putterings 398 < 399 > 400 index
than the rest of us did trying to get somewhere.
Cora brooded, her eyes somber and black. She looked up, and two sparks of defiance quivered in the pupils. She said, with bitter irony, “I don’t know but that papa was right! He seemed to enjoy life more just puttering around than the rest of us did trying to get somewhere.”
Aunt Soph took that more seriously than Cora had intended. “Well, I believe there’s something in that,” she said. Your father knew how to have a good time all right . . . but then, somebody had to do the work!"
“That’s the devil of it,” Cora muttered.
ex Ruth Suckow, Cora (1929) : 131
borrowable at archive.org : link
Cora doesn’t mind the work, it will turn out.
links and observations
- good discussion of this novel, and other of Suckow’s writing, in
Judith Pierson, “A New Reading of Ruth Suckow” (1992). (Easterm Illinois University, Masters Theses, 2218) : link - Ruth Suckow (1892-1960), writer, apiarist, pacificist
wikipedia : link - Chronology of Ruth Suckow’s Life (Ruth Suckow Memorial Foundation) : link
- intrigued by the William Everson connection (Waldport); have been reading more of Suckow’s writing, and will continue to.
brings Marilynne Robinson to mind. - A Cora was the wife of Elijah Halford McVey, my great-grandfather; there was a second wife, Elenda, that no one talked about. his daughter-in-law was Ruth.
link