Flannery O'Connor

[Anonymous No.7240215]

She is the most based female author in the last 100 years.

[Anonymous No.7240222]

>>7240215
Djuna Barnes was better.

jk I actually haven't gotten around to reading either of them

[Anonymous No.7240230]

filename headline trolling here is too subtle to work that well tbh. plus people know what FOC looks like

[Anonymous No.7240233]

>>7240215
Lispector was better

[Anonymous No.7240237]

>>7240222

Djuna Barnes is Real Good

Neither measures up to Doris Lessing tho

[Anonymous No.7240245]

>>7240230
Plus her name's in the thread's subject line.

[Anonymous No.7240257]

The Beak for the win

[Anonymous No.7240268]

She's not popular because she was Christian (Catholic).

She is of immense talent and rare gift.

[Anonymous No.7240435]

She's better than Raymond Carver.

[Anonymous No.7240445]

>>7240268
If she WAS a Christian, she certainly wasn't cloyingly so. I find her take on religion to be unique and interesting.

[Anonymous No.7240466]

>>7240268
She is popular. Widely anthologized and taught

[Anonymous No.7240474]

she wrote bad stories inflected with her dumb morality. can't think of a single redeeming factor for her crippled writing.

[Anonymous No.7240523]

>>7240215
Has anyone noticed that the wikipedia entry for her refers to her as "Canadian." What the fuck?

[Anonymous No.7240540]

>>7240523
104.128.252.29 is right you pleb.

[Anonymous No.7240933]

Bump. Read some of her short stories in high school and that was probably one of the first times I really felt engaged and interested in literature.

[Anonymous No.7240985]

TAKE THE REDPILL IDIOTS. SHE'S A WOMAN AND THEREFORE INFERIOR TO ALL MALE WRITERS

[Anonymous No.7240988]

>>7240215

o'connor is fully backed

everything that rises must converge... dope name, dope collection of stories

[Anonymous No.7241143]

Are there any authors now that would be considered her contemporaries? I am looking for a similar style and voice but in a more modern setting and context.

[Anonymous No.7241285]

>>7240474
She said "nigger" a lot. Kind of.

[Anonymous No.7241298]

>>7241285
Flannery O'Damn Son Connor. The Real OG and patron saint of /lit/

[Anonymous No.7241311]

>>7240474

>she wrote bad stories inflected with her dumb morality.

we get it you read nietzsche's birth of tragedy and you really liked it

[Anonymous No.7241322]

>>7240215
i liked Wise Blood. I think more people should read it, its message of how stupid it is to have a chip on your shoulder is probably never going to stop being relevant.

[Anonymous No.7241403]

Toni Morrison is not only the best female author of the last 100 years, but also the best American author.

[Anonymous No.7242302]

I just ordered a compilation of her short stories, I haven't read her work before

[Anonymous No.7242911]

Was she a racist? Serious question.

[Anonymous No.7243352]

>>7242911
not significantly more than others of her time, I don't think. by modern standards, yes probably

[Anonymous No.7243392]

>>7240215
Ann Rand is better

[Anonymous No.7243405]

>>7241285
Flannery O'Connor confirmed problematic
>http://jezebel.com/5192628/judging-flannery-can-you-love-the-work-and-not-the-author

>Worse, she actively goaded another friend, deeply committed to the civil rights movement, with racist jokes. Not only did O'Connor tell the jokes, she apparently relished them, saving them up and spinning them out in a series of letters that have never been published. That she was (at times grudgingly) in favor of equality herself doesn't lessen the blow of this disclosure.

[Anonymous No.7243415]

>>7242911
I live in her hometown of Milledgeville and go to her old place at Andalusia a lot. She's hated here because of how unsympathetic she was towards southern white culture and it's crazy hypocrisy. Her family was one of the first in the city to rent land to former slaves.

[Anonymous No.7243484]

>>7243405
This makes me like her even more.

[Anonymous No.7243512]

>>7243405
Man, she would have loved 4chan

[Anonymous No.7243524]

>>7240540
Okay, so it was a troll.

[Anonymous No.7243866]

Lit Mom of 4chan <3 Bump

[Anonymous No.7244031]

>>7243405

>That she was in favor of equality herself doesn't lessen the blow of this disclosure.

Of course it lessens the blow of it.

Are these people insane?

[Anonymous No.7244041]

>>7240237

Lessingbrofist

[Anonymous No.7244050]

>>7243405
She sounds like a good time to be around and her stories are so vernacular that I feel like they'd be really fun to hear her read. Plus she seems like Kafka, where at the darkest, most unsettling parts of her stories she'd be in hysterics.

Would befriend and respect. Love her work

[Anonymous No.7244279]

I'm always down for Flannery thread, but let's talk about stories other than Everything Rises and A Good Man. A Temple of the Holy Ghost and A Circle in the Fire are my favorites of hers. I'm curious why both stories employ parallels of Christian lore through children, something I'm trying to get a grasp on right now. In A Circle In The Fire it's obvious that the children represent the 3 men who refused to worship Nebuchadnezzar's idol and I'm not sure if there's a specific saint referred to in Holy Ghost, but this passage is one of my favorites from O'Connor.

"She could stand to be shot but not to be burned in oil. She didn't know if she could stand to be torn to pieces by lions or not. She began to prepare her martyrdom, seeing herself in a pair of tights in a great arena, lit by the early Christians hanging in cages of fire, making a gold dusty light that fell on her and the lions. The first lion charged forward and fell at her feet, converted. A whole series of lions did the same. The lions liked her so much she even slept with them and finally the Romans were obliged to burn her but to their astonishment she would not burn down and finding she was so hard to kill, they finally cut off her head very quickly with a sword and she went immediately to heaven. She rehearsed this several times, returning each time at the entrance of Paradise to the lions."

If anyone is more familiar with Catholicism I'd like to know if that passage has any explicit biblical allusions besides the resistance to fire.

[Anonymous No.7244287]

>>7244279

Oh, also the detail about the tights was more jarring to me than the hermaphrodite in the story. Probably something interesting about child sexuality there that I'm too lazy to dig for.

[Anonymous No.7244310]

>>7244031
yes

[Anonymous No.7244338]

How could such a devout Catholic have such an incredible sense of what Christianity really meant, of all the nuances of Catholic sensibilities and morality, for better and for worse? It blows my Jewish mind.

[Anonymous No.7244345]

>>7244338

Constant study of theology if I'm not mistaken. I'm forever amazed at the strength she found in her religion.

[Anonymous No.7244347]

>>7240445
I'm an extremely resentful ex-Christian from the south and she's one of the few recent Christian authors who I enjoy with no problems even though I recognize all of the Christian influences and messages. She was clearly a very thoughtful person and not dogmatic in the slightest.

>>7244031
>are these people insane
I mean, the evidence is right there. Jezebel is a temple of madness.

[Anonymous No.7244350]

>>7244338
>blows my Jewish mind
I thought you people were supposed to be the epitome of deep religious scholarship and debate. Are you surprised that she was so erudite because she was a goy, or that there was even anything to study in the goy religion?

[Anonymous No.7244351]

>>7244347
>>7240445

Maybe read a little bit about the woman before you say stupid things like this? I can't believe someone would actually claim that O'Connor was "not dogmatic in the slightest."

[Anonymous No.7244354]

>>7244351
She doesn't come off as dogmatic in her fiction, anyway.

[Anonymous No.7244359]

>>7244347
>>7240445

"I write the way I do because (not though) I am a Catholic. This is a fact and nothing covers it like the bald statement. However, I am a Catholic peculiarly possessed of the modern consciousness, that thing Jung describes as unhistorical, solitary, and guilty. To possess this within the Church is to bear a burden, the necessary burden for the conscious Catholic. It’s to feel the contemporary situation at the ultimate level. I think that the Church is the only thing that is going to make the terrible world we are coming to endurable; the only thing that makes the Church endurable is that it is somehow the body of Christ and that on this we are fed. It seems to be a fact that you have to suffer as much from the Church as for it but if you believe in the divinity of Christ, you have to cherish the world at the same time that you struggle to endure it. This may explain the lack of bitterness in the stories."

"Dogma can in no way limit a limitless God. The person outside the Church attaches a different meaning to it than the person in. For me a dogma is only a gateway to contemplation and is an instrument of freedom and not of restriction. It preserves mystery for the human mind. Henry James said the young woman of the future would know nothing of mystery or manners. He had no business to limit it to one sex."

a few choice quotes from the lady herself for you dummies.

[Anonymous No.7244366]

>>7244350
I'm surprised that she found so much strength in Catholicism even when she perfectly understood and acknowledged all the holes that we love to poke in it. It is a regressive, retributive and anti-humanistic faith - and O'Connor understood and still managed to be incredibly devout. Incredible.

[Anonymous No.7244367]

>>7244351
I've read a number of her stories and never felt her overtly attempting to convert people. Maybe in "Good Country People" she becomes a little heavy-handed, but that's the most extreme example. She never preaches.

[Anonymous No.7244369]

>>7244354

Read better.

[Anonymous No.7244371]

>>7244359
She was a fiction author. I'm more interested in what she chose to communicate than her personal beliefs.

[Anonymous No.7244373]

>>7244367

Her stories are almost universally about the shortsightedness and pain and suffering of those who fail to be converted, that doesn't strike you as an attempt to convert people?

[Anonymous No.7244378]

>>7244371

Everything she said in those letters is just as easily communicated in her stories. I don't even really understand what you mean by that sentence anyway, what would she be trying to communicate besides her personal beliefs anyway?

[Anonymous No.7244382]

>>7244373
No. "The Lame Shall Rise" the Christian father tries converting the Satanic boy and his son hangs himself as a result. That doesn't sound like someone who's pro-conversion at all.

[Anonymous No.7244385]

>>7243405
>Progressive for her time but still clever/old time-y enough to piss off Gawker

Damn she is based.

[Anonymous No.7244389]

>>7244382

You haven't read the story. The Lame Shall Enter First. The father is the atheist, the boy is Christian.

[Anonymous No.7244390]

she's fucking lame. read the godless female writers. or just lydia davis over and over until your eyes bleed or you an hero from the magnificent feels

[Anonymous No.7244392]

>>7244385
this

[Anonymous No.7244407]

>>7244389
Eh, I have nothing to prove to some low-life who can't appreciate O'Connor. I'm not religious by any means, but it's obvious that you're one of the reasons fedoras are a meme.

[Anonymous No.7244412]

>>7244385
>She's racist!? Daaaaamn, so based. I'm in love!!

Fucking scared whitebreads around here.

No. I'm pale as they come

[Anonymous No.7244415]

>>7244407

I'm not even sure what you're talking about anymore.

[Anonymous No.7244417]

>>7244385
She was a typical bourgeois white female, nothing progressive about her.

[Anonymous No.7244420]

>>7244415
Weren't you criticizing O'Connor for trying to convert people?

[Anonymous No.7244428]

>>7244420

No, I was doing the exact opposite of that.

[Anonymous No.7244433]

>>7244420

Oh, I see the confusion. No, I wasn't criticizing her for it, just saying that it was certainly something she intended through her work.

[Anonymous No.7244453]

>>7244433
Quit trying to make me hate Flannery O'Connor. She has secular value beyond whatever intentions for converting people that may or may not be underlying her works.

[Anonymous No.7244462]

>>7244453

If you're the person who posted that ridiculous interpretation of The Lame Shall Enter First then I'd rather you hate her. Otherwise, of course she has secular value but ignoring the inherent Catholicism of O'Connor's writing is ridiculous to the point that you shouldn't even bother reading her without a solid understanding of her world view.

[Anonymous No.7244479]

>>7244462
What ridiculous interpretation? That I thought the father in the story was Christian because he was charitable? Besides, who is it more likely that didn't read the story and just used Wikipedia? The guy who made a few errors in the story's synopsis or the guy who got everything right?

Kill yourself.

[Anonymous No.7244487]

>>7244378
>what would she be trying to communicate besides her personal beliefs anyway
A small piece of them that's more easily approached than her whole Catholic system, or a more humane version of her unforgiving beliefs.

>>7244366
My thoughts exactly. She was quite self-aware and, perhaps, skilled at double-think enough to find solace in something like Catholicism. Thanks Jew-bro.

[Anonymous No.7244488]

>>7244479

A few errors? The entire story is about the fathers selfishness and pride in his atheism, and his resentment of his son's interest in Christianity. I suppose I did get everything right by understanding that the father was an atheist (how can you not realize the importance of the telescope in this story?), and actually remembering that his son is introduced to Christianity by the young man his father was attempting to "save".

[Anonymous No.7244494]

>>7244487

I hope you realize the irony in suggesting that O'Connor was attempting to present a "humane version" of her beliefs.

[Anonymous No.7244506]

>>7244488
>The entire story is about the fathers selfishness and pride in his atheism

The story is all about caring about your family. The story is all about not being able to fix people who are ideologically backwards. The story is all about Christians being pussies and hanging themselves. See, I can make up reasons for what the story is "all about" too!

>I suppose I did get everything right

You know how I can tell you've lived a sheltered life?

[Anonymous No.7244508]

>>7244494
Yes, I'm aware that proud nonbelievers meet bad ends in her stories. The path there is a lot more nuanced, though, and one usually ends up forgiving the fire and brimstone bits because of the rest of the story.

[Anonymous No.7244521]

>>7244506

You can't support those claims because they're silly. O'Connor is one of the most studied authors in all of academia. I'm not suggesting there isn't room for interpretation or that she has been "figured out", but I can say with 100% certainty that your interpretation (whichever of the several you've presented you decide on) has no basis in the text itself.

[Anonymous No.7244522]

>>7244508

I wasn't necessarily commenting on the religious aspect, just that humane is never a word I've heard associated with O'Connor.

[Anonymous No.7244524]

>>7244506
You're on a literature board for Christ's sake, are you really pulling the "literary analysis = making stuff up" card?

[Anonymous No.7244526]

>>7244524
I'm stating that his analysis is narrowminded and isn't what the "entire story is about."

[Anonymous No.7244534]

>>7244526

Even ignoring that fact, you literally misinterpreted the single most obvious theme of the story. You simply can't read.

[Anonymous No.7244565]

>>7243405
well now I have to read her whole ouvre

[Anonymous No.7244791]

>>7241285
i'm not a retarded white boy, so no, not particularly redeeming.

[Anonymous No.7245975]

bump bump

[Anonymous No.7246001]

>>7240215
strange way to spell Virginia Woolf but i agree OP

>>7240257
this guy gets it

[Anonymous No.7246555]

>>7243405

too cool

[Anonymous No.7246585]

She was a great writer, but a chicken training genius: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtnV-iD2QlI

[Anonymous No.7246617]

>>7244031
>>7244347
That was a quote of a quote from the article. The Jezebel writer argued against letting it tarnish her work.

[Anonymous No.7246662]

>>7244279
Does anyone want to actually engage with some literature or do we just jerk about how cool O'Connor was (even though she was really cool, come on guys).

[Anonymous No.7246805]

>>7244279

"The sun was a huge red ball like an elevated Host drenched in blood and when it sank out of sight, it left a line in the sky like a red clay road hanging over the trees."

[Anonymous No.7247258]

"If reading it would be painful to her, writing it had sometimes been unbearable
to him—for in order to face her, he had had to face himself. “I came here to
escape the slave’s atmosphere of home,” he had written, “to find freedom, to
liberate my imagination, to take it like a hawk fromits cage and set it ‘whirling off
into the widening gyre’ (Yeats) and what did I find? It was incapable of flight. It
was some bird you had domesticated, sitting huffy in its pen, refusing to come
out!” The next words were underscored twice. “I have no imagination. I have no
talent. I can’t create. I have nothing but the desire for these things. Why didn’t you
kill that too? Woman, why did you pinion me?”
Writing this, he had reached the pit of despair and he thought that reading it,
she would at least begin to sense his tragedy and her part in it. It was not that she
had ever forced her way on him. That had never been necessary. Her way had
simply been the air he breathed and when at last he had found other air, he
couldn’t survive in it. He felt that even if she didn’t understand at once, the letter
would leave her with an enduring chill and perhaps in time lead her to see herself
as she was.
He had destroyed everything else he had ever written—his two lifeless
novels, his half-dozen stationary plays, his prosy poems, his sketchy short stories
—and kept only the two notebooks that contained the letter" - The Enduring Chill


Flannery knew that if a man can't write he should blame his mother.

[Anonymous No.7247281]

>>7247258

This is why Flannery was the best. She was an artist who hated artists, and a Christian who hated Christians, and she was right to be both.

[Anonymous No.7247288]

>>7244279
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_in_the_lions%27_den

[Anonymous No.7247297]

>>7247288

Thanks, this is exactly what I was looking for. Any ideas about the tights?

[Anonymous No.7247302]

"Behind the newspaper Julian was withdrawing into the inner compartment of
his mind where he spent most of his time. This was a kind of mental bubble in
which he established himself when he could not bear to be a part of what was
going on around him. From it he could see out and judge but in it he was safe from
any kind of penetration from without. It was the only place where he felt free of
the general idiocy of his fellows. His mother had never entered it but from it he
could see her with absolute clarity.
The old lady was clever enough and he thought that if she had started from any
of the right premises, more might have been expected of her. She lived according
to the laws of her own fantasy world, outside of which he had never seen her set
foot. The law of it was to sacrifice herself for him after she had first created the
necessity to do so by making a mess of things. If he had permitted her sacrifices, it
was only because her lack of foresight had made them necessary. All of her life
had been a struggle to act like a Chestny without the Chestny goods, and to give
him everything she thought a Chestny ought to have; but since, said she, it was fun
to struggle, why complain? And when you had won, as she had won, what fun to
look back on the hard times! He could not forgive her that she had enjoyed the
struggle and that she thought she had won.
What she meant when she said she had won was that she had brought him up
successfully and had sent him to college and that he had turned out so well—good
looking (her teeth had gone unfilled so that his could be straightened), intelligent
(he realized he was too intelligent to be a success), and with a future ahead of him
(there was of course no future ahead of him). She excused his gloominess on the
grounds that he was still growing up and his radical ideas on his lack of practical
experience. She said he didn’t yet know a thing about “life,” that he hadn’t even
entered the real world—when already he was as disenchanted with it as a man of
fifty.
The further irony of all this was that in spite of her, he had turned out so well.
In spite of going to only a third-rate college, he had, on his own initiative, come
out with a first-rate education; in spite of growing up dominated by a small mind,
he had ended up with a large one; in spite of all her foolish views, he was free of
prejudice and unafraid to face facts. Most miraculous of all, instead of being
blinded by love for her as she was for him, he had cut himself emotionally free of
her and could see her with complete objectivity. He was not dominated by his
mother." - Everything that Rises Must Converge

Sons being truncated by their mothers' ignorance and smothering "love". It's strong motif in her writing.

[Anonymous No.7247304]

>>7244412
I have no idea how any of the folks here function in a real-life literary discussion.

[Anonymous No.7247307]

>>7247302

Not sure it's necessarily about sons and mothers, in A Circle it's a daughter and her mother, and in The Lame it's a son resentful of his father.

[Anonymous No.7247314]

>>7247258
The Enduring Chill is probably one of my favorite two or three from FO'C. Stephen Colbert does a great reading of it

[Anonymous No.7247320]

>>7243405
Jezebel is a trashy meme "journalism" site that exists to manufacture pseudo-feminist rage.

[Anonymous No.7247324]

>>7247320

We know. Why would you even bother posting that?

[Anonymous No.7247330]

>>7247324
Do you really? Why are you giving them clicks?

[Anonymous No.7247332]

>>7247330

I didn't click on it, and even if I did who cares?

[Anonymous No.7247372]

>>7247297
That is an odd detail. My guess is that the connotation is anachronistic; O'Connor might have associated tights with a certain type of person or situation, but it's hard to say what that is for her culture

[Anonymous No.7247381]

>>7247314
Not that it's especially relevant, but Colbert is a Catholic as well.

[Anonymous No.7247395]

>>7247372

That might be true. It puts me in mind of St. Joan, known for wearing men's clothes and burned alive. Maybe it accentuates the pride of her martyrdom fantasy. She wouldn't be able to handle being burned with oil or burned alive at all for that matter, and doubts that she could handle being torn apart by lions. She dies a quick death by sword in the fantasy and looks very pretty and ladylike in her tights. Either that or it has some kind of relation to sexuality and the hermaphrodite, but I don't get the impression that the child in the story really even understands the hermaphrodite so I don't know if that does any work.

[Anonymous No.7247406]

>>7243405
BASED

[Anonymous No.7247516]

>>7247406
Pathetic.

[Anonymous No.7248922]

>>7247516
U 200% MAD

[Anonymous No.7248927]

>>7243405
BURN THEIR EYES CLEAN WITH THE WORD OF GOD FLANNERY. I LOVE YOU.