthday. She is truly a scene-maker of the highest order.

Welty weaves a story that is both sad and filled with grief, yet at the same time, she showcases how the past and remembrance can have a cathartic and healing effect. Laurel has had to mourn the loss of her family; her husband, Phil, killed in the war, her mother a few years ago, and now her father. Her memories serve to confirm the deep love her parents had for each other and become a source of strength and sustenance for her.

One of the most remarkable scenes in the entire novella is the vivid and accurate portrayal of a small town, southern funeral. The boisterous people share their remembrances of the deceased as the casket is on display, and the table is piled high with an abundance of food and casseroles, while all the neighbor ladies ensure that everything is in perfect order. Welty is an outstanding writer, and her work was rightfully recognized with the Pulitzer Prize in 1973.