Flannery O'Connor

[Anonymous No.12003182]

Anyone else read her?

Understanding her nuance and position is very hard for me in a lot of her stories, probably because of her foreign and complicated life (devout Roman Catholic, ill from a young age, Southern). Does anyone else have this problem?

For example, I'm not sure exactly what I'm supposed to get out of "A Good Man is Hard to Find". The grandmother seems to have good intentions but, when it comes down to it, is a very asinine and selfish character, isn't she? Are her actions genuine or is she just trying to escape certain death, even in the face of the death of her loved ones? I understand that the appeal of the Old South for Southerners like the grandmother (hence what may be easily perceived as self-absorption), but is it really more nuanced than this or is it simply self-absorption?

All this said, I've found the stories of hers that are much more straight-forward to interpret ("A Temple of the Holy Ghost", "The Life You Save May Be Your Own") to be profoundly moving and beautiful. Religious imagery and allusion on her magnitude is practically unheard of in the 20th century, and the characters are painfully realistic. Landscape and settings desolate. There's a ton of depth in stories only 10 or 20 pages long. Next to Faulkner and Melville she's among the best American authors I've ever read, and there's nothing much like her.

[Anonymous No.12003211]

Umm we don't talk about literature here sweaty, just meme philosophers and meme books

[Anonymous No.12003274]

>>12003182
She may be /lit/'s favorite female writer.
She's good at writing about low class and obsessive southerners that most readers (or perhaps just northern readers) think are fake or unreal when they show up, but I've seen them in the South my whole life. She's a catholic writing about protestants, and them receiving grace is a big theme.
>does anyone else have this problem?
I've internalized the south so much that everything she has written makes sense to me, even fifty years after her death. But because it's internalized, I don't think about it, I just feel it.

[Anonymous No.12003282]

Non-Catholics will never understand O'Connor desu

[Anonymous No.12004256]

>>12003282
I love her and I’m atheist, just because I’m not religious doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the transcendent or themes of redemption. If anything I like her for how she portrays a struggle with and inner conflict with faith.
>>12003182
A good man is hard to find has got to be one of the best short stories of all time. Her ability to merge dark humor Shown in an almost nihilistic light with depth filled explorations of theology and philosophy is incredible. And she achieves all this while remaining grounded and spare

[Anonymous No.12004752]

>>12003274
Would you say that there's still a noticeable Old South sentiment down there, or is it few and far between? I ask because I really hardly ever hear about things happening down there. I can't imagine things are as desolate and broken as they were in the time Faulkner wrote about and in, or even O'Connor a few decades later.

>>12003282
I don't think that's necessarily true, especially if one has a good deal of knowledge and/or experience with Catholics.

>>12004256
>A good man is hard to find has got to be one of the best short stories of all time.
You mean the short story itself or the collection? If the story, you might sharing an interpretation? I'm sort of wondering where to begin with it.

But yeah, it's a real shame she died so young. Probably one of the most talented authors of the century.

[Anonymous No.12004971]

>>12003182

How do you think she comes?

[Anonymous No.12004981]

>>12003182
I had to read a couple of her short stories in a class about feminist literature but was taken aback at the casual use of racist slurs. In "A good man is hard to find" she uses the word pickaninny to describe a child of color and I don't even want to mention "The artificial n*****", after reading that I had to take a break because I was literally hiperventilating.

Perhaps the professor made us read those stories as a way of making us understand that not all women can be feminists and allies to PoC.

[Anonymous No.12005009]

>>12003211
Did you just make fun of my surface moisture content? What a depraved fucker..!

[Anonymous No.12005043]

>>12004981
I would have made you read just to see who the snowflakes in the room were. When I was a kid, a teacher introduced himself by saying something like, I csn tell which of you will be good students here, because can see things, like who is cool, which of you has had sex.. He didn't know prior to that comment, but certainly did directly after, based on our reactions. I was one of the uncool kids. That teacher didn't live much longer.

[Anonymous No.12005136]

>>12005043
What exactly is this post insinuating?

[Anonymous No.12005315]

>>12004981
>was taken aback at the casual use of racist slurs

[Anonymous No.12005336]

That stories set in the deep south in the 50s. It would not only be unrealistic to have them speak about black people in those terms but also disingenuous White washing of the bigotry that permaited southern culture. The grandmas blatant racism is meant to show how self absorbed she is and how she lack a real moral center unlike the misfit. She even acknowledges the poverty that permeates the black community at the time but rather than being actually concerned for the child all she can say is “wouldn’t that make a picture”

[Anonymous No.12005341]

>>12005336
Shit meant for>>12004981

[Anonymous No.12005345]

>>12003282
most Catholics don't even read or even know who Flannery O'Connor was

[Anonymous No.12005411]

>>12005336
>>12005315
>>12005043

Fucking hell anons, you really have no idea what a joke looks like do you?

>>12003182
She's high-tier, I think maybe Shirley Jackson and at times Ray Carver have some of the same mordant perspective without so much god. Some of the non-brokeback E-Annie Proulx also does this rural brutality game, but with less subtextual fun.

'A good man...' goes out of its way to deny you a lesson, to the extent where that's very much the point.

[Anonymous No.12005460]

>>12005336
Think you're reading a little bit too much into the contemporary white guilt all the time stuff

[Anonymous No.12005513]

>>12004971

??

[Anonymous No.12005675]

>"She would of been a good woman," The Misfit said, "if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."
It's all there, anon. How can't you see? Finally after recognizing the Misfit as one of her own children, internally embracing the ugliness she has sought to ignore, she is given the knowledge that can lead her to a life of purity, but this comes only on the precondition that she realizes her life must be destroyed.

Will you be able to weather the self-destruction that is necessary for all spiritual development? Or when you destroy yourself will there be nothing left?

[Anonymous No.12005728]

>>12004981
Nice bait.

[Anonymous No.12005960]

>>12005675
But is the Misfit trustworthy? And is the grandmother genuine when she's about to be shot?

[Anonymous No.12006005]

Wise Blood was so goddamn good. I actually saw John Houston's movie adaptation first but I loved it so much I sought out the novel and I thought it was pretty well perfect. I will probably read O'Connor's other novel but reading Wise Blood makes me wish she had more.

[Anonymous No.12006023]

>>12006005
Have you read her short stories? How does Wise Blood stack up to them?

[Anonymous No.12006061]

>>12006023
I had to read one of them in school years back and I don't remember it too well. Wise Blood was essentially a mix of subtle character insights, great dialogue, and a really clever and sometimes dark sense of humor. It's about the contradictions of an atheist preacher, founder of the church of Christ without christ, and the various locals he encounters. It's really something. Really alive.

[Anonymous No.12006142]

>>12005960
That’s the point. She can only be redeemed in the face of suffering. She would have been good only if someone were constantly threatening her. Her other complaints were phony and baseless. She tells a serial killer he’s somehow a good person and that praying will fix him. She tells him he comes from good blood, something she has no knowledge of and something that revels a classist elitism, still a relic of the plantations that persist in the south. Only at the end can she genuinely reach out and touch him on a deep primal level and connect with him. But it’s only cause she’s gonna die. If she got let go she’d slip into the same old ways

[Anonymous No.12006619]

>>12006142
I see, now it's starting to make sense to me. Thanks anon

[Anonymous No.12007969]

Bump for Catholic qt

[Anonymous No.12008381]

>>12007969
I agree with this.