What's a "paper brick house"? And what are the "cars" in "The River"?

August 19, 2015 12:41 PM

Two questions about Flannery O'Connor's "The River". 1) What's a "paper brick house"? 2) What kind of public transportation are the "cars"?

1) One family lives in a "paper brick house." It's described like this: "It was tan paper brick with a porch across the front of it and a tin top." What kind of dwelling is being described? Is it made from papier mâché bricks? Or is the outside papered over and made to look like bricks? Something else?

2) Are the "cars" mentioned streetcars, buses or trolleybuses? I'm assuming the first, and then the story would be set during 40s, before the streetcar systems of Atlanta and Savannah were dismantled, but after home refrigerators became common. Did people still referred to buses or a trolleybuses as "cars" in 1950s Georgia?

posted by Kattullus to Society & Culture (4 answers total)

Best answer: Kattullus: "What kind of dwelling is being described? Is it made from papier mâché bricks? Or is the outside papered over and made to look like bricks?"

I would assume asphalt shingle designed to look like brick. Very common in the 30s and 40s.
posted by Rock Steady at 12:45 PM on August 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Akin to Rock Steady above I assumed it was asphalt siding, sort of like what you'd find on a roof, except patterned to look vaguely like brick. Old houses clad this way still exist in some areas (Chicago is one) -- the siding was a type of asphalt-impregnated thing, could be done in sheets or as rolls, and could look sort of like brick, sort of like wood siding, and son on. Nailed on. If it's the roll kind, it seems to usually be applied in horizontal bands with a bit of overlap. I've seen more of the sheet kind, however. The roll kind seems to have been cheaper (houses with it seem to get torn down rather than rebuilt, whereas an old house with the sheet kind might survive to be rehabbed).
posted by aramaic at 12:49 PM on August 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Given that the story makes reference to the tracks (which buses wouldn't need since they have tyres), and also calls the car a trolley, I'd say it's a streetcar (I had to look that up, we call them trams here). The short story was first published in 1955, by which time all the streetcars had been replaced by trolleybuses in Atlanta at least, but obviously it could be set several years earlier when streetcars were the default. A brief timeline of streetcars in Atlanta.
posted by Athanassiel at 7:05 PM on August 19, 2015

Response by poster: Thanks! That answered my questions.
posted by Kattullus at 12:20 PM on August 20, 2015