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Three by Flannery O'Connor
The quintessential Southern writer, O'Connor wrote fiercely comic, powerful fiction. This anthology includes the masterpieces Wise Blood, The Violent Bear it Away, and Everything that Rises Must Converge.
461 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1960
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2103 people want to read
About the author
Flannery O'Connor
219 books5,178 followersCritics note novels
Wise Blood
(1952) and
The Violent Bear It Away
(1960) and short stories, collected in such works as
A Good Man Is Hard to Find
(1955), of American writer Mary Flannery O'Connor for their explorations of religious faith and a spare literary style.
The Georgia state college for women educated O’Connor, who then studied writing at the Iowa writers' workshop and wrote much of Wise Blood at the colony of artists at Yaddo in upstate New York. She lived most of her adult life on Andalusia, ancestral farm of her family outside Milledgeville, Georgia.
O’Connor wrote Everything That Rises Must Converge (1964). When she died at the age of 39 years, America lost one of its most gifted writers at the height of her powers.
Survivors published her essays were published in Mystery and Manners (1969). Her Complete Stories , published posthumously in 1972, won the national book award for that year. Survivors published her letters in The Habit of Being (1979). In 1988, the Library of America published Collected Works of Flannery O'Connor, the first so honored postwar writer.
People in an online poll in 2009 voted her Complete Stories as the best book to win the national book award in the six-decade history of the contest.
The Georgia state college for women educated O’Connor, who then studied writing at the Iowa writers' workshop and wrote much of Wise Blood at the colony of artists at Yaddo in upstate New York. She lived most of her adult life on Andalusia, ancestral farm of her family outside Milledgeville, Georgia.
O’Connor wrote Everything That Rises Must Converge (1964). When she died at the age of 39 years, America lost one of its most gifted writers at the height of her powers.
Survivors published her essays were published in Mystery and Manners (1969). Her Complete Stories , published posthumously in 1972, won the national book award for that year. Survivors published her letters in The Habit of Being (1979). In 1988, the Library of America published Collected Works of Flannery O'Connor, the first so honored postwar writer.
People in an online poll in 2009 voted her Complete Stories as the best book to win the national book award in the six-decade history of the contest.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 166 reviews
May 14, 2023
I remember when I first read Flannery during a summer course. We were concentrating on A Good Man is Hard to Find which is about an elderly lady and a stone killer. When discussion time came, one man was highly offended by the story. I didn't agree with him, and spoke up next, but to each their own. That's the way of it when readers expect authors with religious beliefs to write upbeat good-as-gold stories, tracts, devotionals, homilies. But Flannery falls into the category of Emily Dickinson's "tell the truth but tell it slant." Along with other Catholic writers like Graham Greene, Anthony Burgess and Walker Percy. And that's what you get when you read her. The well-written offbeat tale.
May 14, 2023
Tell It Slant
I remember when I first read Flannery during a summer course. We were concentrating on A Good Man is Hard to Find which is about an elderly lady and a stone killer. When discussion time came, one man was highly offended by the story. I didn’t agree with him, and spoke up next, but to each their own. That’s the way of it when readers expect authors with religious beliefs to write upbeat good-as-gold stories, tracts, devotionals, homilies. But Flannery falls into the category of Emily Dickinson’s “tell the truth but tell it slant.” Along with other Catholic writers like Graham Greene, Anthony Burgess and Walker Percy. And that’s what you get when you read her. The well-written offbeat tale.
I remember when I first read Flannery during a summer course. We were concentrating on A Good Man is Hard to Find which is about an elderly lady and a stone killer. When discussion time came, one man was highly offended by the story. I didn’t agree with him, and spoke up next, but to each their own. That’s the way of it when readers expect authors with religious beliefs to write upbeat good-as-gold stories, tracts, devotionals, homilies. But Flannery falls into the category of Emily Dickinson’s “tell the truth but tell it slant.” Along with other Catholic writers like Graham Greene, Anthony Burgess and Walker Percy. And that’s what you get when you read her. The well-written offbeat tale.
June 3, 2018
Wise Blood was a book that transformed me in high school almost as much as Faulkner's Light in August did. Spell-binding, Hazel is one of Flannery's most vivid (and grotesque) characters. The other stories in this paperback (mind is dogeared, dog chewed, and full of high school diddles ("U2!", "Tears for Fears!") but still a go to book every decade of so.
May 14, 2023
I've had this Signet paperback (pub. 1964) on my bookshelf for decades. I'd read parts of it many years ago, and, in a minute, I'll get to why I recently decided to read the whole book.
The anthology is in three parts: a novel (Wise Blood), a collection of short stories and a novella ("A Good Man Is Hard to Find"), and another novel (The Violent Bear It Away). Since I couldn't remember what I'd previously read, I went from back to front in the hope of sampling the new material first.
Part 3. I was brought up with no religion and in some ways I think that has sensitized me to fundamentalism in many forms—not only religious, but political (including progressive fundamentalism). Fundamentalism is characterized by somebody's absolute certainty that their belief is the only true one and anybody who does not agree is wrong, misguided, an idiot. In The Violent Bear It Away, O'Connor painfully evokes the feeling of being torn to bits by warring sides, of being a confused and helpless angry child without the wherewithal to deal with this level of extremes. O'Connor was Christian and deals with Christian fundamentalism, but the pain transcends the particular story. Reading through all the Scriptural references was a slog for me, since this is not my natural territory, but ultimately I found myself riveted by the basic human drama: a child torn apart by warring adults, and everybody is nuts. I can relate … Unless I completely missed the point and the great-uncle prophet who creates a murdering boy prophet is supposed to be sane. This was the most difficult (unenjoyable) section of the anthology—not easy reading.
Part 2. The short stories and novella ("A Good Man Is Hard to Find") are simultaneously painful, exhausting, and glorious. The writing is exquisite, the normality of rural Southern racism is excruciating, and reading story after story that exposes the worst of humanity is exhausting. One story in a magazine would have been a better way to encounter this work, but I'm glad to have had access to everything in one collection. I feel like O'Connor's student; there are no clichés and every narrative description comes from her idiosyncratic and formidable powers of observation. O'Connor is not a person to copy, but she is a model for finding your own way of observing and reporting on the world.
Part 1. Wise Blood is a Southern-gothic kind of Keystone Kops of insane true believers: Hazel Motes, the protagonist who espouses a Church Without Christ, and his many antagonists. In the opening note to the story, O'Connor describes it as a "comic novel about a Christian malgré lui." She confirms that one must understand that "belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death" and that Hazel Motes, an obsessed prophet who murders people, has an integrity that "lies in his not being able to" deny the Christ that his preaching denies. Yes, the novel is sometimes comic, but the story ends so darkly that I think it could only be perceived as positive by a Christian whose belief in Jesus's divinity is so important that it invalidates the value of life, compassion, and mortal kindness.
I decided to read and reread this anthology now because I believe Flannery O'Connor's work sets a precedent for my own. When I was looking for writers to blurb my novel The Last Will & Testament of Zelda McFigg , I found that there really were no current female writers writing comic and grotesque characters. (Please correct me if I'm wrong; I'd appreciate knowing of any.) If O'Connor were still alive, I'd have begged her for a blurb, but instead I've quoted her sage explanation about why she wrote what she wrote. In The Fiction Writer and His Country, O'Connor says:
I would never define myself as a Christian (or any other religion), but I feel that my protagonist Zelda McFigg’s perhaps grotesque character is my attempt to shout about (and learn from) the deeper concerns in this novel: the insanity of some of the distortions of our American Dream—a zero-sum culture where you’re either right or wrong, good or bad, etc., and dependent on those dualities, you win or lose. In my opinion, the antidote is the sane vision of nonduality (that we are simultaneously right and wrong, good and bad), or compassion—which can hold the fact that we—all of us—are both love and hate; one does not wipe out the other. And it's the compassion for our human condition that makes the whole thing bearable.
But that leads to my problem with O'Connor's work. Yes, it is sometimes humorous, but pain and oblivious cruelty rule, the characters learn nothing from it, and she leaves us with such bleakness (not quite as bad as what I've privately labeled the "Bleak School of Literary Book Writing"), that I often found myself confounded by the point of it all. It's an odd thing to both admire and dread a writer's work. So there I am again, in that awkward but true nonduality of opposites.
The anthology is in three parts: a novel (Wise Blood), a collection of short stories and a novella ("A Good Man Is Hard to Find"), and another novel (The Violent Bear It Away). Since I couldn't remember what I'd previously read, I went from back to front in the hope of sampling the new material first.
Part 3. I was brought up with no religion and in some ways I think that has sensitized me to fundamentalism in many forms—not only religious, but political (including progressive fundamentalism). Fundamentalism is characterized by somebody's absolute certainty that their belief is the only true one and anybody who does not agree is wrong, misguided, an idiot. In The Violent Bear It Away, O'Connor painfully evokes the feeling of being torn to bits by warring sides, of being a confused and helpless angry child without the wherewithal to deal with this level of extremes. O'Connor was Christian and deals with Christian fundamentalism, but the pain transcends the particular story. Reading through all the Scriptural references was a slog for me, since this is not my natural territory, but ultimately I found myself riveted by the basic human drama: a child torn apart by warring adults, and everybody is nuts. I can relate … Unless I completely missed the point and the great-uncle prophet who creates a murdering boy prophet is supposed to be sane. This was the most difficult (unenjoyable) section of the anthology—not easy reading.
Part 2. The short stories and novella ("A Good Man Is Hard to Find") are simultaneously painful, exhausting, and glorious. The writing is exquisite, the normality of rural Southern racism is excruciating, and reading story after story that exposes the worst of humanity is exhausting. One story in a magazine would have been a better way to encounter this work, but I'm glad to have had access to everything in one collection. I feel like O'Connor's student; there are no clichés and every narrative description comes from her idiosyncratic and formidable powers of observation. O'Connor is not a person to copy, but she is a model for finding your own way of observing and reporting on the world.
Part 1. Wise Blood is a Southern-gothic kind of Keystone Kops of insane true believers: Hazel Motes, the protagonist who espouses a Church Without Christ, and his many antagonists. In the opening note to the story, O'Connor describes it as a "comic novel about a Christian malgré lui." She confirms that one must understand that "belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death" and that Hazel Motes, an obsessed prophet who murders people, has an integrity that "lies in his not being able to" deny the Christ that his preaching denies. Yes, the novel is sometimes comic, but the story ends so darkly that I think it could only be perceived as positive by a Christian whose belief in Jesus's divinity is so important that it invalidates the value of life, compassion, and mortal kindness.
I decided to read and reread this anthology now because I believe Flannery O'Connor's work sets a precedent for my own. When I was looking for writers to blurb my novel The Last Will & Testament of Zelda McFigg , I found that there really were no current female writers writing comic and grotesque characters. (Please correct me if I'm wrong; I'd appreciate knowing of any.) If O'Connor were still alive, I'd have begged her for a blurb, but instead I've quoted her sage explanation about why she wrote what she wrote. In The Fiction Writer and His Country, O'Connor says:
The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may well be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock—to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.
I would never define myself as a Christian (or any other religion), but I feel that my protagonist Zelda McFigg’s perhaps grotesque character is my attempt to shout about (and learn from) the deeper concerns in this novel: the insanity of some of the distortions of our American Dream—a zero-sum culture where you’re either right or wrong, good or bad, etc., and dependent on those dualities, you win or lose. In my opinion, the antidote is the sane vision of nonduality (that we are simultaneously right and wrong, good and bad), or compassion—which can hold the fact that we—all of us—are both love and hate; one does not wipe out the other. And it's the compassion for our human condition that makes the whole thing bearable.
But that leads to my problem with O'Connor's work. Yes, it is sometimes humorous, but pain and oblivious cruelty rule, the characters learn nothing from it, and she leaves us with such bleakness (not quite as bad as what I've privately labeled the "Bleak School of Literary Book Writing"), that I often found myself confounded by the point of it all. It's an odd thing to both admire and dread a writer's work. So there I am again, in that awkward but true nonduality of opposites.
April 1, 2015
Flannery O'Connor is a diminutive, sprite-like woman who writes some of the most powerful fiction (of its type) that I have ever read.
If you like Faulkner, you will most likely enjoy O'Connor's work as well. It is a kind of theater of the macabre, southern, holy, and surreal all at once. The characters arrive in the story as if in a fever dream, emerging from some faint mist that she has shrouded them in so that they may pop out at just the right moment; they take on their lives fully-formed, portraying real people with extraordinary personal problems embedded deep in their psyche. O'Connor's action takes place deep in the minds and beliefs of her characters, with their thoughts boiling out into the area around them to wreck havoc. I have seen stills from a movie created about Wise Blood; the characters look like they fell out of a Magritte painting, which I think is an apt tone to give to them.
There isn't much action in the two main novels in this collection (at least not in the traditional sense of action), but the work still draws you in nonetheless. With that in mind, I believe that O'Connor should be read for one of two reasons (though you can get a casual reading pleasure from them both as well):
1) To study, digest, and think about. Her work is incredibly complicated, with symbolic set pieces strewn throughout. Quite frankly, when I finished a recent reread of Wise Blood, I felt like I needed to sit and talk about it for an hour with other readers just to scratch the surface of the meaning. The same could be said of The Violent Bear it Away--each of these two novels captures your (can I call it this?) critical-thinking attention and will not let it go.
2) As a writer. Just as Faulkner, Joyce, and Woolf should be read by serious writers in order to explore both their style and the ways in which they bend and break the rules of language, so too should O'Connor be studied for the ways in which she extrapolates character in the simplest of beliefs. O'Connor has a way of stretching these beliefs into monstrous proportions, pulling them like taffy to find all the little nuances that lie within. As a writer, I found it fascinating that she could pull and pull on a character like that, finding new truths hiding deep within that she would then share with the reader. Though in The Violent Bear it Away it gets a bit tiresome at in the first 30 pages, the rest of the two main novels in this collection are to be studied and admired for their scope.
The Signet edition of O'Connor's work is a steal. For less than ten dollars (when I bought it) you can get two of her novels, plus a collection of short stories.
If you like Faulkner, you will most likely enjoy O'Connor's work as well. It is a kind of theater of the macabre, southern, holy, and surreal all at once. The characters arrive in the story as if in a fever dream, emerging from some faint mist that she has shrouded them in so that they may pop out at just the right moment; they take on their lives fully-formed, portraying real people with extraordinary personal problems embedded deep in their psyche. O'Connor's action takes place deep in the minds and beliefs of her characters, with their thoughts boiling out into the area around them to wreck havoc. I have seen stills from a movie created about Wise Blood; the characters look like they fell out of a Magritte painting, which I think is an apt tone to give to them.
There isn't much action in the two main novels in this collection (at least not in the traditional sense of action), but the work still draws you in nonetheless. With that in mind, I believe that O'Connor should be read for one of two reasons (though you can get a casual reading pleasure from them both as well):
1) To study, digest, and think about. Her work is incredibly complicated, with symbolic set pieces strewn throughout. Quite frankly, when I finished a recent reread of Wise Blood, I felt like I needed to sit and talk about it for an hour with other readers just to scratch the surface of the meaning. The same could be said of The Violent Bear it Away--each of these two novels captures your (can I call it this?) critical-thinking attention and will not let it go.
2) As a writer. Just as Faulkner, Joyce, and Woolf should be read by serious writers in order to explore both their style and the ways in which they bend and break the rules of language, so too should O'Connor be studied for the ways in which she extrapolates character in the simplest of beliefs. O'Connor has a way of stretching these beliefs into monstrous proportions, pulling them like taffy to find all the little nuances that lie within. As a writer, I found it fascinating that she could pull and pull on a character like that, finding new truths hiding deep within that she would then share with the reader. Though in The Violent Bear it Away it gets a bit tiresome at in the first 30 pages, the rest of the two main novels in this collection are to be studied and admired for their scope.
The Signet edition of O'Connor's work is a steal. For less than ten dollars (when I bought it) you can get two of her novels, plus a collection of short stories.
November 4, 2017
2/5 Stars
This is going to be an extremely short "review," only because this was read in class, and I didn't enjoy it. What I did, however, appreciate was O'Connor's descriptive writing and well-rounded story-lines. But nothing else was phenomenal, and frankly, it was quite boring to read through.
Not my type of literature.
This is going to be an extremely short "review," only because this was read in class, and I didn't enjoy it. What I did, however, appreciate was O'Connor's descriptive writing and well-rounded story-lines. But nothing else was phenomenal, and frankly, it was quite boring to read through.
Not my type of literature.
January 15, 2008
In my Top 10 of All-Time. Continuing in the "bad health equals exceptional writing" that Emily Dickinson started some 60+ years before... O'Connor will knock you out with her stories. (And it's hard to tell that she's actually pro-religion/Christianity until long after you've put the book down.)
Read
January 22, 2018Flannery O’Connor’s writing feels like it was originally written in Russian but translated into English by Constance Garnett.
Quick-notes:
Wiseblood: A comic novel that is simultaneously surreal and terrifying. There are scenes and images in here that will never leave me. You have to keep telling yourself this is a parody of a certain type of blind religious conviction. At least I think it is.
The Violent Bear it Away: My favorite piece out of the three. Again, disturbing religious extremism. What if you were kidnapped, raised by your great uncle in the boonies and fed nothing but fat-back and bible verses?
Everything That Rises Must Converge: Southern sketches, mostly deformed, incapable intellectual men living with their mothers while fighting with a variety of ghosts (not really ghosts, but religious obsession, racism, etc.) and losing grotesquely.
General: Interesting that O’Connor writes so many pathetic male protagonists. But it’s not just them, everyone is deformed by their obsessions. It’s hard to take all the off-hand use of the N-word, but at least part of her point (at least in Everything Rises) is to paint white people as demented by their prejudices, so there’s that? A hard reminder of how deep savage and primitive racism runs when it’s source of renewal is insecurity and fear.
Quick-notes:
Wiseblood: A comic novel that is simultaneously surreal and terrifying. There are scenes and images in here that will never leave me. You have to keep telling yourself this is a parody of a certain type of blind religious conviction. At least I think it is.
The Violent Bear it Away: My favorite piece out of the three. Again, disturbing religious extremism. What if you were kidnapped, raised by your great uncle in the boonies and fed nothing but fat-back and bible verses?
Everything That Rises Must Converge: Southern sketches, mostly deformed, incapable intellectual men living with their mothers while fighting with a variety of ghosts (not really ghosts, but religious obsession, racism, etc.) and losing grotesquely.
General: Interesting that O’Connor writes so many pathetic male protagonists. But it’s not just them, everyone is deformed by their obsessions. It’s hard to take all the off-hand use of the N-word, but at least part of her point (at least in Everything Rises) is to paint white people as demented by their prejudices, so there’s that? A hard reminder of how deep savage and primitive racism runs when it’s source of renewal is insecurity and fear.
May 23, 2015
I really enjoyed these short stories by O'Connor. She really knew how to tell a story, to develop character, and to prove a point in a short amount of time. Her writing draws me in and is oddly suspenseful. I loved reading this part of the book. The novels are good, but I gave the book 4 stars for the third part of the collection. As much as I love O'Connor, reading her in short story form is all I can handle. Her novels are so intense and heady in a way that the stories avoid being since they're quickly resolved (if you can call anything in an O'Connor story "resolved").
I recommend this book if you can handle religious debates, matricide, heart attacks, strokes, insanity, and so much more. It's worth it for the pure pleasure of reading O'Connor's prose.
I recommend this book if you can handle religious debates, matricide, heart attacks, strokes, insanity, and so much more. It's worth it for the pure pleasure of reading O'Connor's prose.
April 17, 2020
I have never really read Flannery O'Connor before. I found her work extremely engaging but also very, very weird. Every character she writes is a total enigma, which I think is one of the most fascinating things about her writing. I loved the short stories in this collection but found the novellas kind of disturbing. Her assertions on faith through these works was FASCINATING but I also feel like I had no idea what was going on. After reading this I get the feeling like I've looked at a piece of modern art for a long time but still don't really understand it.
January 21, 2009
Seriously -- wow! O'Connor is fabulous. I've read her short stories before, you know since high school and through college and all of that, and they were good then, too. This time, though, reading for pleasure for the third or fourth time, I was amazed. Such well-written stories and short novels, beautiful, funny, sinister, always with some surprising twist. Even when I know what'll happen it's surprising. An author I love more and will have to return to again and again.
March 2, 2016
There were good moments and bad moments in this collection of stories. Some were a bit humourous and others made you want to take a bath after reading them.
I liked O'Connor's writing style and how she conveyed it. One of my favourite lines from the whole collection was, "They wear pants". That line still makes me laugh. Search it out and you will see what I mean.
This was a Southern Gothic collection that shouldn't be missed.
I liked O'Connor's writing style and how she conveyed it. One of my favourite lines from the whole collection was, "They wear pants". That line still makes me laugh. Search it out and you will see what I mean.
This was a Southern Gothic collection that shouldn't be missed.
August 11, 2014
If I'd had read this book in high school, I would have finished it thinking, "Wow. Well, at least this sort of thing doesn't happen anymore, because we're thankfully beyond religious fundamentalism."
Then I moved to southern Alabama to go to college, where all of O'Connor's character types are living, breathing people then and today. For literary purposes, some of their traits are exaggerated-- but not terribly. I had a literature professor my freshman year, before I'd had enough cultural exposure there, try to explicate "Southern grotesque," and I'm sure we read an O'Connor short story as part of that concept. It was not until I lived and worked among rural Southern people that the deeply-rooted mindsets about which she wrote became living, breathing entities. The intellectuals, the violence, the squaring-off between urban and rural people, the fear-based religious zealotry, and the young people trying to decide on which side they stand while not realizing that the choice has been made for them: all of them are real.
I live in a different part of the South now, and reading O'Connor's three longer works and short stories brought the dawning of my realization back to me. She writes as an enlightened native, and people who have not wrestled with these angels may not understand the archetypes or the significance of the struggle. But if you want to know what goes on down those sunny, dusty dirt roads in the rural South, these works will explain the old mindsets and the new. In this world, a well-raised person is just as likely to beat, rape, and murder as someone raised among criminals, and he's likely to have a plausible reason for doing so.
O'Connor wrote this in the mid-20th century, so you'll encounter some racial language that is part of its times and highly offensive now.
It's not a long book, and the shorter stories are quickly read, but this book takes a long time to digest and none of it is easy going. I would recommend having lighter fare for when you need to take a break. You'll finish with a profound recognition and understanding of a highly misunderstood corner of our nation.
Then I moved to southern Alabama to go to college, where all of O'Connor's character types are living, breathing people then and today. For literary purposes, some of their traits are exaggerated-- but not terribly. I had a literature professor my freshman year, before I'd had enough cultural exposure there, try to explicate "Southern grotesque," and I'm sure we read an O'Connor short story as part of that concept. It was not until I lived and worked among rural Southern people that the deeply-rooted mindsets about which she wrote became living, breathing entities. The intellectuals, the violence, the squaring-off between urban and rural people, the fear-based religious zealotry, and the young people trying to decide on which side they stand while not realizing that the choice has been made for them: all of them are real.
I live in a different part of the South now, and reading O'Connor's three longer works and short stories brought the dawning of my realization back to me. She writes as an enlightened native, and people who have not wrestled with these angels may not understand the archetypes or the significance of the struggle. But if you want to know what goes on down those sunny, dusty dirt roads in the rural South, these works will explain the old mindsets and the new. In this world, a well-raised person is just as likely to beat, rape, and murder as someone raised among criminals, and he's likely to have a plausible reason for doing so.
O'Connor wrote this in the mid-20th century, so you'll encounter some racial language that is part of its times and highly offensive now.
It's not a long book, and the shorter stories are quickly read, but this book takes a long time to digest and none of it is easy going. I would recommend having lighter fare for when you need to take a break. You'll finish with a profound recognition and understanding of a highly misunderstood corner of our nation.
April 7, 2014
I read two of the novels in this compilation; The Violent Bear it Away and Wise Blood. Confusing, sinister and riveting, O'Connor's writing is surreal, with complex story lines where you have to re-read certain passages to determine whether the action is a dream or is actual. Characters are genuine and strange; her writing is superb.
May 5, 2016
This was without a doubt the absolute worst book to bring on a beach vacation. I got through Wise Blood and then abandoned it with the pile of fiction books on the nightstand in the hotel room. Chris wondered if that was cruel in case someone else picked it up and had the same experience.
February 29, 2016
Started last night a bit. I haven't read that much by FOC but what I did read was cherce! I assume this will be awesome...
I'm still reading the none-too-interesting introduction which goes on and on. Plus... I've been shoveling like a machine the past few days. Getting worn out by evening time and having a hard time focusing on the writing! More snow due tonight and tomorrow!
Well... I skipped through that pesky, boring intro and got right to the story(Wise Blood) reminds me of "The Artificial Nigger" a bit.
Moving along despite all the snow and shoveling... So far not enjoying this as much as "A Good man Is Hard to Find" but still... it IS pretty crazy. Who's nuttier: Enoch of Haze??? I'm afraid that I'll be asking at the end what the f..k is it all about and I HATE that.
- Hazel's the ultimate bewildered hick-screw-up. I met a few in the Navy myself. How did he last 4 years in the army w/o being changed. Or is the present Hazel one who was traumatized by that experience? Doesn't say much about that so far. What happened to his family and the rest of the folks in the town? Apparently Hazel did not have sex in the army... unlikely since he was so willing to bed with that prostitute(?)... Mrs. Watts.
- So what is up with Haze anyway? Did his grandfather spook him permanently?
So... finished this last night and was feeling a bit let down. This was her first book and to me it's not as good as the three stories I read in Fiction 100: "The Artificial Nigger" - "A Good Man is Hard to Find" - "All That Rises Must Converge"(I'll be reading that one again as it's in this collection too). To me this story was to self-consciously "about something" and I'm not the kind of reader who's going to think a LOT about what it all means. I just like to be entertained by good writing and a good story. Crazy is good, and this story is crazy, but there has to be more for me to get at. The writing here is pretty amazing of course but the whole set-up is relentlessly grim because it a revolves around the all-time lost soul Hazel. A post-war Odysseus with no home and no destination. There's plenty of "fun" to be had with Enoch and Sabbath around but I'm not seeing the humor in a guy who gratuitously murders a poor sap, burns out his own eyes with quick-lime and dies of exposure in a ditch.
- Tough to rate but I'll give it a 3.5 which rounds down to 3*...
- We had one of those orange peanut brittle surprise cans when I was a kid!
- Everybody disrespects Enoch, the human pile of dog poop!
- Hazel = another Thomas More = hairshirted and humourless(and a killer)...
Now into "And the Violent Bear It Away," which seems pretty similar so far to "Wise Blood" - more Southern religious craziness... country vs. city... the old oppressing the young...
- Reminds me of "The Orchard Keeper"... the old man and the boy... also "The Artificial Nigger" - again!
Interesting... this story's even grimmer than Wise Blood, which is a laff riot compared to Violent Bear. Also... this story seems to be dragging a bit and I even skipped some of the little girl's preachifying. Hmmm... it this boring??? Sort of - it would seem. The story seems more obviously symbolic than Wise Blood and has fewer characters. Nothing much has happened so far and there've been a lot of flashbacks.
- I'm detecting a whiff of the "bad" Marilynne Robinson.
- Frank Tarwater's like Truffaut's "Wild Child"...
I was planning to finish last night but became engrossed in "The Top Ten", a book of rankings of all-time fiction. "The stories of Flannery O'Connor" ranked very high - 25th out of 544 works/authors cited by 125 contemporary American and British writers.
Anyway... Rayber is still working on Frank but without much success and we learn of something very nasty in Rayber's past which makes him seem expendable. Tonight... I WILL finish and move on.
- Rayber's dilemma is neatly constructed: does he give up on Tarwater? Is Tarwater beyond help ("goddam backwoods imbecile")? Do rationality and reason demand that all efforts be made to help him???
All done with "Violent Bear"... Again, the mood of symbolism and unreality is overbearing. Everybody and everything is meant to represent something. It's SO serious it seems almost silly. Who cares about insane religious people??? What universe are we in - the White Protestant Christian South on steroids??? That said, the writing is superb. Joyce Carol Oates is one who seems similarly obsessed in her writing though not as controlled as FO, who does not allow her characters to get away from her control.
- Hearing voices? Get thyself to a loony bin!
- The writing is intense and biblical, the content is not so compelling. The final rating is 3.5 which rounds down to 3*
Now on to the short story section...
"Everything That Rises Must Converge" - I read this not too long ago in another collection. As with the other FO stuff, the trip is everything. Who knows what it's about.
"Greenleaf" - Ah... the angry bull. The writing is awesome, the meaning murky. Very dark humor...
"A View of the Woods" - More of the same form the goddess of crazy country people. Again... the stories are very much linked to each other. This one seems similar to "Greenleaf" only the ending violence is about as crazy/nasty as you can get. The old man's a selfish fool and his foolishness endangers and then destroys his best pal and only loving connection on earth. At the climactic moments a misprint interjects: "loked" instead of "looked"!
"The "Enduring Chill" - At least no one dies in this one! The bitter humor is allowed to hold sway. This story was also similar to "Greenleaf" and "Converge".
- And the meaning is... ? Asbury didn't want a life and God says OK, you won't get one 'cause of your HORRIBLE attitude. That's a problem a LOT of FO's character seem to have. I think she's pointing out the connection with the culture of the South. Something's rotten there...
"The Comforts of Home" - And more very black humor featuring an uptight and rather useless "intellectual" stay-at-home son and his equally clueless mother as they confront anarchy in human form. The ending is violently ironic of course. Logic is a bit wanting as both Thomas and his mother are amazingly clueless. Again we have the disembodied voice a la "The Violent Bear It Away." And again it causes deadly trouble.
"The Lame Shall Enter First" - Having read the preceding stories pretty much gives away the ending of this one. Very obvious - and nasty! This story is very much like "The Violent Bear..." and "Comforts of Home". It's amazing, really, how closely linked all these stories are -like variations on a familiar(but murky) theme.
- Another lost soul is taken in and once again we have teacher(saver) and resistant student("savee"). As usual the saver is clueless, powerless and co-dependent.
- A conflict between science/reason and religion/unreason. Science loses again(in the Deep South at least) and someone dies because of it.
"Revelation" - Guess what? Nobody dies in this one. Almost though... there's a whopper of a violent scene at the end. This story has more of a humorous emphasis but it's still pretty crazy. Ms. O. specializes on white sociology. One of the main points is that the South is a crazy place - in its own way. Another country... The meaning of this story is murky(big surprise) but the same connections are there with other stories, particularly "Greenleaf"...
"Parker's Back" - Funny; I thought the title meant Parker IS Back! Nope... More religious craziness, more dopey rednecks, more black humor in service of a murky theme. I'm not "getting it"!
"Judgement Day" - Surprise! This one's set in Manhattan. But still, its all about the Southern "state of mind". Another black-on-white attack, like "Converge."
So... I'd love to give this book a 4* rating because the writing is so entertaining and idiosyncratic but it's so OBVIOUSLY about SOMETHING that I'm not getting that I have to drop it down. Seems curious that FO claimed that she was not slamming Southern fire-and-brimstone Protestantism in her stories but her crazy Baptist characters aren't exactly pictures of happiness, maturity, good sense and well-adjustedness. Maybe that's because of those pesky sociological and economic factors... like enduring poverty and ignorance!
3.5* rounds down to 3*
I'm still reading the none-too-interesting introduction which goes on and on. Plus... I've been shoveling like a machine the past few days. Getting worn out by evening time and having a hard time focusing on the writing! More snow due tonight and tomorrow!
Well... I skipped through that pesky, boring intro and got right to the story(Wise Blood) reminds me of "The Artificial Nigger" a bit.
Moving along despite all the snow and shoveling... So far not enjoying this as much as "A Good man Is Hard to Find" but still... it IS pretty crazy. Who's nuttier: Enoch of Haze??? I'm afraid that I'll be asking at the end what the f..k is it all about and I HATE that.
- Hazel's the ultimate bewildered hick-screw-up. I met a few in the Navy myself. How did he last 4 years in the army w/o being changed. Or is the present Hazel one who was traumatized by that experience? Doesn't say much about that so far. What happened to his family and the rest of the folks in the town? Apparently Hazel did not have sex in the army... unlikely since he was so willing to bed with that prostitute(?)... Mrs. Watts.
- So what is up with Haze anyway? Did his grandfather spook him permanently?
So... finished this last night and was feeling a bit let down. This was her first book and to me it's not as good as the three stories I read in Fiction 100: "The Artificial Nigger" - "A Good Man is Hard to Find" - "All That Rises Must Converge"(I'll be reading that one again as it's in this collection too). To me this story was to self-consciously "about something" and I'm not the kind of reader who's going to think a LOT about what it all means. I just like to be entertained by good writing and a good story. Crazy is good, and this story is crazy, but there has to be more for me to get at. The writing here is pretty amazing of course but the whole set-up is relentlessly grim because it a revolves around the all-time lost soul Hazel. A post-war Odysseus with no home and no destination. There's plenty of "fun" to be had with Enoch and Sabbath around but I'm not seeing the humor in a guy who gratuitously murders a poor sap, burns out his own eyes with quick-lime and dies of exposure in a ditch.
- Tough to rate but I'll give it a 3.5 which rounds down to 3*...
- We had one of those orange peanut brittle surprise cans when I was a kid!
- Everybody disrespects Enoch, the human pile of dog poop!
- Hazel = another Thomas More = hairshirted and humourless(and a killer)...
Now into "And the Violent Bear It Away," which seems pretty similar so far to "Wise Blood" - more Southern religious craziness... country vs. city... the old oppressing the young...
- Reminds me of "The Orchard Keeper"... the old man and the boy... also "The Artificial Nigger" - again!
Interesting... this story's even grimmer than Wise Blood, which is a laff riot compared to Violent Bear. Also... this story seems to be dragging a bit and I even skipped some of the little girl's preachifying. Hmmm... it this boring??? Sort of - it would seem. The story seems more obviously symbolic than Wise Blood and has fewer characters. Nothing much has happened so far and there've been a lot of flashbacks.
- I'm detecting a whiff of the "bad" Marilynne Robinson.
- Frank Tarwater's like Truffaut's "Wild Child"...
I was planning to finish last night but became engrossed in "The Top Ten", a book of rankings of all-time fiction. "The stories of Flannery O'Connor" ranked very high - 25th out of 544 works/authors cited by 125 contemporary American and British writers.
Anyway... Rayber is still working on Frank but without much success and we learn of something very nasty in Rayber's past which makes him seem expendable. Tonight... I WILL finish and move on.
- Rayber's dilemma is neatly constructed: does he give up on Tarwater? Is Tarwater beyond help ("goddam backwoods imbecile")? Do rationality and reason demand that all efforts be made to help him???
All done with "Violent Bear"... Again, the mood of symbolism and unreality is overbearing. Everybody and everything is meant to represent something. It's SO serious it seems almost silly. Who cares about insane religious people??? What universe are we in - the White Protestant Christian South on steroids??? That said, the writing is superb. Joyce Carol Oates is one who seems similarly obsessed in her writing though not as controlled as FO, who does not allow her characters to get away from her control.
- Hearing voices? Get thyself to a loony bin!
- The writing is intense and biblical, the content is not so compelling. The final rating is 3.5 which rounds down to 3*
Now on to the short story section...
"Everything That Rises Must Converge" - I read this not too long ago in another collection. As with the other FO stuff, the trip is everything. Who knows what it's about.
"Greenleaf" - Ah... the angry bull. The writing is awesome, the meaning murky. Very dark humor...
"A View of the Woods" - More of the same form the goddess of crazy country people. Again... the stories are very much linked to each other. This one seems similar to "Greenleaf" only the ending violence is about as crazy/nasty as you can get. The old man's a selfish fool and his foolishness endangers and then destroys his best pal and only loving connection on earth. At the climactic moments a misprint interjects: "loked" instead of "looked"!
"The "Enduring Chill" - At least no one dies in this one! The bitter humor is allowed to hold sway. This story was also similar to "Greenleaf" and "Converge".
- And the meaning is... ? Asbury didn't want a life and God says OK, you won't get one 'cause of your HORRIBLE attitude. That's a problem a LOT of FO's character seem to have. I think she's pointing out the connection with the culture of the South. Something's rotten there...
"The Comforts of Home" - And more very black humor featuring an uptight and rather useless "intellectual" stay-at-home son and his equally clueless mother as they confront anarchy in human form. The ending is violently ironic of course. Logic is a bit wanting as both Thomas and his mother are amazingly clueless. Again we have the disembodied voice a la "The Violent Bear It Away." And again it causes deadly trouble.
"The Lame Shall Enter First" - Having read the preceding stories pretty much gives away the ending of this one. Very obvious - and nasty! This story is very much like "The Violent Bear..." and "Comforts of Home". It's amazing, really, how closely linked all these stories are -like variations on a familiar(but murky) theme.
- Another lost soul is taken in and once again we have teacher(saver) and resistant student("savee"). As usual the saver is clueless, powerless and co-dependent.
- A conflict between science/reason and religion/unreason. Science loses again(in the Deep South at least) and someone dies because of it.
"Revelation" - Guess what? Nobody dies in this one. Almost though... there's a whopper of a violent scene at the end. This story has more of a humorous emphasis but it's still pretty crazy. Ms. O. specializes on white sociology. One of the main points is that the South is a crazy place - in its own way. Another country... The meaning of this story is murky(big surprise) but the same connections are there with other stories, particularly "Greenleaf"...
"Parker's Back" - Funny; I thought the title meant Parker IS Back! Nope... More religious craziness, more dopey rednecks, more black humor in service of a murky theme. I'm not "getting it"!
"Judgement Day" - Surprise! This one's set in Manhattan. But still, its all about the Southern "state of mind". Another black-on-white attack, like "Converge."
So... I'd love to give this book a 4* rating because the writing is so entertaining and idiosyncratic but it's so OBVIOUSLY about SOMETHING that I'm not getting that I have to drop it down. Seems curious that FO claimed that she was not slamming Southern fire-and-brimstone Protestantism in her stories but her crazy Baptist characters aren't exactly pictures of happiness, maturity, good sense and well-adjustedness. Maybe that's because of those pesky sociological and economic factors... like enduring poverty and ignorance!
3.5* rounds down to 3*
May 31, 2016
Around the Year Reading Challenge #10: A book by an author you should have read by now
So, Flannery O'Connor always seems to come up in conversations about spiritual writing, and I've heard her work referred to as the "epitome" of Catholic writing. Every time she comes up, I'd remember this book on my shelf and think, "I should have read that by now!" (along with about 1,000 other books).
Well, I finally did it! And I did it big. Since my only O'Connor included three books in one volume, I read all three of them. Now I feel like I should get credit on all my reading challenges for three books instead of one, but ISBN #s don't work that way.
Overall: I've heard O'Connor's writing described as "grotesque," and I would have to say that's an apt description. She has a tendency to focus on the dark, the morbid and the unappealing. I feel as if she writes the opposite of mass market romances, where everything is colored in shades to make it a little more palatable than in real life. Here, everything is a little more spoiled and rotten than what most people see through their default filter.
While I can agree that her stories have spiritual underpinnings, I was surprised that these are most often revealed by looking at the underbelly of spirituality -- the dark, the weak, the empty. All of her stories seem to be fundamentally about lack, and a person who is spiritually inclined could easily read them as a constant strain toward the meaning or fulfillment that can come from knowing God. However, the non-religious could just as easily see them as compelling and perceptive character studies. These are the three O'Connor books that were included in my volume:
1. Wise Blood - This was my least favorite of the three, as it centered around a selfish "preacher" who was on fire with the gospel of the "Church without Christ" and was as tied up in his non-belief as the most devout believer is to belief. His motivations were never totally clear, and the way he treated those he encountered was appalling enough to make this an altogether unpleasant reading experience. In the end there is sort of a creepy commentary on what we might use to fill that "emptiness" in our life as we search for meaning, the length to which we might go to establish some sort of God even if we won't name it as such. The whole thing is a little off-kilter and off-putting, and the uneasy feeling it leaves you with is a testament to O'Connor's skill as a writer. But this story is not one I'd be eager to revisit anytime soon. (3/5 stars)
2. The Violent Bear it Away - This novel also examines the lengths we will go to to make meaning of our lives, but this time it does so in the context of relationship. It centers on the relationship of a young boy and his uncle, both of whom define their identities in contrast to the man who attempted to indoctrinate them into a belief in a godly destiny. It's a close, nuanced look at the way our spirituality can get tangled up with the people in our lives who first introduced it to us, for better or for worse. I found both the young boy's stubborn attempt to find his own way after his great uncle's death and his new caretaker's insistence on building a meaningful life separate from God to be compelling. Both characters are far more sympathetic than anything we saw in Wise Blood. But the ending was still darker than seemed necessary -- soon I will begin to see a pattern. (4/5 stars)
3. Everything That Rises Must Converge - This is actually a collection of short stories, and it was my favorite of the three books. O'Connor seems to really shine in the format of the short story, where she can examine characters' "fatal flaws" close up and in defining moments, while not forcing us to stay with them until we feel totally suffocated by their inner darknesses. The short story format also allowed her to explore more varied themes than in the short novels -- for the first time, we see racism coming to the forefront of her consciousness, along with the themes that she explores more in depth in her novels, such as pride, vanity, human weakness, a search for meaning. O'Connor's work is a lot to take in, and it goes down best -- and I think, with the greatest impact -- in small doses. Although I read these stories one after the other because I have limited time for reading and want to take advantage of every moment of it, they beg to be savored and pondered one-by-one before rushing headlong into the next. I think if I had encountered any of these stories as standalones in a short story or literature class, it would have quickly become stuck in my gut as one of the most salient pieces I had ever read. (4/5 stars)
O'Connor's writing is utterly masterful, but the tragedy of it all did start to wear on me
So, Flannery O'Connor always seems to come up in conversations about spiritual writing, and I've heard her work referred to as the "epitome" of Catholic writing. Every time she comes up, I'd remember this book on my shelf and think, "I should have read that by now!" (along with about 1,000 other books).
Well, I finally did it! And I did it big. Since my only O'Connor included three books in one volume, I read all three of them. Now I feel like I should get credit on all my reading challenges for three books instead of one, but ISBN #s don't work that way.
Overall: I've heard O'Connor's writing described as "grotesque," and I would have to say that's an apt description. She has a tendency to focus on the dark, the morbid and the unappealing. I feel as if she writes the opposite of mass market romances, where everything is colored in shades to make it a little more palatable than in real life. Here, everything is a little more spoiled and rotten than what most people see through their default filter.
While I can agree that her stories have spiritual underpinnings, I was surprised that these are most often revealed by looking at the underbelly of spirituality -- the dark, the weak, the empty. All of her stories seem to be fundamentally about lack, and a person who is spiritually inclined could easily read them as a constant strain toward the meaning or fulfillment that can come from knowing God. However, the non-religious could just as easily see them as compelling and perceptive character studies. These are the three O'Connor books that were included in my volume:
1. Wise Blood - This was my least favorite of the three, as it centered around a selfish "preacher" who was on fire with the gospel of the "Church without Christ" and was as tied up in his non-belief as the most devout believer is to belief. His motivations were never totally clear, and the way he treated those he encountered was appalling enough to make this an altogether unpleasant reading experience. In the end there is sort of a creepy commentary on what we might use to fill that "emptiness" in our life as we search for meaning, the length to which we might go to establish some sort of God even if we won't name it as such. The whole thing is a little off-kilter and off-putting, and the uneasy feeling it leaves you with is a testament to O'Connor's skill as a writer. But this story is not one I'd be eager to revisit anytime soon. (3/5 stars)
2. The Violent Bear it Away - This novel also examines the lengths we will go to to make meaning of our lives, but this time it does so in the context of relationship. It centers on the relationship of a young boy and his uncle, both of whom define their identities in contrast to the man who attempted to indoctrinate them into a belief in a godly destiny. It's a close, nuanced look at the way our spirituality can get tangled up with the people in our lives who first introduced it to us, for better or for worse. I found both the young boy's stubborn attempt to find his own way after his great uncle's death and his new caretaker's insistence on building a meaningful life separate from God to be compelling. Both characters are far more sympathetic than anything we saw in Wise Blood. But the ending was still darker than seemed necessary -- soon I will begin to see a pattern. (4/5 stars)
3. Everything That Rises Must Converge - This is actually a collection of short stories, and it was my favorite of the three books. O'Connor seems to really shine in the format of the short story, where she can examine characters' "fatal flaws" close up and in defining moments, while not forcing us to stay with them until we feel totally suffocated by their inner darknesses. The short story format also allowed her to explore more varied themes than in the short novels -- for the first time, we see racism coming to the forefront of her consciousness, along with the themes that she explores more in depth in her novels, such as pride, vanity, human weakness, a search for meaning. O'Connor's work is a lot to take in, and it goes down best -- and I think, with the greatest impact -- in small doses. Although I read these stories one after the other because I have limited time for reading and want to take advantage of every moment of it, they beg to be savored and pondered one-by-one before rushing headlong into the next. I think if I had encountered any of these stories as standalones in a short story or literature class, it would have quickly become stuck in my gut as one of the most salient pieces I had ever read. (4/5 stars)
O'Connor's writing is utterly masterful, but the tragedy of it all did start to wear on me
January 22, 2024
Well, that got dark.
I read this to prepare for watching the 1979 film adaptation and studying Brad Dourif's portrayal of Hazel Motes, the preacher of the Church without Christ. I have a character idea for a novel and can't stop imagining him without seeing Dourif's face, so here we are.
This book is nuckin' futs.
It's absolutely absurd, strange, and weirdly funny yet shockingly violent. I now understand why Flannery O'Connor's name comes up a lot in conversations about the Southern Gothic. I feel like the feverish extent of the dark, ironic, postmodern humor in fact challenges the high rank held by William Faulkner in the genre for this reader. All at once, in this one novel, O'Connor takes the vinegary irreverence of Ambrose Bierce, combines it with the everyday horrors of the American South in the 1940s, and somehow anticipates Kurt Vonnegut's abyssal and somewhat surreal sense of humor in Slaughterhouse Five (minus the sci-fi).
And this was her debut novel.
Wise Blood predominantly follows Hazel Motes, a 22-year-old army veteran who, upon coming home to the U.S., decides to found the Church without Christ and become a street preacher of its non-gospel (or anti-gospel?). He basically preaches that there is no Christ and that there is, therefore, no use in seeking redemption and no such thing as sin anyway. Of course, there's a huge wink behind this since O'Connor was Catholic, but myself as an atheist reader found the ways in which a young former Christian might try to justify the impulse of belief without spirituality absolutely fascinating.
"I preach there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's, but behind all of them, there's only one truth and that is that there's no truth," he called. "No truth behind all truths is what I and this church preach! Where you come from is gone, where you thought your were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place."
Hazel Motes is full of contradictions and cognitive dissonance, so his perspective and temperament were extremely compelling to follow, even as he actively tried to repel others from page one. Regardless of his pushing, people were still pulled to him, and these people were equally compelling, particularly his landlady whom I won't discuss here because spoilers.
I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would. I consider it a new favorite and am looking forward to reading more of O'Connor's work as well as watching the film adaptation of this novel.
CW: racism, blackface, self harm
For fans of: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Civil War Stories by Ambrose Bierce, The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock
I read this to prepare for watching the 1979 film adaptation and studying Brad Dourif's portrayal of Hazel Motes, the preacher of the Church without Christ. I have a character idea for a novel and can't stop imagining him without seeing Dourif's face, so here we are.
This book is nuckin' futs.
It's absolutely absurd, strange, and weirdly funny yet shockingly violent. I now understand why Flannery O'Connor's name comes up a lot in conversations about the Southern Gothic. I feel like the feverish extent of the dark, ironic, postmodern humor in fact challenges the high rank held by William Faulkner in the genre for this reader. All at once, in this one novel, O'Connor takes the vinegary irreverence of Ambrose Bierce, combines it with the everyday horrors of the American South in the 1940s, and somehow anticipates Kurt Vonnegut's abyssal and somewhat surreal sense of humor in Slaughterhouse Five (minus the sci-fi).
And this was her debut novel.
Wise Blood predominantly follows Hazel Motes, a 22-year-old army veteran who, upon coming home to the U.S., decides to found the Church without Christ and become a street preacher of its non-gospel (or anti-gospel?). He basically preaches that there is no Christ and that there is, therefore, no use in seeking redemption and no such thing as sin anyway. Of course, there's a huge wink behind this since O'Connor was Catholic, but myself as an atheist reader found the ways in which a young former Christian might try to justify the impulse of belief without spirituality absolutely fascinating.
"I preach there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's, but behind all of them, there's only one truth and that is that there's no truth," he called. "No truth behind all truths is what I and this church preach! Where you come from is gone, where you thought your were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place."
Hazel Motes is full of contradictions and cognitive dissonance, so his perspective and temperament were extremely compelling to follow, even as he actively tried to repel others from page one. Regardless of his pushing, people were still pulled to him, and these people were equally compelling, particularly his landlady whom I won't discuss here because spoilers.
I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would. I consider it a new favorite and am looking forward to reading more of O'Connor's work as well as watching the film adaptation of this novel.
CW: racism, blackface, self harm
For fans of: Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Civil War Stories by Ambrose Bierce, The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock
August 18, 2013
Sure, I'd read many of her short stories, back in the day...
Picked this up, for the price of a cheap paperback, a chance to re-read them and her two novels as well, nice!
Well, guess what? I overdosed on the words of Our Lady of Southern Letters!
I was initially disappointed by Wise Blood, got perked up a bit by the story collection, and finally thoroughly turned off by The Violent Bear it Away.
The stories are fine (though not always as impressive as I'd remembered) and the two novels were, to my unilluminated mind, relentlessly driven by Mizz Flannery's homily-laden agenda. In other words, 'twas a chore to read them.
I'm thinking:
Wise Blood: 2 stars
A Good Man...: 4 or even 4.5 stars
The Violent Bear it Away 1 puny little star, if that.
Don't know if that evens out to 3 stars, but let's say it does. Everyone more or less agrees on the quality of the stories, but I'll probably cogitate a bit before I come up with a couple of reviews on why I disliked the 2 novels.
Picked this up, for the price of a cheap paperback, a chance to re-read them and her two novels as well, nice!
Well, guess what? I overdosed on the words of Our Lady of Southern Letters!
I was initially disappointed by Wise Blood, got perked up a bit by the story collection, and finally thoroughly turned off by The Violent Bear it Away.
The stories are fine (though not always as impressive as I'd remembered) and the two novels were, to my unilluminated mind, relentlessly driven by Mizz Flannery's homily-laden agenda. In other words, 'twas a chore to read them.
I'm thinking:
Wise Blood: 2 stars
A Good Man...: 4 or even 4.5 stars
The Violent Bear it Away 1 puny little star, if that.
Don't know if that evens out to 3 stars, but let's say it does. Everyone more or less agrees on the quality of the stories, but I'll probably cogitate a bit before I come up with a couple of reviews on why I disliked the 2 novels.
February 29, 2016
Flannery O'Conner is a well-recognized name in American literature and I really don't like her work.
She is not alone in that- there are several authors whose work is regarded as literature but I have no idea why. (Others are great and I totally see why- To Kill a Mockingbird springs to mind.)
Supposedly Flannery captures the humor and drama of the South, but if so, I should stay out of the South. I found her characters either grotesque, hypocritical, cruel, selfish or violent- to say nothing of being unbelievable at times. There didn't seem to be a likable one in any of the three-in-one books here.
Perhaps that was her aim. If so, she succeeded. The humor only came through very occasionally for me and usually I found the characters (and therefore the story) to be ugly and unpleasant. She did turn an admirable descriptive phrase now and again, but it wasn't enough to convince me that I should try her again.
Give me Eudora Welty any day of the week.
She is not alone in that- there are several authors whose work is regarded as literature but I have no idea why. (Others are great and I totally see why- To Kill a Mockingbird springs to mind.)
Supposedly Flannery captures the humor and drama of the South, but if so, I should stay out of the South. I found her characters either grotesque, hypocritical, cruel, selfish or violent- to say nothing of being unbelievable at times. There didn't seem to be a likable one in any of the three-in-one books here.
Perhaps that was her aim. If so, she succeeded. The humor only came through very occasionally for me and usually I found the characters (and therefore the story) to be ugly and unpleasant. She did turn an admirable descriptive phrase now and again, but it wasn't enough to convince me that I should try her again.
Give me Eudora Welty any day of the week.
February 19, 2008
Three stars for Flannery O'Connor? I wouldn't usually do that, but the stories in this book were inconsistent. All of the short stories in "All That Rises Must Converge" were pretty good. "Wise Blood" was awesome. This was actually the second time I've read "Wise Blood" and I love it. "The Violent Bear it Away," however, left me disappointed. I was really, really into the story up until the last couple of chapters, and then, suddenly, the entire thing turned completely predictable, I knew exactly what was going to happen; furthermore, she totally copped out on a really, really cheap device in the end. In my opinion, that is. It started out so well, too! Such a disappointment. All in all, though, Flannery generally rules. I would definitely recommend reading this, but I'm still reeling from the shock of the crappy end of "The Violent..."
June 18, 2020
Another book from grad school that I failed to read then, so now was the time. It's actually two novellas and a collection of short stories focused on the life of a variety of "strange" Southern folk, young and old, often plagued by dark life views and experiences that leave them at odds with the society in which they live. The portraits of these characters, both male and female, are acutely drawn in ways that captivate the reader while their pursuits lead them down very dark and often hopeless paths.
The writing is extraordinary but, in many cases, the story line resolutions feel incomplete, baffling, or predictably callous. If anything, O'Connor delivers to the reader insights into the minds of people unlikely to be known but people who, nonetheless, share this world together.
The writing is extraordinary but, in many cases, the story line resolutions feel incomplete, baffling, or predictably callous. If anything, O'Connor delivers to the reader insights into the minds of people unlikely to be known but people who, nonetheless, share this world together.
April 28, 2011
As much as I appreciate Flannery O'Connor's stories for their literary merit, I cannot like them. She creates the most depressing worlds with the most unlikeable, frustrating characters. Her obvious dislike of pride or smugness leads to their inevitable demise, in the best of grotesque ways (that's right, I'm talkig about you "Greenleaf"). I think my professor said it best when she asked us, "Why is it worse to wear a gorilla suit than to run over a man in your car?" ("Wise Blood" not so wise :)). If anything, her stories force you to think about conventional traditions and make you realize that you are never safe, if that's a philosophy that appeals to you.
December 6, 2013
I suppose it's no longer possible to quote the most famous line from "Wise Blood" here in public. Certain forms of reticence are easy to understand and sympathize with, but not altogether positive in their effects. "Jesus is a trick on n-words" doesn't quite cut it. I suppose we could propose replacing "kyke" with "the k-word" in Gatsby, but that sounds like a tired dodge to avoid dealing with the issue. You can't take the word out of Hazel Mott's mouth any more than you can out of Huck Finn's. You could refuse to read the books, of course, but just whose loss would that be?
June 13, 2024
Really, really enjoyed this. I’m already excited to revisit some of these short stories and the two novels at some point in the future. O’Connor specializes in shining a light on the worst parts of human nature while, almost, always presenting the grace of God. The stories are shocking and affecting. They’ve aged for sure, but barely.
temporarily-set-aside
June 4, 2012I am sorry but the infusion of religion into all of Flannery O'Connor's writing is more than I can manage at this point in my secular humanist life. Her humor does reach me at times but not enough to keep me going.
September 16, 2008
A style of writing--no, of literature all her own. This set of three of her stories is a good introduction to her world.
Read
August 22, 2021Doja Cat could write “Wise Blood” but Flannery O’Connor couldn’t write “Mooo!”
September 4, 2025
Everything that Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor
There is an interesting pattern that I have discovered in many (most?) of Flannery O’Connor’s stories: they tend to have ambiguous endings: the last one I’ve read- The Comforts of Home, ends with a pistol shot, but I am not sure anybody died, even it was at close range and what happens next: it is actually so intriguing that there’s a hint of the impossible coming to being: the hero may get closer through tragedy to one he had loathed up to the end. Maybe nothing of the kind happens, but that’s just the point: we do not know…well, maybe others readers did get the whole point, I am left wondering. The same goes for The River, where two characters may die, but then again, maybe they are saved, or just get off by themselves, or the older helps the younger…maybe one survives and the other one doesn’t… there is drama to be sure and I can’t think of any easy, clear “happy ending”.
There is a lot of tension, conflict and struggle between various points of view: old and young, believer and non believer, conservative and liberal, even between races.
The same goes for this powerful, complex, if short story- we have the conflict between an old woman and her son… Julian and his mother have opposing views on race, attitude towards the black people and…hats.
His mother buys the hideous hat and in a funny twist of fate, or a clever turn of the writer, the same exact hat shows up on the head of a giant…Negro woman. Julian has an attitude which might puzzle; it made me feel a bit uneasy:
Why would he provoke his mother like that, when we already know –we had read that- he loves her?
On the bus he makes a point of sitting next to a black man and even trying to communicate with him...Why do that, when it makes no sense – you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
Or can you?
First of all, in the psychology books I read, it is proven that humans learn and their brain keeps changing into old age. Then there is the other side of the coin:
Julian is the one with the moral, correct point of view and his mother is dead wrong.
Unfortunately, she might be just that: dead wrong.
The game is going too far, or her education, prejudice, limitations, low EQ –Emotional Intelligence, one or more of these reasons combine to make her commit a dreadful mistake:
She wants to give a penny to a young boy and his mother takes offence with a reaction that provokes what looks like a heart attack. I will not get into details that might spoil it for you.
The paradox is that the old woman means to do good: Hell is paved with good intentions”…
She does harm, not only to the other, but to herself.
The friendly fire gets Julian, who would be innocent, if he weren’t trying a bit too hard to teach his mother a few lessons…
“Shine bright like a diamond”…indeed these stories shine bright.
There is an interesting pattern that I have discovered in many (most?) of Flannery O’Connor’s stories: they tend to have ambiguous endings: the last one I’ve read- The Comforts of Home, ends with a pistol shot, but I am not sure anybody died, even it was at close range and what happens next: it is actually so intriguing that there’s a hint of the impossible coming to being: the hero may get closer through tragedy to one he had loathed up to the end. Maybe nothing of the kind happens, but that’s just the point: we do not know…well, maybe others readers did get the whole point, I am left wondering. The same goes for The River, where two characters may die, but then again, maybe they are saved, or just get off by themselves, or the older helps the younger…maybe one survives and the other one doesn’t… there is drama to be sure and I can’t think of any easy, clear “happy ending”.
There is a lot of tension, conflict and struggle between various points of view: old and young, believer and non believer, conservative and liberal, even between races.
The same goes for this powerful, complex, if short story- we have the conflict between an old woman and her son… Julian and his mother have opposing views on race, attitude towards the black people and…hats.
His mother buys the hideous hat and in a funny twist of fate, or a clever turn of the writer, the same exact hat shows up on the head of a giant…Negro woman. Julian has an attitude which might puzzle; it made me feel a bit uneasy:
Why would he provoke his mother like that, when we already know –we had read that- he loves her?
On the bus he makes a point of sitting next to a black man and even trying to communicate with him...Why do that, when it makes no sense – you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.
Or can you?
First of all, in the psychology books I read, it is proven that humans learn and their brain keeps changing into old age. Then there is the other side of the coin:
Julian is the one with the moral, correct point of view and his mother is dead wrong.
Unfortunately, she might be just that: dead wrong.
The game is going too far, or her education, prejudice, limitations, low EQ –Emotional Intelligence, one or more of these reasons combine to make her commit a dreadful mistake:
She wants to give a penny to a young boy and his mother takes offence with a reaction that provokes what looks like a heart attack. I will not get into details that might spoil it for you.
The paradox is that the old woman means to do good: Hell is paved with good intentions”…
She does harm, not only to the other, but to herself.
The friendly fire gets Julian, who would be innocent, if he weren’t trying a bit too hard to teach his mother a few lessons…
“Shine bright like a diamond”…indeed these stories shine bright.
November 2, 2024
“Nothing outside you can give you any place," he said. "You needn't look at the sky because it's not going to open up and show no place behind it. You needn't to search for any hole in the ground to look through into somewhere else. You can't go neither forwards nor backwards into your daddy's time nor your children's if you have them. In yourself right now is all the place you've got. If there was any Fall, look there, if there was any Redemption, look there, and if you expect any Judgment, look there, because they all three will have to be in your time and your body and where in your time and your body can they be?”
Read wise blood.
Read wise blood.
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