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Although you’ll see this short story referred to as Southern Gothic, I wonder if we might not better think of it as a response to the genre. Violet, the pilgrim of the title, does suffer the deformity we’d expect–her father having accidentally split her face with an axe–and she’s eccentric enough–taking a Greyhound bus to Tulsa, OK to be healed by a preacher (presumably modeled on Oral Roberts)--but it is not just devoid of the sort of evil occurrences we’d expect, it is ultimately an intensely Christian fable of recognizing the universality of Man.

The Violet who boards the bus is judgmental about her fellow passengers and casually racist. Her free use of the “n-word” is downright jarring to read nowadays and she says she’d take a pass on being healed if it included giving her black skin. But she eventually accepts–indeed, more than accepts–her compatriots and, after disappointment in Tulsa, her own condition. It’s a lovely story.


(Reviewed:)

Grade: (B+)


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Short Stories
Doris Betts Links:

    -WIKIPEDIA: Doris Betts
    -COLLECTION: Doris Betts Papers, 1932-2012 (UNC: Wilson Special Collections Library)
    -FILMOGRAPHY: Dors Betts (IMDB)
    -ENTRY: Doris Betts (Playbill)
    -ENTRY: Doris Betts (Calvin Center for Faith and Writing)
    -ENTRY: Doris Betts (North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame)
    ENTRY: Doris Betts (Broadway World)
    -ENTRY: Doris Betts (The Carolina Story)
    -ENTRY: Doris Betts (Encyclopedia.com)
    -PUBLISHER PAGE: Doris Betts (Simon & Schuster)


    -OBIT: Doris Betts, Novelist in Southern Tradition, Dies at 79 (Paul Vitello, 4/25/12, NY Times)
    -TRIBUTE: Remembering Doris Betts (Maurice C. York, September 16, 2022< North Caroline Literary Review)
    -TRIBUTE: Tribute to Doris Betts (South Writ Large)
    -TRIBUTE: Doris Betts (Marianne Gingher, Chapter & Verse)


    -AUDIO: #56: Doris Betts 1994: Doris Betts reads from her novel, Souls Raised from the Dead (1994 Festival of Faith & Writing, June 16, 2022)
    -ESSAY: Everything I? know about writing I learned in? Sunday school (Doris Betts, October 21, 1998, Christian Century)


    -INTERVIEW: A Conversation with Doris Betts (Greene, Marti, Spring 2000, ? The Carolina Quarterly)
    -PROFILE: 225 Years of Tar Heels: Doris Betts: A creative writing and English professor at Carolina for 35 years, Doris Betts published six novels and three collections of short stories. (University Communications, Wednesday, April 24th, 2019, UNC)


    -ETEXT The Ugliest Pilgrim by Doris Betts [pdf]
    -WIKIPEDIA: The Ugliest Pilgrim
    -STUDY GUIDE: Violet (Nashville Repertory Theater)
    -WIKIPEDIA: Southern Gothic
    -ENTRY: Southern gothic American literature (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
    -STUDY GUIDE: The Ugliest Pilgrim (eNotes)
    -STUDY GUIDE: The Ugliest Pilgrim (eNotes)
    -STUDY GUIDE: The Ugliest Pilgrim (Course Hero)
    -STUDY GUIDE: The Ugliest Pilgrim (Prezi)
    -ESSAY: Ridin’, Readin’, and “The Ugliest Pilgrim” (Marlin Barton)
    -DISSERTATION: The Judgement of Southern Motherhood in Works by Doris Betts, Gail Godwin, Dorothy Allison, and Kaye Gibbons (Jennifer Martin, Fall 2019, University of South Carolina)
    -ESSAY: Mapping the Heart's Home: Doris Betts's "The Astronomer" (John Lang, Fall 1998, The Southern Literary Journal)
    -ESSAY: Doris Betts, a Greyhound Bus, and an Academy Award (UNC Libraries: History on the Hill)
    -ESSAY: Faith and the unanswerable questions: the fiction of Doris Betts (David Marion Holman, Fall 1982, The Southern Literary Journal)
    -ESSAY: Doris Betts and Reynolds Price: Filling the empty space (D.G. Martin, May 28, 2012, Chapelboro.com)
    -REVIEW ARCHIVE: Doris Betts (Kirkus)
    -ARCHIVES: Betts, Doris (Internet Archive)
    -REVIEW: of Beasts of the Southern Wild by Doris Betts (Michael Mewshaw, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of The Ugliest Pilgrim (Dionne Blasingame, Literatures and Foreign Languages)
    -REVIEW: of Heading West by Doris Betts (Beth Gutcheon, NY Times Book Review)
    -REVIEW: of Heading West (eNotes)
    -REVIEW: of Souls Raised from the Dead by Doris Betts (Kirkus)
    -REVIEW: of The Astronomer and Other Stories by Doris Betts (Earle Labor,? Studies in Short Fiction)
    -REVIEW: of The Sharp Teeth of Love by Doris Betts (Kirkus)
    -REVIEW: of Sharp Teeth of Love (Publishers Weekly)
    REVIEW: of Sharp Teeth of Love by Doris Betts (review) Charlotte M. Wright, The Western Literature Association
   
-REVIEW: of Doris Betts by Elizabeth Evans (Irving Malin, ? Southern Quarterly)

FILM

    -FILMOGRAPHY: Dors Betts (IMDB)
    -FILMOGRAPHY: Violet (1981) (IMDB)
    -WIKIPEDIA: Violet (musical)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: Cultural Ideals of Beauty, Invisible Scars, and the Journey to Find Wholeness in VIOLET – by Quinn North (Ted Collins, Olathe Theater)

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