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osprey_archer) wrote2022-09-23 06:55 am
osprey_archer) wrote2022-09-23 06:55 am
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F/F Friday: Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Years ago my friend Rachel and I watched the delightful movie Fried Green Tomatoes, and I vowed to read the book that it was based on, Fannie Flagg’s Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. Finally I’ve fulfilled that vow, and I’m happy to say that the book was worth the wait!
The story spans most of twentieth century, starting in the 1910s when young Idgie Threadgoode declares on the eve of her sister’s wedding that she’ll never wear a dress again (and attends the wedding in a cute little suit), and ending in the 1980s (when the book was written), when Idgie’s sister-in-law Ninnie Threadgoode reminisces about the old days that Whistle Stop Cafe to Evelyn Couch, a miserable housewife whose unexpected friendship with Ninnie gives her the strength to change her unhappy life.
It also spans much of the country, as the characters include railway men, men-about-town, and tramps on the road during the Great Depression. But the action always circles back to Whistle Stop, a town that sprang up to serve the railway lines and died as the train lines died after World War II.
And the narrative style is just as lively and wide-ranging, dancing back and forth across the time span of the story, switching easily from regular narration to reminiscence to newspaper clippings. I particularly enjoyed the amateur Whistle Stop newsheet, completed by Dot Weems and including a lot of blog-style updates on her life, not least the doings of her beloved but somewhat feckless husband.
Unexpectedly, Evelyn’s story was my second favorite part of the book: I loved her slow shift from lethargic depression to an overpowering rage at the world that treats women so shabbily, leading first to the invention of an imaginary superheroine alter ego Towanda and then to Evelyn’s own emancipation, in becoming a Mary Kaye saleswoman so successful that she wins herself a pink Cadillac, in which of course she goes to visit her beloved Whistle Stop. (Her journey to empowerment also includes a trip to weight-loss camp, a peak 80s moment that is my least favorite part of the book, but it’s fairly short.)
My favorite part of the book was of course Ruth and Idgie’s love affair, which begins in the 1920s when Ruth comes to stay with the Threadgoode family while she teaches at the local Sunday school. “Idgie has a little crush,” mother Threadgoode tells all the Threadgoode children, but Idgie’s “little crush” is so massive that it’s visible from space, and all the other kids have to flee the breakfast table to have a good laugh after they see Idgie attempting to have table manners to impress Ruth.
Ruth loves Idgie too, but she’s engaged, and she has to provide a home for her sick mother, so she goes back and marries the man… But he’s an abusive asshole, and as soon as Ruth’s mother dies Ruth sends a note to Idgie, consisting only of a passage from the Book of Ruth, the bit about “whither thou goest I will go.” Idgie and her brothers (accompanied by Big George, the Black man who will later make the barbecue at the Whistle Stop Cafe) zoom right on over to pick Ruth up, carrying out her trunk right in front of her furious but helpless husband Frank.
(Frank later disappears in suspicious circumstances. His death is never pinned on anybody.)
The Threadgoodes are so delighted to have Ruth back that they come running out of the house to greet her - right after admonishing each other that they mustn’t be too enthusiastic or they might scare the poor girl away! And when it turns out Ruth is pregnant, the Threadgoode clan gives Idgie the money to start the Whistle Stop Cafe, as she has a family to provide for now. Ruth and Idgie’s Whistle Stop Cafe becomes a fixture of the town, remembered fondly by Ninnie Threadgoode and referred to often in Dot Weems’ newsletter.
This is a fascinating picture of a community that is so totally accepting of Ruth and Idgie that accepting almost feels like the wrong word: it implies that there might be an alternative state of non-acceptance, which no one in the town of Whistle Stop appears to even consider feeling with regard to Ruth & Idgie’s romance. (In contrast, many locals definitely feel unaccepting of Ruth and Idgie’s decision to sell food from their cafe to the local Black population. Black customers have to take their food for carryout, and they get it at the back door, and the local Klan still protests.)
Is the town’s attitude toward Ruth and Idgie historically accurate for a small southern town in the mid-twentieth-century? I have no idea. Whatever else it may be, it certainly is adorable.
The story spans most of twentieth century, starting in the 1910s when young Idgie Threadgoode declares on the eve of her sister’s wedding that she’ll never wear a dress again (and attends the wedding in a cute little suit), and ending in the 1980s (when the book was written), when Idgie’s sister-in-law Ninnie Threadgoode reminisces about the old days that Whistle Stop Cafe to Evelyn Couch, a miserable housewife whose unexpected friendship with Ninnie gives her the strength to change her unhappy life.
It also spans much of the country, as the characters include railway men, men-about-town, and tramps on the road during the Great Depression. But the action always circles back to Whistle Stop, a town that sprang up to serve the railway lines and died as the train lines died after World War II.
And the narrative style is just as lively and wide-ranging, dancing back and forth across the time span of the story, switching easily from regular narration to reminiscence to newspaper clippings. I particularly enjoyed the amateur Whistle Stop newsheet, completed by Dot Weems and including a lot of blog-style updates on her life, not least the doings of her beloved but somewhat feckless husband.
Unexpectedly, Evelyn’s story was my second favorite part of the book: I loved her slow shift from lethargic depression to an overpowering rage at the world that treats women so shabbily, leading first to the invention of an imaginary superheroine alter ego Towanda and then to Evelyn’s own emancipation, in becoming a Mary Kaye saleswoman so successful that she wins herself a pink Cadillac, in which of course she goes to visit her beloved Whistle Stop. (Her journey to empowerment also includes a trip to weight-loss camp, a peak 80s moment that is my least favorite part of the book, but it’s fairly short.)
My favorite part of the book was of course Ruth and Idgie’s love affair, which begins in the 1920s when Ruth comes to stay with the Threadgoode family while she teaches at the local Sunday school. “Idgie has a little crush,” mother Threadgoode tells all the Threadgoode children, but Idgie’s “little crush” is so massive that it’s visible from space, and all the other kids have to flee the breakfast table to have a good laugh after they see Idgie attempting to have table manners to impress Ruth.
Ruth loves Idgie too, but she’s engaged, and she has to provide a home for her sick mother, so she goes back and marries the man… But he’s an abusive asshole, and as soon as Ruth’s mother dies Ruth sends a note to Idgie, consisting only of a passage from the Book of Ruth, the bit about “whither thou goest I will go.” Idgie and her brothers (accompanied by Big George, the Black man who will later make the barbecue at the Whistle Stop Cafe) zoom right on over to pick Ruth up, carrying out her trunk right in front of her furious but helpless husband Frank.
(Frank later disappears in suspicious circumstances. His death is never pinned on anybody.)
The Threadgoodes are so delighted to have Ruth back that they come running out of the house to greet her - right after admonishing each other that they mustn’t be too enthusiastic or they might scare the poor girl away! And when it turns out Ruth is pregnant, the Threadgoode clan gives Idgie the money to start the Whistle Stop Cafe, as she has a family to provide for now. Ruth and Idgie’s Whistle Stop Cafe becomes a fixture of the town, remembered fondly by Ninnie Threadgoode and referred to often in Dot Weems’ newsletter.
This is a fascinating picture of a community that is so totally accepting of Ruth and Idgie that accepting almost feels like the wrong word: it implies that there might be an alternative state of non-acceptance, which no one in the town of Whistle Stop appears to even consider feeling with regard to Ruth & Idgie’s romance. (In contrast, many locals definitely feel unaccepting of Ruth and Idgie’s decision to sell food from their cafe to the local Black population. Black customers have to take their food for carryout, and they get it at the back door, and the local Klan still protests.)
Is the town’s attitude toward Ruth and Idgie historically accurate for a small southern town in the mid-twentieth-century? I have no idea. Whatever else it may be, it certainly is adorable.
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Ohhh, this part got me. TToTT
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In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have been surprised when she came out as trans a few years later XD
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"Goodbye, Earl!"
Is the town’s attitude toward Ruth and Idgie historically accurate for a small southern town in the mid-twentieth-century?
I haven't read the novel since seventh grade, but the fact that it foregrounds racism suggests that it's not trying to paint the town as an anachronistic utopia so much as a small community that has decided to make an exception, which does not strike me as historically impossible, especially if Idgie has always done the socially, normatively masculine thing: she fits a recognizable category.
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Jen Manion's Female Husbands (2021) would be relevant here if my copy weren't in storage. Highly recommended, though.
Watsonianly, it also strikes me as reasonable for the town to accept her family-building with Ruth because if the town had not been going to accept Idgie, she would have struck out on her own a long time ago.
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But yes, this. Idgie is more Us than Them, really. They are okay with expanding their definition of Us a little bit.
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I meant to ask: how is the film as a version of the book? I've only read the book.
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In the movie Ruth and Idgie aren't as clearly together as they are in the book, but my recollection is that they're not not together - the movie doesn't say it's a romance but it also doesn't try to stop you from reading the romance just below the surface.
And I actually preferred the movie ending. The book sort of trails away at the end and the movie goes out on a stronger note.
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Oh, cool. In terms of plotting or the way it's played or what?
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In the book, Ninnie Threadgoode dies at the end. In the movie, after she leaves the nursing home (and finds that her home has been demolished) she goes to live with Evelyn, so she's there when Evelyn discovers that Idgie is still alive.
Also IIRC the movie totally cuts the weight-loss camp bit, which can only be an improvement.
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What is Idgie short for? And is the name sort of like "edgy" or sort of like "iggy"?
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It's short for Imogene, which makes sense to me as a compression: "Imgie" is a lot harder to say.
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I think the acceptance is historically true in a sense -- it happened with someone I knew a while ago in a small town in Maine. Her father's cousin raised her and lived with another woman for about twenty years and they weren't really out but they weren't closeted, either, and people accepted it. It helped that her family was white, fairly well-off, and had lived in the town for about thirty thousand years. If you don't rock the boat and start demanding stuff like social equality (like, with the local Black population eating in your restaurant!) small towns like that can be very protective. People like to see that environment as either idyllic OR prejudiced and horrifying, and the truth is, like most things, it's an AND situation. People in small towns can be accepting of people they think are, well, acceptable, on their terms, AND they can be horrifying to outsiders. (Insert Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" HERE. It's amazing how rarely anti-Semitism gets brought up when people talk about that story, but anyway.)
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Oh, please do!
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Not that I want every book set in a small town to be a sociological exploration of Acceptance and Rejection: Social Dynamics of a small town, but I do want it to feel real and often they don't. I think this is especially true in modern books, perhaps because fewer people live in small towns these days - authors are writing out of hopes and fears rather than experience. Older books are more likely to have "I love my small town BUT ALSO there are some definite flies in this ointment."