User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
An exemplary short story collection & very likely at the zenith in most "all-time" lists. All 10 vignettes are blissfully cinematographic, spewing out image after retched image, illuminating lives filled with woe, woe, & more woe. In a place of stasis & violence.
The setting is that of the inglorious Southern U.S.--minus its usual sheen of glittery magnificence.
It is without a doubt one very strong dose of American Gothic. The elements of which practically overflow in each short story: the immortal clashes between races, between sexes, between ages... reluctance to the advances of technology, the always impressionable war between rural & urban spaces.... plus the fabulous and macabre for which we've come to know and love the artist, such as: bizarrely wise children and inane adults; monkeys (of course!); trains, cars, transportation; self-fulfilling prophecy (the titular story is the main example of this); death, missteps, punishment exchanged for ingrained ignorance; as one character boldly puts it, an infatuation with "secret infections, hidden deformities, assaults upon children" (173). Sentences are overstuffed with a hidden meaning, & there is absolutely no real key to unlock each mysterious element or eerie undertone.
After the first story, the stories linger on insignificance much to long, but this is quickly forgiven as the last four stories (A Circle of Fire, A Late Encounter with the Enemy, Good Country People [my personal winner], and The Displaced Person) in the book match, if not surpass, the first one, the very very good "A Good Man...". & the immigrant polemic of this country in the modern day is a prophetic way to end her collection, in tale #10.
With these horrific and morbid morsels, it begins to dawn on us that no one else but the devil is in the details. It is no wonder that O'Connor is conversing with Faulkner in the Afterlife at this very moment... (Imagine, for a second, a fantasy collaboration between the two. A screenplay? WOW.)
Rating: really liked it
This stuff is twisted, sparse, clipped, dark, doomy, funny, dramatic, Southern, angry, sexy, super Catholic, death-haunted, maniacial, bizarre, possibly racist, apparently desperate, fatalistic, existential, dreary, ugly, fetid, frenzied, morbid, lax, stern, prepossessing, unforgiving, unrelenting, anti-everything, aged, "retro", haunting, parabolic, anecdotal, moral, redemptive, sublime, reasoned, feverish, dreamlike, unsparing, sparse, I said that one already, seductive, craftsmanlike, worried, extremely well concieved, taut, brooding, polarizing, scary, and powerful.
I literally didn't know one could write like this until I heard her do it.
I didn't know that the human mind would concieve of this until she did. Not that it's simply freaky- o no, that would be too easy- it's just so carefully done and well-proportioned in its flatness and its odd grace.
Masterpieces, pretty much to a story.
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Rating: really liked it
Exiled From Eden I don’t always have the aptitude and the patience (paradoxically) for short fiction, but O’Connor has a way of connecting all her stories by setting them in a landscape that refuses to leave you. The stories and the unease stay with you as you finish each grotesque piece, building up layer upon layer of despair until you thirst for an almost religious release from it all.
Peopled with the religious, the good and the moral -- trying to come to terms with a god-less world, grappling with a cruel word and crueler selves -- the continuous tensions between religiousness, morality and reality is played out in small, inconsequential dramas that affect nobody and nothing, but continues to fray the fabric of the world.
And in the end, each mini-drama also raises many mega-questions — Was it the loneliness of spirit that caused this particular drama to play out as it did? Can religion be blamed for the mistakes of humanity? Was God only ever invented so that humanity could bask in a continuous god-less loneliness, blaming abandonment over depravity for their ills? Are we self-exiled?
These are essentially comic tales — mixing violence, religion and morality without any restraints — where her characters face the ultimate questions of life and make the best choices they can, which are almost always tragically absurd in the eyes of the observer. With the best intentions, they are allowed to knock at and break open the gates to Hell.
My favorite is ‘The River’ — (view spoiler)
[of ‘a neglected four-year-old boy looking for the Kingdom of Christ in the fast-flowing waters of the river.’ (hide spoiler)] This story is characteristic of O’Connor’s fiction — it is simple and straight forward at first glance, though strangely, unaccountably powerful. But this apparent simplicity is misleading, for it operates on many levels — showcasing the power, absurdity, and danger of religion; and also its hypnotic beauty and irresistible splendor.
While the stories are deeply religious and derive their grotesqueness and tension from religion, a religious sensibility is in no way required for the reader to stand in awe of and grapple with the cold, godless and essentially lonely reality as presented to the protagonists. The readers will instantly find themselves at home in this cruel, fantastically real world of O’Connor. It is only the world outside your window, and inside yourself.
Rating: really liked it
Flannery O'Connor taps into a different type of dark with this collection of ten short stories. This is not horror, but it is disturbing. Nothing uplifting in here, no sirree-bob.
Hidden deformities, unwelcome visitors who refuse to leave, a woman's aversion to doctors, and a door-to-door Bible salesman who is a collector of some very odd things. Many of the characters are slightly "off", just as many have a mean streak. Eyes play a prominent role, a cast in the eye, a cracked eye, the eyes in the tail of a peacock, the look of the eyes behind spectacles.
A Good Man Is Hard To Find title story is just as striking as I've always heard. It may stick with me longer than I want.
Rating: really liked it
Coated with cynicism, the stories of
A Good Man is Hard to Find question the possibility of redemption in a society nearly rotten. Almost all the stories grotesque and make strange Biblical narratives, from the drowning of demonic pigs to angels in the wilderness. O’Connor’s stark descriptions of the South are breathtaking, and her ability to create sympathetic but unlikable characters is impressive. The most memorable moments in her work are those rare instances when grace breaks through the grimy setting and offers protagonists the chance to change. Aside from the titular story, favorites included “The River,” “A Temple of the Holy Ghost,” “A Circle in the Fire,” and “Good Country People.”
Rating: really liked it
A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories, Flannery O'Connor10 short stories:
A Good Man Is Hard to Find,
The River,
The Life You Save May Be Your Own,
A Stroke of Good Fortune,
A Temple of the Holy Ghost,
The Artificial Nigger,
A Circle in the Fire,
A Late Encounter with the Enemy,
Good Country People,
The Displaced Person.
A Good Man Is Hard to Find: A man named Bailey intends to take his family from Georgia to Florida for a summer vacation, but his mother (referred to as "the grandmother" in the story), wants him to drive to east Tennessee, where the grandmother has friends ("connections"). She argues that his children, John Wesley and June Star, have never been to east Tennessee, and she shows him a news article in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution about an escaped murderer who calls himself "The Misfit" and was last seen in Florida. ...
تاریخ نخستین خوانش
عنوان: آدم خوب، سخت گیر میاد؛ نویسنده مری فلانری اوکانر؛ مترجم ایمان کیمی نژاد ملائی؛ کرج: انتشارات ایماد، 1399؛ در 52ص؛ شابک 9786229688762؛ موضوع داستانهای کوتاه از نویسندگان ایالات متحده آمریکا - سده 20م
مری فلانر اوکانر، رماننویس، نویسنده داستان کوتاه، و مقاله نویس «آمریکایی» بودند؛ «مری فلانر اوکانر» در روز بیست و پنجم ماه مارس سال 1925میلادی، به عنوان تنها فرزند «ادوارد اوکانر» و «رجینا کلاین» در شهر «ساوانا» واقع در ایالت «جورجیا» متولد شدند؛ ایشان دوران کودکی خود را، به سان کبوتری ترسو، که با عقده های کوچک خود تنها رها شده، توصیف میکنند؛ ایشان در سن شش سالگی، برای نخستین بار طعم پیروزی را چشیدند، و مردم در جشنی برای نخستین بار «مری اوکانر» کوچک را با جوجه اش دیدند، فیلمی که از وی گرفته شده بود، در ایالتهای همسایه به نمایش درآمد؛ او میگوید: (هنگامیکه شش ساله بودم، به جوجه ام یاد داده بودم، عقب عقب راه برود، در آن دوره کمکی که به جوجه ای کوچک در زندگیم کرده بودم، نقطه ای پراهمیت در زندگیم به شمار میآمد، انگار که به خود کمک کرده ام؛ از آن به بعد بود، که ناتوانی برایم معنی شد، و از آن به بعد همه چیز برایم سیری قهقرائی پیدا کرد.)؛
در روز نخست ماه فوریه سال 1941میلادی؛ بیماری که با آن دست و پنجه نرم میکرد، ایشان را به ورطه نیستی کشاند، و در سن پانزده سالگی پس از تجربه ای که او را کم مانده بود به ورطه نابودی بکشاند؛ خود را برای رفتن به کالج آماده ساخت، در سال 1942میلادی پس از پایان تحصیلات متوسطه به «کالج جورجیا» واقع در «دانشگاه ایالتی» راه یافت، و به سرعت و پس از سپری شدن سه سال، فارغ التحصیل گردید، و مدرک خود را در علوم اجتماعی اخذ نمود، و پس از آن در کارگاه نویسندگی «لوآ» در «دانشگاه لوا» پذیرفته شد؛ «لوآ» در واقع نخستین جایی است، که ایشان نخستین آموزشها را، در عرصه ی روزنامه نگاری فرا گرفتند؛ و خود را در میان شماری از مهمترین نویسندگان، و منتقدان ادبی مطرح آن روزگار یافتند؛ که در میان ایشان به افرادی همچون «رابرت پن وارن»، «جان کرو رانسوم»، «روبی مکاوولی»، «آستین وارن»، و «اندرو لیت» اشاره کرد، «لیت» برای مدتها، ویراستاری روزنامه «سوئینی ریویو» را، بر دوش داشت، و از اولین تحسین کنندگان آثار «اوکانر» به شمار میرفت، و بعدها چندین داستان از ایشان را در «سوئینی ریویو» انتشار داد، و نقدهای مثبتی را بر آثار وی نگاشت؛ راهنمای جلسات «رابرت انگل» نام داشت، او اولین کسی بود، که به نقد و بررسی نخستین اثر مهم «اوکانر» با عنوان «شهود (وایز بلاد)» پرداخت، و آن را مورد ستایش قرار داد
داستان «آدم خوب کم پیدا میشود» را جناب «احمد گلشیری» نیز در 21ص، ترجمه کرده اند؛ در این داستان مردی به نام «بیلی» قصد دارد خانواده خود را برای تعطیلات تابستانی، از «جورجیا» به «فلوریدا» ببرد، اما مادرش (در این داستان «مادربزرگ» نامیده میشود)، میخواهد او را به شرق «تنسی» ببرند، جایی که مادربزرگ دوستانی و ارتباطاتی دارد؛ او استدلال میکند که فرزندانش، «جان وسلی» و «جون استار»، هرگز به شرق «تنسی» نرفته اند، و همچنین او یک مقاله ی خبری در مجله ی «نظامنامه ی آتلانتا» در مورد یک قاتل فراری، که خود را «ناجور» مینامد و آخرین بار در «فلوریدا» دیده شده، به او نشان میدهد؛ و ...؛
آدم خوب کم پیدا میشود: فلانری اوکانر؛ برگردان: احمد گلشیری: نقل از آغاز داستان (مادربزرگ خوش نداشت به «فلوریدا» برود، دلش میخواست برود «تنسی شرقی»، چند تا از بستگانش را ببیند، و هر وقت فرصتی دست میداد، سعی میکرد نظر «بیلی» را برگرداند؛ «بیلی» پسرش، پسر یکی یک دانه اش، بود، که در خانه اش زندگی میکرد؛ «بیلی» پشت میز، روی لبه صندلی، نشسته بود، و سرگرم خواندن صفحه ورزشی «مجله جورنال» بود؛ مادربزرگ گفت: «بیلی، اینجارو نگاه کن، اینو بخون»؛ یک دستش را به کمر لاغرش گذاشته بود، و با دست دیگر روزنامه رو تق تق به سر طاس او میزد؛ «یه بابایی، که اسم خودشو ناجور گذاشته، از زندون فدرال فرار کرده، رفته طرف فلوریدا؛ بخون ببین چه بلایی به سر فلوریداییها آورده؛ بگیر بخون؛ من بچه ها رو برنمیدارم ببرم جایی که توش همچین آدمکشی ول بگرده؛ یعنی اگر این کارو بکنم جواب وجدانمو چی بدم؟»)؛ پایان نقل
دنباله ی داستان ایشان را در نشانی زیر میتوانید بخوانید
http://rezabishetab2.blogfa.com/post/78
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 20/02/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Rating: really liked it
A Good Man is Hard to Find: A family strikes out on a road trip to Florida, knowing that an escaped convict is on the loose...
What a kick ass tale to open the collection. Flannery O'Connor had to be an influence of sorts on Jim Thompson, as this reads a lot like a condensed version of one of his stories. "She would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life."
The River: An odd little boy is taken to a river to be Baptised by a fire and brimstone preacher. Bleakness ensues.
"He could hear broken piece of the sun knocking on the water."
The Life You Save May Be Your Own: A one armed drifter takes up with an old woman and her deaf maiden daughter. Flannery O'Connor sure writes some grim tales.
A Stroke of Good Fortune: Ruby has some difficulty climbing the stairs to the apartment she shares with her husband, Bill Hill, and her brother Rufus, all the while thinking about what the fortune teller said.
"Bill Hill takes care of that!"
A Temple of the Holy Ghost: A child's annoying second cousins come from the convent to attend the fair.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I missed the point of this one. It was a little different from the previous ones since no one died.
The Artificial Nigger: Mr. Heard takes his grandson Nelson to the big city and they encounter African Americans.
I glossed over a lot of this. It's a tale of some country folk coming to the big city and it nicely illustrates why we rural Americans get a bad name. It also uses the N-word more times per page than anything I've read before, a product of the time.
A Circle in the Fire: Three troublesome boys show up at an old woman's farm. What will happen when they refuse to leave?
This one had some religious overtones and was fairly creepy.
A Late Encounter with the Enemy : Will Sally Poker's 104 year old grandfather, General Sash, die before her graduation?
I loved this one.
Good Country People: A young man shows up at Mrs. Hopewell's house selling bibles and takes a shine to her daughter, Joy.
This was another great story that reminded me of a Jim Thompson, Savage Night.
The Displaced Person: A priest hires a displaced person to work on Mrs. McIntyre's farm. How will her existing hands take it when he's more capable than them?
The ending of this one really drives home my point that it's very likely that Jim Thompson was a Flannery O'Connor fan.
A Good Man is Hard to Find is a powerful collection of tales by an overlooked mistress of the form. Four out of five stars.
Rating: really liked it
First things first, O’Connor did exactly what she intended to do here. It’s not a failure by any stretch (if, at times, close-cropped and uneven). Whatever she’s doing, cruel and unusual, she’s
good at it. But ugh, it just happens to be the exact kind of thing that revolts something deep down in my gut. I’m usually all on board with the creepy, crazy, what-have-you, but the difference here is that nobody is even alive before they’re dead.
There was this other review that said O’Connor believes in God but not so much in people, and all things considered that’s exactly it. The thing is, I need the opposite. I need it the other way around.
Rating: really liked it
I am developing quite an addiction for the Southern flavor of American literature, and reading my first short story collection by Flannery O'Connor is more than just adding fuel to the flame of my interest. She is surpassing all my expectations and constantly going beyond the surface of things to touch on personal trauma that is often as unavoidable, tragic and soul reaving as a Greek tragedy. I am not sure if I should use the term 'gothic' for her stories. Yes, her subjects are usually deformed people, people with dissabilities or with communications problems, people with anger in their hearts or living in denial of the outside world. A world that keeps intruding on their fictional reality, mercilessly knocking them down and teaching them some harsh lessons... or not, to those still unwilling to see or hear. I am associating Gothic with romantic heroes or heroines and grotesque settings. O'Connor's characters are ordinary people engaged in routine, everyday activities. Things get scary, yes, but I didn't find any supernatural elements or larger than life heroes. Unless you consider the stories through the lens of the author's Roman Catholic faith, which admittedly plays a central role in her plot construction. You have the sinners, the trial she or he has to go through, and the revelation of grace, or mercy, or whatever else you might want to call the lesson of the day. Literary, I found every story in the collection to be a true gem of style and restrained intensity, the raw emotion that I have so admired in Carson McCullers veiled here in a more intellectual and self-assured presentation that peals back from the soul every pretense and affectation to aim at the core of the character. There is a sustained sense of doom, of bleakness and hopelessness that can get depressing after a while, but more than one story ends on a more upbeat note, with life going on, and maybe a little more wisdom and kindness settling down on the afflicted, and on the reader.
A Good Man Is Hard to Find is the opening gambit, and despite the title it is not about romantic searches for a suitable spouse. It is about a typical American family leaving on vacation, by car from Georgia to Florida I think. There's the working father, the housewife mother, two lively kids and a garrulous grandmother that is kind of annoying in her self-centered preoccupation. The outside world barges into their lives in the most brutal and unreasonable way, and I can't really think what the lesson is, other than to live life fully and meaningfully while we can, because it is so fragile and precious and easily wasted.
The River is possible even more disturbing than the first story, because here, instead of an old lady, we have a young boy sent by his indifferent parents to spend the day with a babysitter. This lady takes the boy to a Baptist ceremony, and I believe the moral is we need to be very careful about what we teach our children and how we protect them from harm.
The Life You Save May Be Your Own is one of the first stories to introduce the dynamics of a mother and daughter relationship, a recurrent theme in the collection. The first one protective, the other damaged and unable to face the world on its own. The messenger of change, or Fate, takes the form of a one-armed travelling handyman, who offers to fix the women's farm implements in exchange for food and lodging. The mother sees in him an opportunity to solve the worries about the future of her daughter, but the man may have plans of his own. One possible moral may be that from immoral and selfish actions may result positive outcomes, and that there is a streak of kindness and integrity even in the lost souls.
A Stroke of Good Fortune is the story of another selfish woman, one of modest origins who tries to escape from the perceived prison of the cycle of marriage and children and taking care of the land and of the family, choosing instead a form of living for yourself. Her internal monologue takes place as she painfully climbs the stairs to her apartment. She's a gossippy and mean spirited woman, with an acid tongue (
"She had expected Rufus to have turned out into somebody with some get in him. Well, he had about as much get as a floor mop."), but she is not refused grace, even if the one that descends on her may be different from the one she has prayed for. But God (or the author) knows best.
A Temple of the Holy Ghost is one of the few stories with a touch of humour, coming from a very smart young girl who receives the visit in her house of two older girls from a convent school. The title of the piece is a reference to the lesson taught in the convent that your body is a temple and you must treat it as such, not letting anybody (especially boys) touch it or disrespect it. The young witness/narrator is quick to dismiss the convent girls for their shallowness :
"Neither of them could tell an intelligent thing and all their sentences began, 'You know this boy I know well one time he ...'" . But the story turns out to be not about the giggling adventures of these inept teenagers, but about a circus freak they see in town, and about accepting the other for what he is, not for what he looks like. This is also one of the stories where the Catholic viewpoint and the prayer as a way to salvation are made explicit.
The Artificial Nigger is my favorite piece in the collection, the most powerful condemnation of prejudice and narrow minded clinging to traditions. It has also some of the most beautiful and evocative paragraphs. An old man lives alone with his grandson in an isolated farm:
"Mr Head looked like an ancient child and Nelson like a miniature old man." . Mr. Head decides that in order to keep the boy by his side, he must scare him away from the big city, so they take a trip together to see all the niggers and the craziness of the metropolis. Crazy their adventure is, but also eye opening about the dark motives and the cruel methods the old man is willing to use in order to reach his goal. Ultimately, the couple turn their back on the modern world and its more permissive way of thinking, retreating to their hillbilly abode to lick their wounds and fight with each other. Yet there is hope still for the old man, even at this late stage in his life:
"Mr Head stood very still and felt the action of mercy touch him again but this time he knew that there were no words in the world that could name it. He understood that it grew out of agony, which is not denied to any man and which is given in strange ways to children. He understood it was all a man could carry into death to give his Maker and he suddenly burned with shame that he had so little of it to take with him." A Circle in the Fire is about another mother with a reclusive / disabled daughter. This time, the authoritarian lady is hard working and very proud of her farm, while the daughter hides in an upper room (autistic?) and timidly looks at the world from a safe distance. The status-quo is broken by visitors from the city: three young boys from an impoverished neighborhood, dreaming of a land of plenty and a life of leisure.
"You take a boy thirteen years old is equal in meanness to a man twice his age. It's no telling what he'll think up to do. You never know where he'll strike next." I could draw parallels between this story and the parable of Job, seeing as we are tested in our self-sufficiency and pride and judged not by the wealth we amass but by the compassion we show.
A Late Encounter with the Enemy deals with one of the favorite Southern pastimes: glorifying the past, clinging to a false image of prosperity and gentility that was built on the backs of slavery and intransigence. Here an elderly lady is graduating at 64 from a college and wants her 104 years old grandfather to come and be on the stage as a symbol of Confederacy values:
"See him! See him! My kin, all you upstarts! Glorious upright old man standing for the old traditions! Dignity! Honor! Courage! See him!" The old senile geezer is as fake as the General's uniform he wears, a gift from a television producer in need of fresh material for a feature. I would choose as soundtrack for this piece a Jethro Tull tune : "Living in the Past"
Good Country People revisits the mother / daughter menage, with the particularity that the daughter here is only physically disabled (a missing leg from a traffic accident). Her mind is as sharp as scissors, at least in theory, as she holds a university degree in philosophy, one that is pretty much useless to her as she vegetates in her mother's house. Fate knocks on their door in the shape of a travelling Bible salesman, of good country origins, according to his own account. It goes to show that not even intelligence makes us proof against the vicissitudes of fate or sweet-tongued crooks.
"Malebranche was right: we are not our own light. We are not our own light!" *
exclaims the young lady in despair, finding philosophy an insufficently strong support in her time of need.
*OK, so I didn't know who Malebranche is and I had to look it up, but it was worth it. It appears he was a French priest and philosopher from the 17 century who tried to reconcile the mind and the body, the will of God and causality in the real world.
The Displaced Person ends the collection in grand style, opening out the enclosed and often retrograde Southern culture to the modern influences and upheavals brought about by the second world war. The protagonist is another strong lady, managing a big farm with the help of 'white trash' servants and former slaves as workers. A priest persuades her to accept a family of Polish refugees from the concentration camps, and the change seems beneficial in the beginning, as the new man introduces modern machines and a more rigorous work ethic.
"Times are changing. Do you know what's happening to this world? It's swelling up. It's getting so full of people that only the smart thrifty energetic ones are going to survive." The old hands rebel against the changes, and the lady is torn between being faithful to her traditions and accepting the modern times. Tragedy once again tests the characters to their very core. Peacocks feature prominently in the background as a glittering but endangered symbol of the past glories. The story ends with the priest trying to give solace to the guilty conscience of the owner, and my own review ends with an ambiguous message of hope, one that requires a strong character who accepts all humanity's faults and still has the faith to go on:
"We are all damned, but some of us have taken off our blindfolds and see that there's nothing to see. It's a kind of salvation." ---
After the journey: I am now convinced that Flannery O'Connor knows not only how to write exceptional pages of literature, but she is well acquainted with all forms of physical and spiritual pain. Writing is a form of exorcising these demons, and possibly transmit the gift of grace to the reader. I am not a member of her confession, or ready to be converted, but I can respect and admire the results of her struggles.
Rating: really liked it
Horrible horrible horrible, particularly the first two. Trust me, I'm not saying this just for effect. They take 'dark' to a whole new level - like staring down into a bottomless pit. Yet absolutely brilliant, more of a review later (maybe) once I've recuperated.
Rating: really liked it
Joyce Carol Oates says (in a review in the New York Times)
no postwar and posthumous literary reputation of the twentieth century, with the notable exception of Sylvia Plath, has grown more rapidly and dramatically than that of Flannery O’Connor, whose work has acquired a canonical status since her death in 1964.And she compares Flannery’s rep with that of Carson McCullers and Truman Capote who, sez Joyce, have gone down.
Which surprised me. I mean, no one could dispute
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter or
Breakfast at Tiffany’s or
In Cold Blood, but plenty of people might like to quibble with
Wise Blood and its crazy ass ilk.
Gee, I wish they’d publish the Authors Hot 100 every year so we could see whose reputations have gone up and whose have gone down. That would be fun.
As to what makes them go up and down, I guess that’s a secret sauce. Likes of us don’t get to know.
Well, anyhow. I should tell you that I’m in a bit of a quandary here, in this review.
With Flannery O’Connor I’m in the most uncomfortable position of greatly enjoying and admiring a writer who I know absolutely I don’t understand, and further, that if I did, I wouldn’t like any part of what she was telling me. This is because she was a consciously Christian writer, and Catholic to boot. Many, maybe all, of these stories are like – or actually are – parables. Sometimes they become explicitly mystical :
He had never thought himself a great sinner before but he saw now that his true depravity had been hidden from him lest it cause him despair. He realized that he was forgiven for sins from the beginning of time, when he had conceived in his own heart the sin of Adam, until the present, when he had denied poor Nelson. He saw that no sin was too monstrous for him to claim as his own, and since God loved in proportion as He forgave, he felt ready at that instant to enter Paradise.Say what? What was that again?
So when I find myself loving these strange, menacing, hilarious stories with their deliciously dozy characters and bent-backwards dialogue, the Christian message about sin and redemption and grace and so forth just goes whizzing right over my head.
It’s rather like buying Playboy for the pictures of the naked ladies and not bothering to read any of the terrific articles at all.
Rating: really liked it
Such a fantastic way she has in drawing her stories. So vivid, varied characters, in all these stories regardless of the social strata of the people they are all searching for the same thing, grace. Knowing this author's background leads to a better understanding of her stories. Her long illness, she suffered with lupus, her Catholicism in the bible banging South and her people watching are all present in Jr stories. Yes, they are dark, her title story A good man is hard to find, left me reeling. The Displaced person contained her favorite bird the Peacock. A temple of the holy ghost took me in a small way back to Catholic school days. I am in awe of her talent, the symbolism contained in these stories is frankly brilliant, she even uses the weather and the sun to bring home the message being conveyed. Brilliant.
Rating: really liked it
“He had never thought himself a great sinner before but he saw now that his true depravity had been hidden from him lest it cause him despair. He realized that he was forgiven for sins from the beginning of time, when he had conceived in his own heart the sin of Adam, until the present, when he had denied poor Nelson. He saw that no sin was too monstrous for him to claim as his own, and since God loved in proportion as He forgave, he felt ready at that instant to enter Paradise.
This is my first Flannery O'Connor and I must say, I did not expect the darkness. I am quite a fan of Southern literature, and it is looking for that flavor that I picked this one up. And it did not disappoint! It reminded me of a cross between
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe and
The Dubliners. Each story is a portrait of the normal abnormalities of humanity; of the vices of cowardly, violence, prejudice, self-pity, hypocrisy and xenophobia; of the misinterpretation of everything that is good and wholesome until it's bent for one's personal gain. There is no evolution in the characters, no redemption: just raw humanity, like in Joyce's work. Kept me glued to the pages.
Rating: really liked it
So far, the best short story collection that I've read. Flannery O'Connor's prose can make you sing. However, the songs are predominantly dark, tragic and sad. The most appropriate image that I can think of is that scene in
The Wizard of Oz when the tornado is ravaging the Kansas farm of Dorothy's parents and then picture her singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" while the bicycle-riding wicked witch is smiling at her.
Quite an appropriate picture because Flannery O'Connor was born in Georgia and Dorothy is from Kansas. This collection of 10 short stories with
A Good Man is Hard to Find as the banner story is all set in Tennessee and Georgia. The stories are all about common town folks during O'Connor's life; this book was first published in 1953 and she died in 1964 (my birthyear). O'Connor, a devout Catholic, said that her objective in writing was
to reveal the mystery of God's grace in everyday life and this stated purpose does not come on a silver platter when she serves you her stories. You have to think. At times you would even say, "Where is God's grace in here?" You have to reflect at the end of each story as God can be in the characters' suffering:
it is when it's dark when you see the stars. This is not an easy read but a very engaging one. The twists and turns of the events are all very unexpected. Unlike Dorothy's rainbow, the colors of O'Connor's rainbow are all dark and bleak. It is up to you, the reader, how you can transform your life to put colors in your own rainbow.
O'Connor's short stories are different from the ones that I so far enjoyed. Alice Munro's stories in
The Progress of Love are so well told you would love her to write several others about her characters. Raymond Carver's strength say in
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is in presenting slices of life capturing its minutiae very distinctly and closing his story abruptly as if he is freezing the scene. Haruki Murakami's sparse prose and imagination in say
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman are something that are himself alone and put him in his own league.
In contrast, above the beauty of her prose and the darkness of her stories, O'Connor's strength is on unpredicability of her plot and the twist that she presents towards the end. Although these stories are not easy to read, me being unfamiliar with some Southern English words, i.e., think Alice Walker's
The Color Purple, you will hold on to each story and eagerly wait - breath controlled - for the last paragraph. Then since you liked the story, I just couldn't help but move to the next until you finish all the 10 stories.
SPOILERS ALERT! (I just don't want to forget some of the stories that I found amazing so I want to capture them here for my future reference).
A Good Man is Hard to Find The grandmother is a mouthy kick-ass Georgian woman. There is Misfit who is a prison escapee. I laughed on the scene where the grandma made a mistake of referring to a Tennessee farm when in fact that was in Georgia. They had an accident. And the Misfit and his cohorts came and killed the family one by one. Last to get killed was the grandma.
The River The orphan 5-y/o boy was drowned in the same river where he was baptized. Sadder than the first story.
The Artificial Nigger Very arresting introduction. The relationship of the white grandfather to his white grandson is one for the books. Reminded me of the travails between the father and son in an Italian classic movie,
The Bicycle. The treachery of the grandfather is mind-boggling similar to St. Peter's denial of Jesus. I wonder how it would affect the child when he grows up. Very moving.
A Late Encounter with the Enemy The funniest. I love reading stories about old men. It reminded me of Balzac's
Old Goriot. While reading, I was thinking of my 93-y/o father-in-law who is still alive. Although my father-in-law is not as grumpy and ascerbic and young girl-crazy as the General here, it is always fun to talk to him.
Good Country People A mother and her 23-y/o Ph.D. daughter who had an artificial leg were visited by a 19-y/o man who was supposed to be a nice Christian Bible salesman. He lured the daughter to come with him to a barn and the daughter thought she was in love. She was asked to remove her artificial leg and then the young man revealed his true identity. What a catch.
The Displaced Person Black workers are employed in a farm by a lady landowner. Until one day, a priest arrives with Polish family who left their country because Jews are being prosecuted by Hitler. So, the family will work as farmhands also. The Displaced Person, called DP is the head of the family. "Black or white, they are the same" says the lady landowner who is always worried about money.
6 out of 10 amazing short stories, each of them worthy of 5 stars. I need to read her other books before I die.
Rating: really liked it
In this 1949 classic, you will find every kind of nasty character and offensive prejudice imaginable. Really ugly stuff! This is the second time I've started reading this ten story collection
(distracted by other books) and even after several years, I
still remembered the first story entitled
The Misfit. It is a most horrific
killer of a read. Truly.
You will also find stories of sadness, despair, more prejudice, deceit, hard lessons learned, more deceit, a collector of bizarre souvenirs....that leads to even more deceit, and yes, more prejudice.
A GOOD MAN IS HARD TO FIND is one strange dark read......but entertaining!
