Oh, Flannery. Her writing blows me away. Was boring O. in the kitchen last weekend reading passages from a book of her short stories. I find her like Roddy Doyle in that her descriptions are so vivid that you don't just imagine what things look like... you smell them, feel them, taste them. She doesn't aim for your head, though she is whipsmart. She doesn't play on your heartstrings, though she is a sensitive and emotional writer. She goes straight for the gut. I carry her stories around with me for days, feeling the ache where she hit and a tightness in the throat from trying to pretend it didn't hurt. Which is why I generally try not to read to much of her writing at once. Bad for my temperment, though I love them. Especially bad when it is 38 degrees outside and hotter in.
Mint juleps have the opposite effect (perhaps that's why they go so well with Flannery), leaving me light, refreshed, giggly. Early this spring it became clear that I was going to have a bountiful mint crop, so I announced my intention to learn to make mint juleps. My friend Danette showed up for dinner one night with a bottle of Jack (bourbon doesn't come in small bottles and we didn't want to make the investment unless we liked them) and a recipe. Her first sip was too harsh, but once the ice melted a bit and the drink mellowed, she enjoyed it. I liked it from the first, and have since passed along the joys of juleps to O. We've been drinking them often (though not in great quatities), have used up the Jack and bought a bottle of Wild Turkey. Here's the recipe we've been using:
4 oz. bourbon (two doubles)
4-6 fresh mint leaves
sugar
ice
Tear the mint leave into large pieces. Combine with the sugar and crush the sugar and mint together to release the flavour. Add the bourbon and stir until the sugar has disolved. Serve over ice, while reclining in a chair under the shade of a grand tree.
4 comments:
Two things: I am certainly never bored from hearing your lovely voice read classic literature, and it was Jim Beam, not Wild Turkey. Just saying. Julep anyone?
i am so there. i wish i was i really really do! (it is to be in the 40s through this week here!!)
and i learned something too - always though flannery was a he! oops!! xo
I LOOOOVE Flannery O'Connor. Read a few of her stories in an anthology I bought for school and then rushed out, bought the complete stories and read non-stop.
I was just thinking about her yesterday as I was cycling home and watching all the cars whiz by - I recalled a line from one of her stories which was something like "Who needs Jesus when you've got a General Motors automobile?"
A few details will always stay with me - Enoch getting part of his front teeth broken off by a spring-loaded candy surprise, or shaking hands with the gorilla. And Parker blowing up his tractor and lying there with his shoes off, staring at the burning tree.
Plus I just read an essay entitled "Why evangelicals can't write" in which a theologian explained why Catholics and Anglicans write great literature, but evangelicals don't. He used a lot of Flannery O'Connor examples, as well as some of her non-fiction writing.
O you are a sweetie! I always liked the idea of a mint julep. You must make me one some day. Did you know I haven't had a drop of alcohol since almost two years ago? Not that I'm counting.
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