Pulling A Rabbit Out Of A Hat, drawing by writer Ann Patchett, St. Paul, Minnesota, January 2008, all photos © 2008-2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
I was watching WCCO’s Good Question: What’s With The Easter Bunny? when it dawned on me that I had this old snapshot of a drawing by Ann Patchett on the front page of The Magician’s Assistant. The night we saw her at the Fitzgerald Theater, she smiled when I handed her the book — “I don’t get a chance to draw these much anymore,” she said, and from her pen flew this big-eared bunny poking out of a hat.
According to Darcy Pohland who covered last night’s Good Question (watch the video for some fun footage from kids on the subject), the Easter Bunny has ancient roots:
It’s part of a pagan tradition that started in Germany as part of a spring celebration. It honored Eastre (also Ēostre or Ôstarâ), the Anglo-Saxon goddess of dawn and spring; a fertility goddess who brought the end of winter.
One version of the bunny legend comes when she comes late one spring and finds a bird with wings frozen to the ground. She turns it into a snow hare with the ability to lay eggs in rainbow colors one day a year.
Snow hares with the ability to lay eggs in rainbow colors — you have to love that. I’m fond of the Snowshoe Hare because it’s directly related to one of my Totem Animals, the Lynx. They do a 7-year dance together and the Lynx’s ability to survive depends on the Snowshoe Hare’s abundant life and death cycle.
On this 53 degree Saturday in Minnesota, I’m longing for the end of Winter. Which means I’m jumping up and down for Eastre, the Goddess of Dawn and Spring. If you celebrate Easter, I hope you look glorious in your bonnet. Looks like tomorrow will be a good day for hunting those eggs. Or learning to pull a rabbit out of a hat.
Rocky: And now….
Bullwinkle: Hey Rocky, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat.
Rocky: But that trick never works.
Bullwinkle: But this time for sure. Presto! [pause] Well I’m getting close.
Rocky: And now its time for another special feature.
–Rocky & Bullwinkle Sound Clips
Ann Patchett’s Bunny, St. Paul, Minnesota, January 2008, photo © 2008-2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
-posted on red Ravine, Saturday, April 11th, 2009
-related to posts:
Ann Patchett – On Truth, Beauty, & The Adventures Of “Opera Girl”
Which Came First, The Grasshopper Or The Egg?
The Ant & The Grasshopper – Ann Patchett & Lucy Grealy
Book Talk – Do You Let Yourself Read?
My Totem Animal
I have a friend who is in Iowa City for a long weekend, just for fun. She just sent me an email from one of the plethora of bookstores there.
Iowa City always makes me think of Ann Patchett. And, of course, Lucy G.
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What a great doodle! I love it, and I love that you commemorated Easter on the blog.
Speaking of, we are dying Easter eggs as we speak. We’re doing the Ukranian approach, and I’ll have to get all the right terms for the instruments. Except, we’re not doing traditional patterns, which are incredible. These are experimental eggs, so they’re free-form. It’s a lot of fun.
And I just pulled mini-cheesecakes out of the oven. I think I didn’t do them so well. Might have to make another batch.
Ham in fridge, and lots of drinks and other goodies. The colored hard-boiled eggs are also in the fridge, and a BUNCH of plastic eggs with Jelly Bellies and Peanut M&Ms and Hershey’s kisses in them.
We’re ready for the Easter bash.
Happy Easter to you, QM, and to all our readers. I hope you’re doing well, QM. I know you’ve got a lot on your hands, helping keep Chaco comfortable. Take care.
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ybonesy, thanks. Glad you are having a fun Easter with your family. We didn’t dye eggs this year and I was thinking that would have been fun! How did your eggs come out?
We are having a pretty laid back day. I miss the Easter ham that I grew up with (but sounds like I can have it vicariously through you). I’ve had a non-electronic day. Sitting peacefully in the living room reading. I picked up Flannery O’Connor’s letters again, Habit of Being.
I have to say, I feel like I’ve been to church! It’s perfect reading during these days where many are celebrating some kind of Holy time. O’Connor grew up Catholic and carried it into her adulthood and into her novels and short stories. But she also studied and was interested in other religions and takes a kind of a comparative, philosophical approach to religion in her letter writing.
The book is 617 pages long and spans 1948 through her death in 1964. I am on Part III of Habit of Being — The Violent Bear It Away from her novel of the same name (which was published during this period). Since it covers 1959 until her death, she often reflects on other writers of that time: the Beats, Jung, Katherine Anne Porter, John Hawkes, James Baldwin, Elizabeth Bishop, Thomas Merton, Bill Faulkner, Robert Lowell, Truman Capote, Cecil Dawkins, Eudora Welty, and of course, “A” or Betty Hester.
I am learning a ton about the process of writing and publishing at that time, and the relationships between writers and their support people that happened through these letters. I can also relate to the Georgia pieces and know exactly what she’s talking about when she references inheriting her childhood home in Savannah (See Flannery O’Connor (Part I) — The House I Grew Up In (LINK) (which should really be “the house I was raised in”)
One thing about reading a body of letters like this, I do best when I spread them out over time. Usually, they span a lot of years and I pick up the details more if I pick the book up and put it back down.
Sinclair, I think of Ann Patchett, too, when I think of Iowa City. And once in a while Flannery O’Connor references Iowa, too. As well as Yaddo and all the craziness of drugs, alcohol, and relationship matches that went on there. It kind of reminded me of Patchett’s memoir about her and Lucy.
About Yaddo, Flannery’s final sentence in a 1959 letter to Cecil Dawkins cautions her about how to get the writing done — “You survive in this atmosphere by minding your own business and by having plenty of your own business to mind; and by not being afraid to be different than the rest of them.”
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A few more words (whoops, more like paragraphs) about Flannery O’Connor in Part III of Habit of Being. I haven’t read her novel The Violent Bear It Away (about a boy who is destined to be a prophet and wants to escape that fate), but after reading her letters, I really want to read it. She talks a lot in her letters about how the critics treat the work (which is full of Catholic themes and dark images that is in the tradition of what is now called Southern Gothic literature).
The title from the novel is from Matthew 11:12 and here’s what she says about it in a few of her letters from between 1959 and 1962:
Then on March 28th, 1959, I guess that’s about 50 years ago a few weeks ago, she says in a letter to Thomas Stritch:
It kind of reminds you of the division between Protestant and Catholic at that time period in the South (which she is often working to bridge in her letters to friends of various faiths). Then this from a letter to Dr. T. R. Spivey (she has many great religious and philosophical discussions with him via letter) in March 1960:
St. Basil was considered a saint by the traditions of both Eastern and Western Christianity. All this to say, she goes into this much detail about just the title of her book in letters that span across these particular years. I don’t want to give the wrong impression. Because in the next sentence, she can be talking about her peacocks fluttering across the yard and her mother who she calls “the parent.” She’s incredibly funny in that Southern way and I often laugh out loud while reading. Just a flavor of the reading today.
One more passage, and this is in a letter to Louise Abbot from Sat. 1959. It’s about having faith and, for me, I can apply it across all Higher Powers, not one particular religion or faith (and I find that even those who consider themselves non-believers, believe in something):
Seemed apropos to drop this in here today. Like I said, it feels like I’ve been to church. 8) I don’t necessarily agree with everything she says, but it’s just so fascinating to read the way her mind worked. It makes me so sad that Willa Cather asked that her letters be burned after her death (and they were). There is so much to be learned from a body of work like this.
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[…] to post Watch Me Pull A Rabbit Out Of My Hat and The Thing About […]
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Cool, QM, sounds like you’ve gotten into the letters. Interesting about the title. I wonder if she wrote about it so much and thereby explained it because it was important her friends and colleagues knew what she meant by it and/or she knew it would be confusing and therefore needed to preempt the questions that would arise.
Well, you did enjoy vicariously through me ham, deviled eggs, hot spinach dip, salads and side dishes (although no green bean casserole nor sweet potatoes), mini cheesecakes (I made those and they turned out well) and lots of other yummy stuff. I ate at about 2 and I’m still full.
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ybonesy, ah, deviled eggs! I LOVE deviled eggs and can’t remember the last time I had them. And fresh baked ham. Yum. So sad I missed dinner at your place.
Hmmm, about Flannery O’Connor, I don’t know for sure. But her letters are full of deep philosophical thoughts about religion, many times comparing one to the other. She seems to have been fascinated by that. And had a few letter writing friends who seemed to share her passion for the discussion.
I think her explanations of the title The Violent Bear It Away were sometimes in answer to her friends’ questions in their letters to her. Though we don’t get to see those, only Flannery’s responses. She also writes about it after her book is published, I think as a way to digest the things the critics are saying about the book.
There were mixed reviews. Her themes were dark and controversial in the 50’s. I think they may still be today. Yet she wrote about them anyway. She seemed to think people could be transformed by facing their darker (or violent) sides and believed that could effect spiritual awakening. She was a devout Catholic but seemed to have a lot of respect for those who felt strongly about their own religion. She would often debate back and forth, was very opinionated, but seemed open to learning more about the way others felt. All of this is my opinion only. Take what you like. 8)
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Happy Easter to those who celebrate! We made deviled eggs to take to a pot luck at a friend’s house today. It’s windy and sunny in Minnesota. I’m searching for the Easter Bunny! Oh…there she is.
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[…] to posts: haiku 2 (one-a-day) and Watch Me Pull A Rabbit Out Of My Hat — last year’s Easter post with info on the origins of the Easter […]
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