The Ponder Heart

People love a holy fool -- Prince Myshkin, Innocent Smith, Elwood P. Dowd. And one of the more lovable ones is Daniel Ponder, whom his niece describes as "just like your uncle, if you've got one -- only he has one weakness." Actually his weaknesses seem to be excessive friendliness and generosity -- and that's what indirectly sparks off this arch, slightly madcap little murder trial. Edna Earle runs a hotel in a small Southern town called Clay, and helps take care of her sweet, not-too-bright Uncle Dan. Dan is generous and friendly almost to a fault, which even leads his stiff-backed father to commit him to an asylum (in a "Harveyesque" twist, the dad is accidentally committed instead). More importantly, Uncle Dan gets married -- once to an eccentric Baptist widow, and then to an ephemerally pretty teenager from a none-too-genteel background. Considering the marriage a "trial," the self-absorbed Bonnie Dee soon leaves Dan, comes back, ejects him from his own vast house. When Edna convinces Dan to cut off all money, she asks him to return -- only to be found dead the next morning. And after the most white-trash funeral you can imagine, Bonnie Dee's nasty family immediately charges Dan with murder. Unfortunately, Dan doesn't really recognize the danger he is in. And the murder trial soon turns into a circus, with the trashy family, lightning balls, some inconveniently-placed servants, and two completely inept lawyers in the mix. As with all of Eudora Welty's fiction, "The Ponder Heart" drips with Southern atmosphere and gentle eccentricities. Instead of the typical cliche trappings, Welty introduces us more to the attitudes and likably odd people who populate the South, ranging from outright weirdos to the slightly odd. In few other books could you find a murder trial interrupted by a couple of boys dragging a fig tree. And since the whole book is seen through Edna's eyes, Welty spins out a story in arch, slightly exasperated prose. It spins out slowly and with many side-stories and tangents, full of conversational moments ("Oh, but he was proud of her") and vivid little descriptions ("like one of those dandelion puff-balls"). And her throwaway lines can tell you more than most writers can with a whole paragraph, such as Edna noting that Mrs. Peacock wore tennis shoes to her daughter's funeral -- which, in an instant, tells us everything we need to know about Mrs. Peacock. But the sense of restrained absurdity really blossoms when the trial starts -- that's when Welty really brings out the satire guns. The whole thing starts to resemble a circus, with really awful lawyers, trashy in-laws, and a blind coroner who contributes exactly nothing. The whole trial becomes more and more surreal, until Uncle Dan's eccentric, generous nature clinches it. In fact, Uncle Dan is the heart of the entire story: a lovable child-man whose naive, generous spirit is uncorrupted by the nasty intentions of those around him. He's too sweet to be irritating, and

"The South impresses its image on the Southern writer from the moment he is able to distinguish one sound from another," Flannery O'Connor wrote in her 1963 essay "The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South," and Eudora Welty expressed a similar sentiment roughly 20 years later in her memoir "One Writer's Beginnings," when she wrote that ever since she had first been read to, and then started to read herself, there had never been a line that she had not *heard* as her eyes followed the words on the page, possibly out of the desire to read as a listener. And indeed, as Flannery O'Connor remarked in the above-mentioned essay, "the Southern writer's greatest tie with the South is through his ear." While proof of the truth of these statements can be found throughout the literature written by both of these preeminent Southern novelists, Eudora Welty's novella "The Ponder Heart" is perhaps one of the most obvious examples thereof as it is actually written in the form of a monologue, addressed to an imaginary traveler who happens to find himself - by force of circumstance rather than plan - in the small town of Clay, Mississippi, somewhere off the main highway and not quite halfway between Tupelo and the Mississippi-Alabama border, in Edna Earle Ponder's Beulah Hotel; face to face with the hostess. "My Uncle Daniel's just like your uncle, if you've got one ... he loves society and he gets carried away," she immediately tells her visitor about her Uncle Daniel's "one weakness" and proceeds, without further ado, to tell her family's story; thus proving herself afflicted by that same weakness of "getting carried away," and as the reader/listener soon discovers, it is just as impossible to get a word in with her narrative as it is with Uncle Daniel Ponder. But then, you don't even really want to interrupt her: too often she makes you smile or laugh out loud at her descriptions of family and townsfolk, too much you are getting caught up in the story, and too acute is the appearance of her observations. For no doubt, Eudora Welty was not only a keen observer of Southern society; she also mastered the transformation of her observations into the written word with a skill matched only by a select few of her fellow Southern writers. And true to Welty's reflection in her memoir - and to her desire to write as a listener, as much as she used to read as a listener - it is impossible not to actually hear Edna Earle talking to you as you turn the pages, in that unmistakable drawl which seems to roll past your ears languidly, much like the waves of the mighty Mississippi, and which smells of bourbon and magnolias. Thus, in the space of less than 200 pages, we make the acquaintance of Grandpa Ponder, whose fortune would become Edna Earle's to watch over and Uncle Daniel's to give away, Uncle Daniel's first wife Miss Teacake Magee nee Sistrunk (who sang at her own wedding, which turned out to be bad luck because the marriage didn't hold), his second wife Bonni

Eudora Welty possessed a remarkable talent for crawling into the skin of her characters--and Edna Earl Ponder is one of her most astonishing creations. Like her widely anthologized short story "Why I Live at the P.O.," Welty's short novel THE PONDER HEART is written as a monologue, giving the reader the unexpected sensation of sitting across the front porch from Edna Earl herself as she determinedly relates the story of how her eccentric Uncle Daniel unexpectedly found himself on trial for murder in their tiny Mississippi town.THE PONDER HEART is a masterpiece of American humor. The humor of the novel is not, however, so much in the story (amusing though it is) as in the way it is told. Edna Earl has a typically Southern knack for turning a colorful phrase, and throughout her narrative she takes us on a tour of the best of Southern venacular, tossing off several memorable comments and laugh-out-loud descriptions on every page--particularly when it comes to white trash Bonnie Lee Peacock, who marries the addlepated Uncle Daniel on a trial basis. And if you're not Southern enough to completely grasp the definition of "white trash," that most Southern of perjoratives, Edna Earl will leave you in no doubt as to what precisely it means.Welty wrote considerably deeper works than THE PONDER HEART--her stunning short stories and the Pulitizer Prize winning novel THE OPTIMIST'S DAUGHTER come quickly to mind--but for pure-dee down home humor Edna Earl, Uncle Daniel, Bonnie Lee, and the Peacock family are hard to beat. A touching, hilarious, and extremely memorable work that you'll probably return to again and again! Strongly recommended.

Endearing and funny, with a wonderfully satiric narrative style,award-winning author Eudora Welty's exquisite, but tender and loving portraits invite us to laugh at the absurd frailties of the human animal. The slightly backward, small southern town of Clay is the setting for Edna Earle's rambling tale of her Uncle Daniel Ponder and his unique eccentricities. While perhaps not exciting (or readable) enough for the youngest teens, adult readers should enjoy this madcap window on southern life. Uncle Daniel is a simple, gentle, kindly, guileless, and above all generous soul, who loves to give things away. Fortunately, Grandpa Ponder is "rich as Croesus", but even his resources are limited. In an effort to find someone to give more things to, Uncle Daniel becomes enamored of one Bonnie Dee Peacock, a suitably mindless twit who agrees marry him "on trial". Things are rocky enough for the happy couple, when an unexpected deaththrows the whole town into turmoil. The book's conclusion may seem silly to some, but is not so very unbelievable given the context.The only thing to be said against this precious little gem of a book is that it doesn't have much of an impact - there are no great issues being debated here, or at least the aren't presented explicitly. Reading between the lines though, some fundamental human values are being affirmed, to wit: family loyalty, kindness toward those with special needs, and good old-fashioned Christian charity. A delightful, uniquely American entertainment, even if it is rather light weight.

In this masterpiece of idiomatic Southern narrative, Edna Earle Ponder relates the zany adventures of her Uncle Daniel. You can almost imagine Edna Earle sitting in her rocking chair on the front porch, dryly commenting on the goings-on in Clay County and the foibles of its Dickensian population. Edna Earle looks out for her overly generous Uncle (who "may not have a lot of brains" but is "blessed with a fond and loving heart"), looks up to her ornery Grandpa (whose fear of electricity motivated him to cover the roof "with lightning rods the way Grandma would sprinkle coconut on a cake"), and looks down at the white-trash Peacock family (the type of folk who would "wave at trains till the day they die"). When Uncle Daniel up and marries one of the Peacock daughters, the next thing you know she's dead and he's on trial for murder. A quick read--and well worth it--"The Ponder Heart" never loses its colloquial appeal or its comic pacing. I only wish it were longer.