Fannie Flagg Has Written a New Novel
Thu., August 22, 12:23 PM
Fannie Flagg Has Written a New Novel!
If our family of readers, i.e., my daughters and I, think Fannie Flagg has any faults, it’s that she writes too slowly. After Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café, we went back and read Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man. And then we had to wait a long time before she turned out Welcome to the World, Baby Girl.
Fannie was an actress before she was a novelist. (She had to change her name to be an actress, since her real name, Patricia Neal, was already taken.) I can’t remember actually seeing her in a movie, even though I have seen some of those films; I guess you had to be looking for her. However, as a standup comedienne, she was fairly popular on the late night talk shows in the seventies, especially after her successful album, “My Husband Doesn’t Know I’m Making This Phone Call,” which satirized the Watergate affair.
Mostly we know Fannie from the game show, “Match Game,” where she was a popular panelist. The Gameshow Network runs those old shows regularly, and they’re just as funny now as they were then. Anytime you saw her, you could be astounded by this attractive lady who was so very funny. (Somehow, people seem to think that pretty girls can’t be funny; actually, they just don’t have to be funny. But some of us are anyway.)
We’ve been waiting ever since Welcome to the World, Baby Girl, and what has appeared is Standing in the Rainbow, which turns out to be an entire story about one of the minor characters in the previous book. (And makes me wonder whether the next book will be about “Poor Tot” Whooten, a minor character who introduces this one.) The protagonist, Neighbor Dorothy, is such a nice lady that you’re rooting for her all the way. And since you want her to be happy, you’re also hoping for the best for her husband and kids, as well as everybody else she likes. An old-fashioned story, as “Poor Tot” says, with a beginning and an end and nice people in between.
Strangely enough, I found some anachronisms in the book, but I’m not sure anyone will notice but me. Fannie is a little younger than I am, so maybe she just doesn’t remember. And how many of her readers will be familiar with baseball in the 1940’s, for example? For most of us, any knowledge we have about the Korean conflict (it wasn’t a war, y’know, just a “UN police action”) come from M*A*S*H, which contained a few anachronisms of its own.
None of these really affect the story. I’m a proofreader/ copy reader. I’m always noting discrepancies – and I’m compulsive about pointing them out.
