A Short History of a Small Place

by T.R. Pearson

Marvelously funny, bittersweet, and beautifully evocative, the original publication of A Short History of a Small Place announced the arrival of one of our great Southern voices. Although T. R. Pearson's Neely, North Carolina, doesn't appear on any map of the state, it has already earned a secure place on the literary landscape of the South. In this introduction to Neely, the young narrator, Louis Benfield, recounts the tragic last days of Miss Myra Angelique Pettigrew, a local spinster and former town belle who, after years of total seclusion, returns flamboyantly to public view-with her pet monkey, Mr. Britches. Here is a teeming human comedy inhabited by some of the most eccentric and endearing characters ever encountered in literature.

Genres: Fiction, Southern, Humor, Literary Fiction, Novels, Unfinished, Contemporary

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

Thomas Reid Pearson is an American novelist born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He is the author of seventeen novels and four works of non-fiction under his own name, including A Short History of a Small Place, Cry Me A River, Jerusalem Gap, and Seaworthy, and has written three additional novels -- Ranchero, Beluga, and Nowhere Nice -- under the pseudonym Rick Gavin. Pearson has also ghostwritten several other books, both fiction and nonfiction, and has written or co-written various feature film and TV scripts.

Reviews

[Mommalibrarian · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a 'story' like your uncle would tell at some family occasion. It is repetitive, convoluted and told in a straight forward deadpan manner. You are supposed to laugh. It is not so much Southern as rural and contains all the stereotypes that urban people imagine are characteristic of rural situations. This is the funniest passage in the entire book.

"Miss Dupont fanned her face with an old church bulletin and appeared noticeably flustered and agitated, Mrs Phillip J. King said, like maybe she'd been chatting with the governor and a burst of wind had blown her dress over her head."

This is typical of the style of the whole book. ". . . on the morning of what Mrs. Phillip J. King said was day two of the duck imbroglio which was actually day three if you counted the afternoon of the Gottlieb invasion as day one which Mrs. Phillip J. King neglected to do and so arrived at day two instead of day three. And on the morning of day two which was actually day three . . ."

Abraham Lincoln “People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.”

[Judi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Southern writers are among my favorites. I adore the prose style in this book in particular. The sentence construction and imagry is amazing. This book has a great cast of eccentric characters and oozes with Southern small town ambiance. I have read this one several times.

[Laurie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started out loving this book -- bits of humor, colloquilisms -- but like a "death-by-chocolate" cake, too much of a good thing became hard to swallow. About half-way through the third chapter, the narration just sounded like rambling jibberish and the clever turns-of-phrase got missed in the tedium. I skimmed the middle section, and I then read the last fifteen pages hoping to end with something positive to say...I prefered Cold Sassy Tree and Jayber Crow for glimpses into small-town life and clever colloquilisms.

[Ralph · Rating 4 out of 5]

With long and rambling sentences, a non-linear narrative style, and a lack of anything apparent that the book is "about", "A Short History" isn't a book that everyone will enjoy.

If you decide to read it, give yourself time to get used to the cadence. You can't be in a hurry. If you stick with it, you'll be rewarded by laugh-out-loud funny and a reminder of the bittersweet and existential side of life.

I enjoyed the book so much that I slowed down reading at the end because I didn't want it to end. That's my highest praise for a book.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

The sight of a public service officer reminded me of a sentence in this book. It had been years since I read it, but the sentence came roaring back into my head and I had to go get a copy of the book to see it again.

page 12: "Aside from being naturally soft and mealy, Daddy said Sheriff Burton was probably a little too much encumbered with the implements of law enforcement to have the chance of being nimble. He couldn't take half a step without the leather creaking and the metal jangling, and when he tried to run, Daddy said he was extremely musical and put himself in some peril what with all of his free-swinging attachments threatening to beat him senseless."

[LaShawna Powers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lyrical, smart, and crazy hilarious. Child protagonist Louis Benfield notices everything & remembers it all. The sense of place is so profound, I could see the Pettigrew house, picture the Benfield's kitchen and the view from the window, and I'd know Pinky Throckmorton if I saw him in the street.

Pearson does use racial slurs on at least two occasions, however. They tend to be said by assholes, so I suspect that Pearson is making a commentary on the kind of person that would say them. It's still a little jarring.

[Amy]

I can't really rate this because I just never finished it. I really tried, though. Made it to about page 175 but I just wasn't feeling it. I enjoyed the Southern/rural flavor and the eccentric characters, but the writing was just too annoying for me. It was so much "Dad said this happened" and "Dad said it was because of this that happened", etc. I know it was supposed to be funny (and some of it was) but I found myself dreading it, so I decided just to stop reading. Maybe I just wasn't in the right frame of mind? Perhaps I'll try it again sometime, we'll see.

[Cynthia Paschen · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great look at a small town & its quirks and oddities.

UPDATE, December 2011: Sitting in my living room with the tree lights glowing and a sink full of dirty dishes in the kitchen, this made for an excellent re-read. One of the best scenes is when the narrator, Louis, and his Daddy have "the talk."

(page 288)"...And once they're married they can become what we call intimate without other people looking sideways at them.'

'Intimate?' I said.

But Daddy rolled on ahead of me and recommenced with, 'But there are some men, and some women too I suppose, who want to go direct to intimate without ever dancing much. Do you see what I mean?'

And I looked up at Daddy who was looking down at me with his lips turned up in a sickly sort of way and his face partway blue from the mercury light overhead, and I was just about to tell him Lord, no, I didn't see what he meant when it hit me like a sledgehammer blow to the forehead. Daddy was talking about plugging, or anyway that's what Everet Little calls it even though his sister, Angela Kirstan, insists the scientific term for it is getting intercoursed which Bill Ed Myrick says his brother tells him is most probably undoubtedly correct since word around town is that Angela Kirstan is taking a degree in it."

Funny stuff. If long sentences bother you then you should skip this one. Actually it's dialect, if you've spent any time in the small town rural Cracker Barrel south, you'd know that already. So there you go. You're welcome.

[Nora · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this book. In the beginning, there were some laugh out lines but as the book progressed, I found the constant repetition of extremely long phrases in very long sentences to be very tedious. Although the characters could be amusing, I never really related to them or cared about them very much.

I spent 2 months slogging my way through it, waiting for it to get better. Normally I'm a fan of southern literature, but this was truly a chore to get through.

Sorry, Kayla. I know you really liked it:(.

[Audrey · Rating 1 out of 5]

sigh.....i had to give this one up halfway through which i just do not like to do...sigh.

meantime i was sure all along that one of you guys had LOVED this book and so i stuck with it. But now i don't see any reviews by any of you so i guess i was hallucinating?

back to the book - it is a story of a small town, and the small town gossip and politics that go along with small town living. The characters are extremely well drawn but the writing style is so pains-taking that it is awkward to read. after spending almost 3 weeks trying to read this book and only being halfway through i realized i didn't like it well enough to give it another 3 weeks.

wish i knew why i thought i should read it? :)

(Later...) oh for pete's sake, i just noticed my review of "Cry Me a River" by this same author (a book i loved) and i said in that review "i'm going to try other books by this author and see if they are as good". They are not. Mystery solved.

[Doug Nagel · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the funniest books I have read lately. The story, set in the fictional town of Neely, North Carolina, provides the reader with a plethora of really interesting characters in a variety of unusual situations.

I would read this book before going to bed and would begin chuckling out loud. This would prompt my wife to read aloud what I was enjoying alone. Soon we were both laughing so hard the tears would come to our eyes.

T.R. Pearson has a wonderful way with words. He is often wry and sarcastic, but able to turn a phrase in such a way that the reader is left with a smile.

Enjoy this book!

[Jolynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Short History of a Small Place is undoubtedly one of the most hilarious books I have ever read. Not many books make me laugh out loud -- and this one did -- repeatedly. I tried to read some parts aloud to my family and I was laughing so hard I could not see the next line of print through my tears. That funny! if you are from a small town in the South -- do not miss out on this gem published in 1985. The characters are priceless, the small town is true to life (eccentric personalities, everyone in your business, Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians, and all), and the storytelling is beyond compare.

[Sarah Hanawald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not short. One of the funniest books I've ever read. Tonight is my night to add books "of place" which means Ferrol Sams and Robertson Davies. TR Pearson's trilogy is brilliant, and this is the first of three books. Faulkneresque and yet also completely independent. Full of literary allusions that you don't need to get to enjoy Pearson's exploration of southern life (I'm sure I missed half of them). Sometimes, simple, clear prose is overrated and instead, only stream of consciousness with delicious, meandering sentences will do.

[Kali Browne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book! A friend gave it to me when I graduated college. I smirked. She said, "I know the last thing you want right now is to read yet another book. Trust me, you have to read this." It was my companion for weeks, as I read it on my daily commute and scared New Yorkers every time I let out a cackle. Funniest thing I have ever read. And years later, I'm still referencing characters and scenes in daily conversation. It's joyful and funny and fresh.

[Elizabeth · Rating 1 out of 5]

What a waste of four days of reading!!! The author had no idea whether he was writing in the '70s or the '50s, had a Faulkner complex, without the genius to back it up, and frankly, the writing wasn't nearly compelling enough to invest the time that was needed to keep up with the rambling, blathering plot. UGH!!!

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most entertaining book I have ever read, hands down. You can 'hear' the southern accent as you read, and absolutely visualize every character. A wonderful book that will have you not only laughing out loud, but forcing people to listen as you read sections to them.

[Katie Maus · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn't even finish it. The book was so long and wordy it lost my attention every other paragraph. It took weeks to get through 100 pages. I hate not finishing books, but had to in this case. Sorry.

[T. Philly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unfortunately for me, I did not like any of the subsequent books by Pearson. It's unfortunate because "A Short History of a Small Place" is one of the best books I have ever read. It's full of wild imagination and great prose. I loved it!!!

[Laura Reed · Rating 1 out of 5]

I made myself read the first chapter...and I could not get into it...I gave it a fair shot I think. The word choice was too obtuse and sentence structure too complex for an enjoyable read.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a sucker for the meandering storytelling stuff. And this is chock full. And maybe one of the funniest books I've ever read. More people should be reading the Neely Trilogy.

[Paul Gaya Ochieng Simeon Juma · Rating 1 out of 5]

The small place is called Neely. Neely's history is that of a people who suffer from madness, commit suicide and engage in endless litigation. The list is not exhaustive. This book had so much life that challenged my imagination and provoked my thought. However, this is not to say that I liked the book. The more I read it, the more I was surprised to find out just how boring it was. But instead of abandoning the book, I tried to hide my displeasure if only for the sake of finishing it.

[Teresa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Godibile e davvero divertente soprattutto all'inizio, si fa via via episodico e sfilacciato.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Laugh-out-loud turns of a phrase on nearly every page. T. R. Pearson's story of an imaginary small place called Neely, North Carolina took me back to my own childhood with its small-town vernacular. Louis Benfield, the youthful narrator, turns observations of the mundane into sublime comedy and bittersweet moments. As you read this prose, be patient. Sip it like your favorite coffee or tea. The build up is worth the turn of the next page with capstones such as:

"Mrs. Phillip J. King is what Daddy calls a legwagger so it is near impossible to watch her talk without getting yourself hypnotized or half agitated or maybe a little dizzy and nauseous, and of course I got hit with the dizzy and nauseous part of it once the legwagging and eau de garden salad aroma took up together and came at me. What few bites of pecan twirl I had managed to get down were organizing to come back out for an airing, so I excused myself to Mrs. Phillip J. King and Momma and went off to the bathroom to hang my head over the toilet."

Characters ponder their surroundings in ways that are, at times, quite unexpected, resulting in colorful descriptions such as:

"Itty Bit passed the time in barking fairly persistently at nothing much in particular. We'd all grown somewhat accustomed to the aggravation of it, so nobody paid any attention to Itty Bit except for Mr. Bobby Ligon, who was sitting on his heels just to her backside, and he spent a full minute and a half in devoted contemplation of Itty Bit's rearend, tilting his head first towards one shoulder and then towards the other. You know, he said at last, I wish you'd just look how that little dog's shithole opens up every time he barks." ----- which leads to Louis's Daddy explaining one of Newton's Laws of Nature and the concept of balanced thrust.

Anyone who has grown up in a yard with work to be done (or perhaps, like me, with a mock orange bush on the homestead) can place themselves into Louis's shoes when his Daddy sends him to the backyard with a rake:

"Confronting the mock orange bush had simply become what Daddy called a point of honor, a sort of obligation he had seen through until I could inherit it. So once a year in November I wake up on a Saturday with the sort of feeling that must come over birds just before they migrate, and I get straight out of bed into my playclothes and put on my carcoat and my workgloves and my green corduroy hat with the earflaps and I fetch the rake out of our cellar and set out for the bottom of the back lot, where I am condemned to thrash at the mock orange bushes for the balance of the day. And that is when it usually happens, not while I'm still trying to extract from the mock oranges everything that has blown or fallen into them in the course of the year, but after I have left off from the struggle for a spell and have sat down on the grass where I pluck at the rakehead to make the tines sing, and I listen to the sound of the sprung metal dying away sometimes mixed with the cry of a hound or the low, indecipherable noise of a voice on the air, and suddenly I am aware of the sort of chill I haven't known in a year and I notice that the sky is very high and tufted and the color of ash in a grate, which is the color of my breath, which is the color of the afternoon, which is the color of the season; and I know it isn't autumn anymore."

Sublime.

[Sheila Cartwright · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite novel of all time!

This story is hilarious and poignant. The author captures the mindset of small-town America. So much color, brilliant humor and dialog. Strongly recommend you add it to your library. This my fifth or sixth reading and I find it every bit as entertaining as the first reading. Bravo, bravo! Read everything you can find from Pearson, you'll never be disappointed, I promise.

[S · Rating 4 out of 5]

"I am really interested in small books," I said to my mother-in-law. "Books you can read with one hand while you feed a baby with the other." My failed attempt to read Grimoires: A History of Magic Books, a fascinating yet literally weighty bit of hardcovered non-fiction was on my mind.

She got a dreamy look on her face for only a moment before she disappeared into the back room with a purpose. She returned with this book in her hand and stitches in her side.

This book is exactly the kind of thing I want in a book about The South. It is full of tangents and asides and characters behaving in manners that make an internal kind of sense, but no other. I grew up in a large city full of faceless neighbors and interchangeable authority figures, and so this kind of thing fascinates me. But the book isn't all just harmless rubes doing their comical bits. This is the south of the 50's and prior. The book makes it clear, indirectly, that there were really two Neelys. One familiar and extensively remembered because it was white and one strange and momentary because it was black.

From the other reviews here, I can't see if any black people have read this book, but I would be very interested in what they thought of it.

[Kristal · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story is written with an amazing sense of lyrical style and some of the most colorful and descriptive narratives that I have ever read. Told through the eyes of Louis Benfield, jr., a young boy who has been handed down the different parts of the story through various townspeople, it all weaves back and forth around one central person, Miss Myra Angelique Pettigrew.

Along with a host of characters - a set of crazy sisters, a dishonest plumber, a power-hungry politician, a postal employee with a hankering for jurisprudence, and a shoe-less ape, they all reside in the fictitious town of Neely, North Carolina. Each character's story has an underlying moral theme that revels itself slowly (like molasses in June, so my Mama always said) yet each story circles back and together each one makes a whole. It is a delightful Southern read.

I did come upon a phrase in the book that I would like to start using on a daily basis while I compute back and forth doing my daily errands to refer to the driving habits of local persons: habitual vehicular stupidity. Yeap, I can pretty much say that everyday.

[Coco Cockerille · Rating 5 out of 5]

T.R. Pearson reminds me of Jane Austen with his joyful character observation and wit; of Gabriel García Márquez with his flourishing prose, just dripping with necessary decoration; of Faulkner—which has been said before—in his sad and often dark Southernness; of Twain with his astonishingly accurate yet humorous commentary; of Steinbeck with his sublime descriptions that rise out of what was seemed like just chatter a moment earlier.

I love this book so very much and read it now and again just for the reminder. It's not fast reading, even if you're a quick reader, though, especially in these days of the glorification of the short sentence. Reading T.R. Pearson is like eating Sunday dinner—just sit and enjoy it.

The sentences are long—often very long, the narrative rambles mightily, there is little real action, and there are made-up words galore, so honestly, this book is not for everyone.

[Sunshine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to wonder what on earth the outline for this book must have looked like prior to Pearson beginning his first draft. My guess is that it would be as odd and eclectic as the book itself. With his laugh-out-loud funny characters and stories Pearson delights his readers with colorful, and at times, meaningful trips through this "small place". His witty descriptions, slow-moving pace and overall style, very much mimic the part of the country in which this book is set. An enjoyable, amusing, and timeless piece of classic fiction.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

If one can stand the intentionally repetitious, deadpan, long-winded writing style, there are a number of rewards to be found in this book. It certainly has its amusing, tall-tale aspects typical of Southern writing; for me, it was like listening to one of my partner's relatives in rural North Carolina monopolize a conversation for hours on end without really saying much of anything. It is quite a feat to write this way so consistently; but it is quite another thing to read almost 400 pages of this and survive with one's sanity intact. I barely made it....

[Scottie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh good grief.
Recommended by a friend who said this is about the area where I live, southwest Virginia, northern North Carolina.
I have NEVER read a book with more boring repetition. Only my friend's recommendation kept me going. A few enjoyable parts, but NO I do not recommend it.