A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories in Overdue Podcast

Jun 06, 2022 Marcella rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories, fiction, 2022-100-book-challenge

"If he had thought about it before, he would have thought Jesus Christ was a word like “oh” or “damm” or “God,” or maybe somebody who had cheated them out of something sometime."

“Do you know who Ponce de Leon was?”
“He was the founder of Florida,” Ruby said brightly.
"He was a Spaniard,” Mr. Jerger said. “Do you know what he was looking for?”
"Florida,” Ruby said.

"He felt he knew now what time would be like without seasons and what heat would be like without light and what man would be like witho "If he had thought about it before, he would have thought Jesus Christ was a word like “oh” or “damm” or “God,” or maybe somebody who had cheated them out of something sometime."

“Do you know who Ponce de Leon was?”
“He was the founder of Florida,” Ruby said brightly.
"He was a Spaniard,” Mr. Jerger said. “Do you know what he was looking for?”
"Florida,” Ruby said.

"He felt he knew now what time would be like without seasons and what heat would be like without light and what man would be like without salvation."

“They ain’t got enough real ones here. They got to have an artificial one.”

"Every time Mr. Guizac smiled, Europe stretched out in Mrs. Shortley’s imagination, mysterious and evil, the devil’s experiment station."

Lauren Groff writes a thoughtful introduction to this collection of pitch-black stories, placing O'Connor's famous violence within her Catholic tradition.

"At the deepest, most molten core of all of O’Connor’s work is her Catholicism, or, as she says, “the stinking mad shadow of Jesus.” Every story she wrote hinges upon her characters’ stain of original sin, and what grace they are sometimes allowed is hard won, fleeting, and almost always too late to make much of a difference in the end...Only when you’re as immovable in your beliefs as bedrock can you then become a subversive...If a reader has no understanding of the humor deep in the bones of the stories, that reader will likely not be able to swallow the stories at all."

I'm not sure if I can swallow them in fact, and I have a taste for dark humor (or at least I thought I did). I feel like a philistine for only giving this four stars, but I am never able to give five to a piece of writing that leaves me utterly despairing about humanity. I can admire an abyss, but I also need to feel a sliver of hope in the abyss, and if that makes me a sentimentalist (read: loser) in the eyes of the literary community, fine.

I decided to read this collection after Bill Hader mentioned on a podcast that A Good Man Is Hard To Find is one inspiration for his darker-than-dark comedy Barry, a show I love and a show that revels in its dark comedy in a way O'Connor would definitely admire. There are slyly humorous moments, piercing observations of manner and class, beautiful writing that is neither too flowery nor too stripped, but above all the stories loom with menace and hover overhead like storm clouds slowly sucking the light from the sky, until they break over you with the all-too-expected violence of a hurricane as if to say, well? What did you expect? These are people we're talking about, and we know what THEY'RE like. ...more

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Apr 12, 2025 Sarah rated it really liked it

Twisted, dark, funny and oh so Southern stories. I see why Flannery is so acclaimed.

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Jan 26, 2017 Megan rated it liked it

Shelves: short-stories, classics, book-riot-read-harder-2017

Read for the 2017 Book Riot Read Harder Challenge: Read a collection of stories by a woman.

So The Displaced Person is kind of timely. :-/

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Dec 29, 2014 Samantha rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: refinery29-50-books-before-30

I knew O'Connor was a master of the Southern Gothic tale, but I wasn't really sure what that meant until I finished these. Some of them were amazing, some I just liked, but all were memorable. ...more

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