Can anyone here help me understand Flannery O'Connor?

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Robyn_p

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I’ve heard a lot of good things about her, but I’ve never gotten a chance to read anything by her until now. So I was excited to finally find and pick up a book of her’s recently, *A Good Man is Hard to Find. * I’ve read the first three or four short stories in it and…I don’t get her.

So far, an entire family’s gotten murdered by a gangster, a little boy’s drowned in a river trying to find Jesus, and a groom abandons his deaf bride ON THEIR HONEYMOON at a diner in the middle of nowhere. :bigyikes:

I know in real life O’Connor was a devout Catholic, so I’m assuming she’s not a sadist and has a message she’s trying to get across with all these horrible situations. I don’t really have a problem with dark fiction, if there’s some sort of redemption or redemptive message. But I don’t see that so far here. There doesn’t seem to be a point. These stories are just really depressing.

Any fans of O’Connor out there who can help me? I can tell she’s a good writer because I get engaged in the story and characters within a few pages, which not many authors can do to me. But she just…keeps killing people! :banghead:
 
FOC’s characters end in death because we do.

The importance, for her, is not that anybody is redeemed physically (since none of us will be), but the spiritual redemption prior to the end.

In the first story you mentioned, the importance is what goes on the the Grandmother’s soul (as revealed by the dialogue) just before the end.

But otherwise, the writings of FOC are dark because human life so often is.

Feel free to PM me with any more questions.

ICXC NIKA
 
Robyn_p said:
I’ve heard a lot of good things about her, but I’ve never gotten a chance to read anything by her until now. So I was excited to finally find and pick up a book of her’s recently, *A Good Man is Hard to Find. * I’ve read the first three or four short stories in it and…I don’t get her.

So far, an entire family’s gotten murdered by a gangster, a little boy’s drowned in a river trying to find Jesus, and a groom abandons his deaf bride ON THEIR HONEYMOON at a diner in the middle of nowhere. :bigyikes:

I know in real life O’Connor was a devout Catholic, so I’m assuming she’s not a sadist and has a message she’s trying to get across with all these horrible situations. I don’t really have a problem with dark fiction, if there’s some sort of redemption or redemptive message. But I don’t see that so far here. There doesn’t seem to be a point. These stories are just really depressing.

Any fans of O’Connor out there who can help me? I can tell she’s a good writer because I get engaged in the story and characters within a few pages, which not many authors can do to me. But she just…keeps killing people! :banghead:
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Yes, I am a huge Flannery O’Connor fan. She is my favorite author and played a very big role in me joining the Catholic Church. She is also my biggest literary inspiration.

First thing is: A lot of people, even in her time, didn’t understand what the heck she was writing about. People struggled to understand her fiction and message.

Second thing: O’Connor is not a Catholic who happens to write fiction. She writes fiction because she is Catholic, as she said herself. All her stories about about what she sees as the drama of redemption being radically played out in its own context.

Third thing: The context in which she writes is the overwhelmingly protestant south in the 1950’s-1960’s. This is why few of her stories include Catholics. The stories take place in the deep south, with all its fundamentalism.

Fourth Thing: O’Connor strongly believed that the world is charged with God. She was very influenced by St.Thomas Aquinas, and all manner of Thomism. Thomistic metaphysics strongly affected her, and a strong sacramental view made her very conscious that God is at work everywhere and in everything. Christ is everywhere, often where you would say he is not.

Fifth thing: O’Connor lives in the grotesque. She sees her context in the south as the perfect expression of the grotesque, the utter misfits who find themselves in utterly sick situations. She seems the sick and twisted situations as radical ways in which God gets to the heart of people who are otherwise very far from him. The violent and the obscene become shocks to the system that enlighten one about the need for Grace and the violent act of redemption.

Sixth thing: Redemption is serious and often violent for her. Her favorite bible verse was: “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.” She was serious about that. Thats what happens in her stories. People violently crash towards a bloody redemption or a reckoning with it weather they want to or not.

Seventh: She had a strong belief that often the “Freaks, and lunatics” were often closer to redemption than the “Good old people.”. Jesus said he would rather us be cold than lookwarm. For her, mankind is not divided into the Good and Bad. It is divided into the Good/Bad and then the Apathetic. Those who flee from redemption come ever closer to an encounter with it.

Those are some basic starting points. Many other things are addressed in her writings. Such as racism, prejudice, insanity, immigration. Etc. But they all go back to the basic theme of violent encounters with redemption. She is writing about Grace, Grace where you don’t expect it and in ways you would never imagine.
 
TRH1292 said:
Yes, I am a huge Flannery O’Connor fan. She is my favorite author and played a very big role in me joining the Catholic Church. She is also my biggest literary inspiration.
Cool! If you don’t mind me asking, what was it in her writings that helped you in your conversion?
First thing is: A lot of people, even in her time, didn’t understand what the heck she was writing about. People struggled to understand her fiction and message.
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Wow! That was really helpful thanks! 👍 Especially your fifth point. I think I’m finally starting to understand her. I was about to give up on the book but I think I might just try and finish it now. 🙂
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GEddie said:
FOC’s characters end in death because we do.

The importance, for her, is not that anybody is redeemed physically (since none of us will be), but the spiritual redemption prior to the end.

In the first story you mentioned, the importance is what goes on the the Grandmother’s soul (as revealed by the dialogue) just before the end.

But otherwise, the writings of FOC are dark because human life so often is.

Feel free to PM me with any more questions.

ICXC NIKA
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Thanks! This helps also. 👍
 
TRH1292 said:
Yes, I am a huge Flannery O’Connor fan. She is my favorite author and played a very big role in me joining the Catholic Church. She is also my biggest literary inspiration.

First thing is: A lot of people, even in her time, didn’t understand what the heck she was writing about. People struggled to understand her fiction and message.

Second thing: O’Connor is not a Catholic who happens to write fiction. She writes fiction because she is Catholic, as she said herself. All her stories about about what she sees as the drama of redemption being radically played out in its own context.

Third thing: The context in which she writes is the overwhelmingly protestant south in the 1950’s-1960’s. This is why few of her stories include Catholics. The stories take place in the deep south, with all its fundamentalism.

Fourth Thing: O’Connor strongly believed that the world is charged with God. She was very influenced by St.Thomas Aquinas, and all manner of Thomism. Thomistic metaphysics strongly affected her, and a strong sacramental view made her very conscious that God is at work everywhere and in everything. Christ is everywhere, often where you would say he is not.

Fifth thing: O’Connor lives in the grotesque. She sees her context in the south as the perfect expression of the grotesque, the utter misfits who find themselves in utterly sick situations. She seems the sick and twisted situations as radical ways in which God gets to the heart of people who are otherwise very far from him. The violent and the obscene become shocks to the system that enlighten one about the need for Grace and the violent act of redemption.

Sixth thing: Redemption is serious and often violent for her. Her favorite bible verse was: “From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force.” She was serious about that. Thats what happens in her stories. People violently crash towards a bloody redemption or a reckoning with it weather they want to or not.

Seventh: She had a strong belief that often the “Freaks, and lunatics” were often closer to redemption than the “Good old people.”. Jesus said he would rather us be cold than lookwarm. For her, mankind is not divided into the Good and Bad. It is divided into the Good/Bad and then the Apathetic. Those who flee from redemption come ever closer to an encounter with it.

Those are some basic starting points. Many other things are addressed in her writings. Such as racism, prejudice, insanity, immigration. Etc. But they all go back to the basic theme of violent encounters with redemption. She is writing about Grace, Grace where you don’t expect it and in ways you would never imagine.
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Great explanation!
 
empther said:
Flannery O’Connor dismissed Harper Lee’s monumental To Kill A Mockingbird as “a child’s book”. :bigyikes:
voices.yahoo.com/to-kill-mockingbird-just-kids-book-11991278.html

That, and what I’ve read in this thread, settles it for me. I haven’t gotten around to reading O’Connor yet and probably never will.
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You are going to dismiss one of the greatest writers in history, certainly one of the best Catholic ones, who might possibly be declared a Saint one day, because she didn’t like to kill a mockingbird and her stories might not be from a Disney movie? :rolleyes:

I’m sorry but that seems a little silly.
 
You are going to dismiss one of the greatest writers in history, certainly one of the best Catholic ones, who might possibly be declared a Saint one day, because she didn’t like to kill a mockingbird and her stories might not be from a Disney movie? :rolleyes:
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I’m sorry but that seems a little silly.
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I might try a few of O’Connor’s short stories to see what she’s about,
after reading To Kill A Mockingbird a fourth time. 😃

__________________________Amazon Bestselling Rank

To Kill A Mockingbird … #56 :bigyikes: :clapping:
( Harper Lee )
The Violent Bear It Away: A Novel … #70,301
( Flannery O’Connor )
The Complete Stories … #3,262
( Flannery O’Connor )
Wise Blood: A Novel … #11,028
( Flannery O’Connor )
 
Robyn_p said:
I’ve heard a lot of good things about her, but I’ve never gotten a chance to read anything by her until now. So I was excited to finally find and pick up a book of her’s recently, *A Good Man is Hard to Find. * I’ve read the first three or four short stories in it and…I don’t get her.

So far, an entire family’s gotten murdered by a gangster, a little boy’s drowned in a river trying to find Jesus, and a groom abandons his deaf bride ON THEIR HONEYMOON at a diner in the middle of nowhere. :bigyikes:
I know in real life O’Connor was a devout Catholic, so I’m assuming she’s not a sadist and has a message she’s trying to get across with all these horrible situations. I don’t really have a problem with dark fiction, if there’s some sort of redemption or redemptive message. But I don’t see that so far here. There doesn’t seem to be a point. These stories are just really depressing.

Any fans of O’Connor out there who can help me? I can tell she’s a good writer because I get engaged in the story and characters within a few pages, which not many authors can do to me. But she just…keeps killing people! :banghead:
Click to expand...
Yup, that’s Flannery O’Connor all right! First time I read her stories, I kept thinking, “well, that was not a happy ending!”

A few years ago I was visiting my brother in Atlanta, and we drove down to Milledgeville Ga. to visit the Flannery O’Conner home. It wasn’t very well marked. We drove right past it the first time. There was one guy on duty to show us around and sell books. We sort of had the place to ourselves, house and grounds. But it was kind of interesting.
 
empther said:
Flannery O’Connor dismissed Harper Lee’s monumental To Kill A Mockingbird as “a child’s book”. :bigyikes:
voices.yahoo.com/to-kill-mockingbird-just-kids-book-11991278.html

That, and what I’ve read in this thread, settles it for me. I haven’t gotten around to reading O’Connor yet and probably never will.
Click to expand...
There were probably some personal issues going on there as well as literary criticism, as (according to the recent biography of O’Connor (which is quite good), Lee had made a sexual pass at O’Connor, and O’Connor was repulsed by that. I would imagine the public enmity between the two increased after that.
 
Arizona_Mike said:
There were probably some personal issues going on there as well as literary criticism, as (according to the recent biography of O’Connor (which is quite good), Lee had made a sexual pass at O’Connor, and O’Connor was repulsed by that. I would imagine the public enmity between the two increased after that.
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Harper Lee was a lesbian? :eek:
 
I crashed through that article in the link given by janeway520 in post 11.

There was only one paragraph that referenced the negative characters:
Paul Elie gives us this analysis of freakish and grotesque characters in O’Connor’s
fiction: “The grotesque character or freak plays various roles in her work, serving a broad
range of dramatic purposes. The freak is an image of human nature deformed by sin, as is the
Misfit in “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” or an instance of human nature transformed by
God’s grace, as Hazel Motes is at the end of Wise Blood. The freak is a figure for modern
man, like the psychologist Rayber in The Violent Bear It Away, reduced by the scientific
worldview to an aggregate of tendencies and statistics; or a character deliberately distorted
by the author, like the tattooed O.E. Parker in “Parker’s Back,” so as to startle the unwitting
reader to attention.”
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Later, the article talks about O’Connor’s aim of showing that grace saves.

Well, all right. That is a legitimate purpose for a piece of writing.

Of course, a writer might have another objective.
How about a character who is not evil, who, if left alone, will probably go to Heaven or not many of us will ,
who is decent, normal, and untroubled,
but,
is faced with great challenges through no fault of her own,
and overcomes them because she believes in God and trusts he will get her through?

“A woman who puts her trust in a higher power will be unchanged. Theresa will remain Theresa.”

That’s what I wrote. 😃
 
TRH1292 said:
Harper Lee was a lesbian? :eek:
Click to expand...
She has never said if she was lesbian or bisexual (there’s been a lot of discussion of that in literary circles - I think a lot of academics hope she is), but O’Connor was seriously creeped out by Lee’s come-on. I don’t think a woman like O’Connor would make that up.
 
janeway529 said:
I recommend reading this lecture by Archbishop Niederauer. He has a PhD in English Literature and if I’m not mistaken, his specialty [and dissertation] is on Flannery O’Connor.

FLANNERY O’CONNOR’S VISION OF FAITH, CHURCH AND MODERN CONSCIOUSNESS
usfca.edu/uploadedFiles/Destinations/Institutes_and_Centers/Lane/Events/documents/NiederauerOConnorLecture.pdf
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A very good article, worth re-reading. One thing struck me that O’Connor said. Reminds me so much of our own times and political approaches to religion.

"In regard to the value of self-denial in following Christ, Flannery O’Connor made the following observation on members of the Beat Generation as opponents of materialism: “They call themselves holy but holiness costs
and so far as I can see they pay nothing.”
 
Originally Posted by TRH1292
Harper Lee was a lesbian?
Click to expand...
She has never said if she was lesbian or bisexual (there’s been **a lot of discussion of that in literary circles :bigyikes: _:banghead: **- I think a lot of academics hope she is), but O’Connor was seriously creeped out by Lee’s come-on. I don’t think a woman like O’Connor would make that up.
Click to expand...

OK. Harper Lee was a tomboy, her early friend and neighbor was openly gay Truman Capote, and O’Connor didn’t like her book. So somebody says O’Connor says Lee made a pass at her and everybody believes it.

If O’Connor did say that, the time, date, where and circumstances of when she said it should be all over the internet. Try searching for it. You won’t find it.

Harper Lee is still alive at 87. In all that time, did anybody write a “tell all” book for a quick buck, or give an interview to get on television? It’s inevitable. 😦 It always happens.😦 It hasn’t to Lee. 😃

If the story began in “literary circles” that shouldn’t be surprising. TKAM was a spectacular success, winning the Pulitzer Prize and made into a classic Gregory Peck movie.
They were envious.
 
I kind of think of her as similar to Walker Percy as a philosophically-minded writer, perhaps influenced to some degree by modern existentialism? It’s been quite a while since I read any of her stories, they did (now that you mention it) seem somewhat depressing in that the characters all have major flaws and these flaws always lead to an existential crisis by the end of the story, one that as often as not destroys the character. I’m definitely not familiar enough with her to say what makes her fiction distinctly Catholic but if you put a gun to my head I’d say it’s got something to do with flawed people coming to some realization of their predicaments through anguish and suffering?
 
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