Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Untidy Pilgrim

The Untidy Pilgrim

Walter, Eugene
Clark, Katherine

Paperback

Series: Deep South Books

General Fiction

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0817311432
ISBN13: 9780817311438
Publisher: University Alabama Press
Published: Aug 9 2001
Pages: 264
Weight: 0.83
Height: 0.68 Width: 5.74 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
A zanier bunch of characters has seldom been collected between the covers of a novel. And yet, eccentric though they may be, it is impossible not to love them.--New York Times

Eugene Walter's first novel, and winner of the 1954 Lippincott Fiction Prize for Young Novelists, is about a young man from a small central Alabama town who goes south of the salt line to Mobile to work in a bank and study law. As soon as this unnamed pilgrim arrives, he realizes that--although he is still in Alabama--he has entered a separate physical kingdom of banana trees and palm fronds, subtropical heat and humidity, and old houses and lacy wrought-iron balconies. In Mobile, Alabama, the town that can claim the oldest Mardi Gras in America, there is no Puritan work ethic; the only ruling forces are those of chaos, craziness, and caprice. Such forces overtake the pilgrim, seduce him away from the beaten career path, and set him on a zigzag course through life.

The Untidy Pilgrim celebrates the insularity as well as the eccentricity of southerners--and Mobilians, in particular--in the mid-twentieth century. Cut off from the national mainstream, they are portrayed as devoid of that particularly American angst over what to do and accomplish with one's life, and indulge instead in art, music, cooking, nature, and love. In this novel Walter dispels the gloomy southern literary tradition established by Faulkner, Capote, and McCullers to illuminate the joyous quirkiness of human existence.

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