Thursday, May 17, 2012

Christy Study Notes

I thought that the novel "Christy" was an interesting read in high school but not something to explore any further. Ok, so maybe Catherine Marshall fictionalized some things about the small town in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee but I really would not be able to separate fact from fiction. It really would not matter to me one way or another because as far as I am concerned the novel is all fiction, including the fictional character named Alice Henderson, a single woman whose story is sad and a bit tawdry, whose daughter out of wedlock Margaret ran away to become a dancer in some squalid speakeasy. Perhaps the Hoskins family knows something that I don't know about Christy's Alice but I only remember the Alice of Miami who was the receptionist at Vida Publishers years ago and whose story does not match that of Alice Henderson that I know of. I never had any personal connection to wealthy author Catherine Marshall and her high-powered Washington connections, only read some of her books, including the one about her first husband Peter Marshall and also the book "Something More" which is about the charismatic movement. Perusing the Wikipedia article about author Catherine Marshall I see that her father was Pastor John Wood, a Presbyterian. I suppose that some inquiring minds would would want to know whether the novelist is a distant cousin to Pastor George Wood, who is not an author of bestselling fiction that I know of but is the superintendent of the Assemblies of God denomination. This is not a question that ever crossed my mind until recently but anyway these Presbyterians have an odd way of tripping all over themselves trying to explore these trivial pursuits that really in the whole scheme of things mean absolutely nothing that I know of. It is just all fiction.