In 1964, three years before her death, Carson McCullers published her last book, Sweet as a pickle and clean as a pig, a book of verse for children. Sweet and carefree, with an uncanny eye for childhood curiosities, it is sad to discover that this book was written as McCullers struggled with pneumonia and a broken hip, already a semi-invalid from having suffered a series of strokes and a life of alcoholism.
Sweet as a pickle and clean as a pig is the only children's book written by Carson McCullers. The verses are about familiar occurrences and wonders in a child’s life, in fact, they often feel like an actual child could have written them. Why teenage girls never actually “slumber” at slumber parties, why bad boys are often sad boys, whether a giraffe in the zoo is dreaming about Africa and what air looks like are some of the questions these poems ponder.
Adults often forget the memories invoked in this book, which is interesting, as friends and biographers have often described Carson McCullers as childlike. Josyane Savigneau remarked in her excellent biography Carson McCulllers: a life, that McCullers’ habit of climbing into bed with her friends came more from “a childish need to snuggle up to someone“, than from any adult sexual urges, and showed that many of her personal relationships were girlishly crushy and adolescent in nature. Sweet as a pickle and clean as a pig captures that aspect of her personality perfectly.
Thanks to the selection of The heart is a lonely hunter for Oprah's book club in 2004, the work of Carson McCullers has experienced a surge in popularity, with the aforementioned title briefly being a number one best seller in the US, 64 years after its publication. The novels by McCullers held by Auckland City Libraries are:
- Elisabeth |
