Seductive Beginnings, Surprising Twists, and Delicious Endings: Reading Flannery O'Connor's Short Fiction
I have been reading Flannery O'Connor's short stories since March. Reading them slowly, because she wrote them slowly, over a long stretch of time, sometimes on publisher deadlines which she didn't meet; she was always hesitant to let go of her work.
For those not familiar with O'Connor, she was a shy Georgia woman who brought her Southern drawl to graduate school at the University of Iowa in the 1940s. Her MFA teachers and peers thought little of her, but when she read her first story in a workshop, it is said that she mesmerized her listeners, and as everyone would shortly discover, she had already published her first story "The Geranium".
Flannery O'Connor believed in re-writing and did not allow a story to satisfy her easily. Then those characters of hers, Hazel, Enoch and others, kept coming back in different stories. The early stories were so connected that she later turned them into the novel Wise Blood. Her stories were re-written and transfigured constantly. O'Connor was understood as a powerful but disturbing writer: wait until you see what she does with religion in the stories, how she thins the boundaries of good and evil. One of her most disturbing stories is "A Good Man is Hard to Find", a powerful, but disgusting story which ends in a transcendental place.
Sometimes it is hard to tell what the stories criticize the most, our notions of good, or our aversion to evil, but as you read the stories, there is much to savor, whether it's the skillfully-sculpted sentence, or the unexpected twists and turns of the plots. The endings of the stories always lift you to a higher place, a high degree of transformation, but if you miss that moment when it happens, when you capture the tail of time, you might be left confused, a tad frustrated, but that's because you skimmed the story and forgot that close reading pains and pays. In Paul Matavire's terms, these stories anozipa....
I just finished "The Life You Save May be Your Own" and I am restless, so, to relax, I decided to listen to Macheso's music, which in turn sent me to my computer to work on my own stories.
Here is the last paragraph of the O'Connor story I just finished:
"The turnip continued slowly to descend. After a few minutes there was a guffawing peal of thunder from behind and fantastic raindrops, like tin-can tops, crashed over the rear of Mr. Shiftlet's car. Very quickly he stepped on the gas and with his stump sticking out the window he raced the galloping shower into Mobile."
What a way to enter a city after a long drive!
The next story is entitled "The River". The O'Connor volume I am reading contains thirty-one stories, the entire collection O'Connor published in her lifetime. She also published two novels.
For those not familiar with O'Connor, she was a shy Georgia woman who brought her Southern drawl to graduate school at the University of Iowa in the 1940s. Her MFA teachers and peers thought little of her, but when she read her first story in a workshop, it is said that she mesmerized her listeners, and as everyone would shortly discover, she had already published her first story "The Geranium".
Flannery O'Connor believed in re-writing and did not allow a story to satisfy her easily. Then those characters of hers, Hazel, Enoch and others, kept coming back in different stories. The early stories were so connected that she later turned them into the novel Wise Blood. Her stories were re-written and transfigured constantly. O'Connor was understood as a powerful but disturbing writer: wait until you see what she does with religion in the stories, how she thins the boundaries of good and evil. One of her most disturbing stories is "A Good Man is Hard to Find", a powerful, but disgusting story which ends in a transcendental place.
Sometimes it is hard to tell what the stories criticize the most, our notions of good, or our aversion to evil, but as you read the stories, there is much to savor, whether it's the skillfully-sculpted sentence, or the unexpected twists and turns of the plots. The endings of the stories always lift you to a higher place, a high degree of transformation, but if you miss that moment when it happens, when you capture the tail of time, you might be left confused, a tad frustrated, but that's because you skimmed the story and forgot that close reading pains and pays. In Paul Matavire's terms, these stories anozipa....
I just finished "The Life You Save May be Your Own" and I am restless, so, to relax, I decided to listen to Macheso's music, which in turn sent me to my computer to work on my own stories.
Here is the last paragraph of the O'Connor story I just finished:
"The turnip continued slowly to descend. After a few minutes there was a guffawing peal of thunder from behind and fantastic raindrops, like tin-can tops, crashed over the rear of Mr. Shiftlet's car. Very quickly he stepped on the gas and with his stump sticking out the window he raced the galloping shower into Mobile."
What a way to enter a city after a long drive!
The next story is entitled "The River". The O'Connor volume I am reading contains thirty-one stories, the entire collection O'Connor published in her lifetime. She also published two novels.
Comments