Three Examples of Karr's Style

  1. I should explain here that in East Texas parlance the term Nervous applied with equal accuracy to anything from
    chronic nail-biting to full-blown psychosis. Mr. Thibideaux down the street had blown off the heads of his wife and
    three sons, then set his house on fire before fixing the shotgun barrel under his own jaw a nd using his big toe on th
    thrigger. I used to spend Saturday nights in that house with his daughter, a junior high twirler of some popularity, and I
    remember nothing more of Mr. Thibideaux than that he had a crew cut and a stern manner he was a refinery worker
    like Daddy, and also a deacon at First Baptist.

  2. I had this succinct way of explaining the progression of my grandmother's cancer to neighbor ladies who asked:
    "First, theyt ook off her toenail, the her toe, ther her foot. Then they shot mustard gas through ehr leg till it was burnt
    black, and she screamed for six weeks nonstop. Then they took off her leg, and it was like a black stump laid up on a
    pillow. When we came to see her, she called Lecia by the wrong name. Then she came home, and it went to her brain,
    so she went crazy, and ants were crawling over her arm. Then she died."

  3. The big game for me once she'd started drinking was to gauge which way hr mood was running that I might steer her
    away from the related type of trouble. Hiding her car keys would keep her off the roads and, ergo, out of a wreck, for
    instance. Or I'd tie up the phone by having a running chat with the busy signal (seven-year-olds dn't yet have any phone
    life to speak of), so she couldn't dial up any teahcers or neighbors she was liable to bad-mouth. If I could thwart her
    first urges to call So-and-So or head down the highway to Yonder-a-place, eventually she'd get onto something else or
    just give up and pass out.