The Patience Worth Phenomenon Today
The story and writings of Pearl Curran/Patience Worth are little known outside of occult circles today. Most of the writing is out of print, except for a few print on demand publishers who specialize in public domain works.
Irving Litvag's Singer in the Shadows, written in 1972 and reprinted by Back-In-Print publishers, offers a thorough and accessible chronicle of the Pearl Curran/Patience Worth phenomenon.
In his book Immortal Remains. The Evidence of Life after Death Stephen E. Braude thoroughly examines the case of Patience Worth and concludes that Pearl Curran was probably a highly gifted child whose talent for writing was smothered by her mother, who wanted to force Pearl into a singing career. In the alter ego of Patience Worth her subconscious could revive that talent. Patience also had a sharp tongue and was highly suspicious and critical of organized religion and formal education. She also was contemptuous of the various forms of academic and religious posturing. Braude argues that these were in fact personality traits of Pearl that she couldn't let out at that time.
Read more about this topic: Patience Worth
Famous quotes containing the words patience, worth, phenomenon and/or today:
“He who knows patience knows peace.”
—Chinese proverb.
“There’s not a note of mine that’s worth the noting.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Culture relates to objects and is a phenomenon of the world; entertainment relates to people and is a phenomenon of life.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)
“There was a time when the average reader read a novel simply for the moral he could get out of it, and however naïve that may have been, it was a good deal less naïve than some of the limited objectives he has now. Today novels are considered to be entirely concerned with the social or economic or psychological forces that they will by necessity exhibit, or with those details of daily life that are for the good novelist only means to some deeper end.”
—Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964)