Welcome to The Literary Lounge
Flannery O'Connor
Recently, I took at class at Vanderbilt on "The Incarnational Art of Flannery O’Connor." I would really challenge you to take a peek at her short stories if you have not done so before. She is nothing short of brilliant and with “Wild Cat” directed by Ethan Hawke coming out in a week it would be helpful to become a little acquainted with her beforehand.
Hawke said that O’Connor has a way of “undressing humanity” and that is one of the most important things about what and how she writes. She makes you feel very uncomfortable and it’s intentional because she’s forcing you to look at your prejudices and arrogance. And generally, the more intellectual the character thinks they are, like Julian in “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” or the person Like Mrs. Turpin who thinks she better than everyone else in the story, “Revelation,” the harder they fall. Grace is present but it’s hard and brutal. There is no romanticism in the harshness of the grace that is given. And you never get to be privy to the rest of the person’s story. The stories always abruptly end, and you are left to consider what next steps the protagonists take. Do they grasp onto the gift given or will they turn away to live a second-rate life.
She was only 39 years old when she died from complications from Lupus. Her own father had died from the same disease, and we are left wondering how much more she would have been able to speak to us through the power of story had she lived to 100 yrs., which is what she would have been next year 2025.
Jessica Hooten Wilson has many podcasts on O’Connor and all of them are good. Here is one on how to read her because Flannery is somewhat of an acquired taste.
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A Good Man is Hard to Find
Revelation
Everything That Rises Must Converge
Here are two quotes to leave with you on the undressing of humanity:
The fiction writer has to engage in a continual examination of conscience. He has to be aware of the freak in himself.
Flannery O’Connor
The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through all human hearts.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn