A Good Man is Hard to Find - Discovery Read_October 2013

[Diane, "Miss Scarlett"]

I just finished the last story tonight. They are so powerful that I could only read one each day. Each one requires some thought and time to ferment.

[Kathleen]

I am so looking forward to this one. Being anal retentive in the extreme, I won't let myself start it until it is officially October.

[Diane, "Miss Scarlett"]

As you read the stories, notice how many of the characters don't actually have names, but are identified as The Grandmother, The Child, The Grandfather, The Girls. It's also interesting that most of the women in these stories are widowed or unmarried and have to cope on their own. Each one of these stories pulled me in and wouldn't let go, and the characters live in your head for a while.

[Diane, "Miss Scarlett"]

Bevel was not actually the boy's name, he made it up when the baby-sitter asked him his name. His real name was Harry Ashfield. My synopsis was much less complicated than yours; I thought the little boy was searching for the love he didn't get at home. The preacher said the river of blood would take your pain away, and I guess in the end it did just that.

[Zorro]

A Good Man is Hard to Find

Everitt wrote:"Second the identification of the woman as primarily a mother and grandmother culminating in the recognition of her murderer as one of her own children. I feel like this is a kind of inversion of the relationship between Mary and Jesus. Though in this story it is "The Mother" who has the redemptive power via her death. This seems reasonable to me in light of the symbolism of the glasses above. If "The Misfit" is blind when he kills "The Mother" then his cleaning of the glasses is a kind of failed redemption. Failed because the grandmother, despite her tenuous metaphorical connection to the Mother of God, isn't capable of redeeming "The Misfit." He is beyond human redemption.

I agree with your interpretation of the Misfit as beyond human redemption - failed redemption. He thought that if only he could have lived when Jesus was on earth and seen him with his own eyes, he could have believed.

I also like your reference to hesychasitc prayer . I am familiar with the Jesus Prayer, but did not know its origin. I think FO would have liked your interpretation.

[Franky]

Everitt, really liked your analysis of "The River." I've read all the stories several times, but, for some reason, this story always stuck with me the most as being reflective and thought-provoking, sort of linked with O'Connor's illness. For that reason, it was one of the more serious in tone. I remember being quite shocked and saddened at the end when I first read it years ago. It has such vivid symbolism, and is one of the most powerful of the collection, with the boy finding redemption, although losing his life in the process. The river itself seems very symbolic of healing.

[Richard]

Everitt, Sorry to pick nits here, but two corrections. The man's name is Shiftlet--perhaps suggesting "shifty" or "shiftless"? Who knows.

Also the girl's name is Lucynell.

I think O'Connor does indeed write about abandonment and love betrayed. The little boy in The River is abandoned, or at least ignored and left to fend for himself, which is how he meets his tragic fate. There is love betrayed in some other stories of this collection, although it isn't always romantic love; it's sometimes estrangement between family members.

[Richard]

Everitt wrote: "Oops, my mistake. I read it earlier today and don't have the book in front of me right now. Corrected the mistakes, thanks much Richard.

That is a good point about the boy in The River. Though I ..."

I sometimes feel like a grammar nazi when I point out things like that, but my intention is not to be critical, only helpful.

You're right that abandonment and estrangement are different. I think there is abandonment too, but I don't want to get too detailed about stories you haven't discussed yet.

[Richard]

Which story are you reading next, Everitt? I didn't do the group-read because I've already read this collection (as well as The Complete Stories). But maybe I can help you jump-start some discussion.

[Diane, "Miss Scarlett"]

"The Life You Save May be Your Own" affected me very deeply. At the stories end, I was most concerned with the mother at home who had given her precious daughter to Mr. Shiftlet to take care of. Mr. Shiftlet would always use others to his own advantage, Lucynell would probably be taken care of one way or another and would probably not be aware of the difference. But that poor mother would just wait and wait, with no way of ever knowing why they never came back. Abandonment was certainly a theme here: Maybe the title refers to the mistake of entrusting others with your most important belongings and emotions?

[Zorro]

I woke up this morning thinking/dreaming about The Misfit as a Carol Burnett skit with Harvey C. as the father, Carol B. as the mother, Vicki L. as the Grandmother, and Tim Conway as The Misfit. It was hilarious, and I think that Flannery enjoyed seeing the show. So I guess that is my interpretation of A Good Man. And Grandmother died with a smile on her face.

[Diane, "Miss Scarlett"]

You guys are just weird.

[Richard]

Zorro wrote: "I woke up this morning thinking/dreaming about The Misfit as a Carol Burnett skit with Harvey C. as the father, Carol B. as the mother, Vicki L. as the Grandmother, and Tim Conway as The Misfit. I..."

Vicki: Don't you point that thing at me, mister! I'll take my cane and wear out your bee-hind.
Carol: I am just sick and tired of listenin' to you, old woman! All my life you never appreciated me and you killed Fluffy. Oh, Fluffy, Fluffy, Fluffy!
Vicki: Now listen here, Eunice...
Carol (to Tim): Just shoot her already, wouldja?
Harvey: Yeah, shoot the old bag!
Tim (shrugs goofily): Okay, lady, whatever you say. [Shoots. Gun ejects flag that says "BANG!" Vicki looks mad, then cracks a smile, then starts laughing hysterically, dies.]

[Zorro]

Along with A Good Man stories I am reading written by a Baptist scholar, now teaching at Baylor, who was a student at East Texas State when Flannery spoke there. It was a life-changing experience for him. He has become a FO scholar because of that visit. He says while reading one of her stories to the students she just cracked up laughing, she thought it was so funny.

[Richard]

Zorro wrote: "Along with A Good Man stories I am reading written by a Baptist scholar who was a student at East Texas State when Flannery spoke th..."

I once heard a vinyl recording of Flannery reading "A Good Man is Hard to Find." When she got to the part where the grandmother cracks a joke about Gone With the Wind, she delivered it in what sounded like a very deadpan voice. But I'd be willing to bet she had the audience chuckling.

[Richard]

Zorro wrote: "Along with A Good Man stories I am reading written by a Baptist scholar who was a student at East Texas State when Flannery spoke th..."

That's a great story, Zorro. I've added the book because of your comment.

[Zorro]

The River

Little Bevel(Harry) accepts Preacher Bevel's promise that he will 'count' if he is baptized. However when he returns home he finds that he doesn't count any greater with his party-loving parents than he did before his baptism. He figures if staying under the river such a short time didn't make them love him and make him count with them, that he could "go to the Kingdom of Christ" for a longer time and then he would be loved.

"He could count totally if he stayed under the water permanently. Far from committing a despairing act of suicide, therefore, young Ashfield returns to the scene of his baptism to find the new life by plunging beneath the river's surface, and thus to abandon the old death by leaving his unloving parents." ~Ralph C. Wood

[Zorro]

I think I saw The River as Flannery O's great story on the Sacrament of Baptism. In a literal way the little boy accepted the promise of love through Baptism.

But I would like to hear your comments on Mr. Paradise...I am not sure what he represents.

[Zorro]

The Life You Save May Be Your Own

Mr. Shiftlet wanted that car, but he did not want to be tied to a life on the farm with his bride, so he left her, abandoned her at The Hot Spot.

Lucynell's mother needs a handyman who will stay on the place and help keep things in working order. She thinks she will be able to keep him there by marrying him to Lucynell.

Poor Lucynell.

I did not see too much spiritual symbolism in the story but I have read reviews that really picked up on the Christian symbolism: "O'Connor regularly uses color imagery, analogies, and traditional symbolic techniques to create the double vision which she considered so important to her fiction. If one examines those elements as they are used in this story, it becomes, as we have said, more than a humorous tale; it becomes a comment on at least one of the ways by which man may separate himself from the Divine order of things." http://www.cliffsnotes.com/study_guid...

[Zorro]

Does anyone have any idea whether O'Connor spent much time thinking of or writing about abandonment or love betrayed? ...

I have learned from reading Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor that Flannery was in love with a Danish book salesman who visited her several times, then went home and married there.

Perhaps she sees herself as poor Lucynell.

[Zorro]

http://manasto.tumblr.com/post/107920...

Flannery reads the story A Good Man is Hard to Find at Vanderbilt

[Lawyer, "Moderator Emeritus"]

The Artificial Negro


A Lawn Jockey, not the same as the artificial negro seen by Mr. Head and Nelson, but illustrative of O'Connor's ironic point

Flannery O'Connor wrote in several letters that this story was her favorite creation. Its origin began with her mother being given directions to a house which was the only one on the road with an "artificial negro." The origin continued with O'Connor's having ridden the bus and hearing the driver tell a group of black women that "All you stove pipe blondes get on back there," pointing to the back of the bus. It was an incident that turned Miss O'Connor into an intergrationist, one year prior to Rosa Parks memorable refusal to take her seat at the back of a Montgomery, Alabama bus.

O'Connor's use of the N word thirteen times in this brief story can be viewed as disconcerting unless it is viewed in the ironic sense she intended by showing the interaction between grandfather Mr. Head and grandson Nelson on their day trip to Atlanta.

Clearly Mr. Head was a racist. Nelson could easily have been converted to a racist based on the attitudes of his grandfather. But he is not.

Lost in a black neighborhood, it is Nelson who approaches a black woman who kindly directs him back in direction to the train station.

Mr. Head has been Nelson's sole guardian since his wife and Nelson's mother died when Nelson was only one. His behavior towards Nelson can be callous. Abandoning Nelson after he falls asleep on a bench to teach him a lesson he won't forget, he is not prepared when Nelson wakes in a panic and collides with an elderly lady, scattering her groceries. Not unlike Peter denying Christ, Mr. Head walks through the gathering crowd denying knowing his own grandson.

This incident causes Mr. Head to question his own morality and he is ashamed of himself because of his behavior.

Returning to the train station, Grandfather and grandson confronting an artificial nigger lawn ornament in front of an affluent Atlanta home is Mr. Heads first instance of recognition of the misery portrayed in the face of the artificial ornament and ironically jokes that on that street folks have no real Negroes, they must resort to having an artificial one.

O'Connor has stated more than once this was Mr. Head's first real recognition of God's mercy and the possibility of redemption.

This is a story that begs to be read more than once. It also is one of the few stories in this anthology that does not end on a violent or negative note, but marks the beginning of hopefully a kinder and more positive relationship between Mr. Head and his grandson.

Mike
Lawyer Stevens

[Lawyer, "Moderator Emeritus"]

Zorro wrote: "Does anyone have any idea whether O'Connor spent much time thinking of or writing about abandonment or love betrayed? ...

I have learned from reading Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor that Fla..."

And as I recall the Danish "gentleman" described kissing Flannery as being akin to kissing a cold fish.

Mike
Lawyer Stevens

[Lawyer, "Moderator Emeritus"]

I finished this anthology early this morning. Each story retains the same ability to shock, stun, and amaze as it did when I first read them in undergraduate school in my Southern Literature Class. Bless you Dr. O.B. Emerson. I miss you still.

Mike
Lawyer Stevens

[Sue]

Zorro wrote: "The River

Little Bevel(Harry) accepts Preacher Bevel's promise that he will 'count' if he is baptized. However when he returns home he finds that he doesn't count any greater with his party-lovin..."

I've just read the first 2 stories for the first time. My, Miss O'Connor can pull the rug from under your feet, can't she. I agree with the above comments about"The River". It seemed that Harry/Bevel took the preacher's words very literally, as a young child would, and sought the place where he would truly belong. As young as he was, and with no one to guide him, he took the literal way to God's Kingdom, not realizing what it meant.

As for Mr Paradise, he is a confusing presence. Perhaps he is the reminder that there is more to salvation than a dip in the river and he hopes to protect those who are unaware. A guardian angel of sorts for lost souls?

[Sue]

In "A Good Man is Hard to Find", I was also so struck by the grandmother's role in the whole fiasco which became a tragedy. She lied, deceived about her cat, egged on the children about a plantation that she really couldn't place. At the same time she was prophetic re their possibly meeting The Misfit.

At first I thought what a silly story, wondering where it was going. Then it got there, relentlessly.

[Zorro]

Mike wrote: "The Artificial Negro

This is a story that begs to be read more than once. It also is one of the few stories in this anthology that does not end on a violent or negative note, but marks the beginning of hopefully a kinder and more positive relationship between Mr. Head and his grandson."

I have just read a very distinguished, scholarly, Christian explanation of this story in Flannery O'Connor and the Christ-Haunted South by Ralph C. Wood.

I agree with Mike that the story "begs to be read more than once". I am not able to stretch my understanding enough yet to see all the intended depths of the story.

[Zorro]

A Stroke of Good Fortune (I can understand this story because of past experience)

Madam Zoleeda had said, " A long illness.... it will bring you a stroke of good fortune", so Ruby just knew she and Bill Hill would be moving to a subdivision. "Good Fortune, Baby!"

She was already sick and those steps "stuck straight up like steeple steps". We climb these steps that "reared up and got steeper for her benefit" and meet her neighbors on the way.

Hartley Gilfeet - "Mister Good Fortune" (according to his mother) 6 years old. "If he had been hers, she'd have worn him out so hard so many times ...." She found his tin gun

Could her breathlessness be heart trouble?

Mr. Jerger, retired teacher, gives her a daily dose of history.

She had thought the word 'cancer' - she slashed it through twice. She would have to stop on the third floor - "gasping and feeling as if her knees were full of fizz"

Lavern Watts let out a great guffaw when she saw Ruby with the tin gun. "I'm not going to no doctor", but Lavern knows what's wrong MOTHER.

Noooo...Bill Hill couldn't have slipped up!

'Then she recognized that feeling again, a little roll."

[Zorro]

Poe was FO's favorite author when she was a girl.

Anna Broda Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2008 in the subject American Studies - Literature

http://www.grin.com/en/e-book/90527/o...

Odd and Deviant Behaviour in Selected Short Stories by Edgar Allan Poe and Flannery O'Connor

abstract: The aim of the present thesis is to analyse the dark sides of human nature in the literary works by the two prominent American writers, Edgar Allan Poe and Flannery O'Connor. The thesis presents the types of characters whose behaviour is stigmatized with madness, brutality and alienation. The introduction portrays Poe's and O'Connor's profiles in comparison with their contemporary writers. The differences between Edgar Allan Poe and other representatives of Romanticism are discussed. Comparably, the reader is acquainted with these features of Flannery O'Connor's innovative writing that enriched the literary tradition of American South. The introduction presents the major themes of E. A. Poe's and F. O'Connor's fiction, such as inner conflict, death wish, violence and mental deformities. The first chapter describes the impact of the writers' life experiences and personal interests on their literary output. The chapter mentions the traumatic experiences from the authors' lives, such as Poe's early orphanhood and O'Connor's combat with her incurable disease. The chapter is also devoted to the writers' fascination with a sphere of human psyche and their interest in psychopathology. The aim of the second chapter is to depict the heroes whose depravation is so extreme that they lose the ability to decide about themselves and are subjected to the influence of a mysterious force to regain their internal balance. The force is meant to free these figures from their anguish and internal chaos. The third chapter presents the picture of intellectual in Poe's and O'Connor's short stories. This figure aims at exceeding the limits of human mind. As a result, he suppresses his spirit. The chapter portrays contrasting views of both

[Zorro]

http://bookcritics.org/blog/archive/g...

October 7 - anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s death

[Lawyer, "Moderator Emeritus"]

Everitt wrote: "And Mike, I love your analysis of some stories I've not gotten too yet. Reading your input has made me anxious to get a chance to read them. But not tomorrow (football is on - hey it's a southern t..."

Thanks, Everitt. I joined you in a football Saturday. Some stunning upsets. Alabama was open. My wife bemoans Texas' loss.

Mike

[Diane, "Miss Scarlett"]

I am beginning to see that reading and understanding Flannery O'Connor could take a lifetime of study. "A Good Man is Hard to Find" was really the only story I had read of hers before our goodreads group took her on. Having only read "Wise Blood" and these stories, I would have to say I believe she is more of a sprinter. Her short stories all stand out as gems of the genre, and contain whole worlds within each of them.

[Zorro]

Diane wrote: "I am beginning to see that reading and understanding Flannery O'Connor could take a lifetime of study. "A Good Man is Hard to Find" was really the only story I had read of hers before our goodread..."

I agree. The short stories are very clearly focused for me. And I sometimes "get it" without too much help from others, especially in the later stories. I think Parker's Back is my favorite, probably because I got a clearer understanding of it the first time I read it (yesterday).

I am at a loss to understand what she is trying to say in some of the stories. I have to read what she intended or get notes from other reviewers in order to understand them.

[Zorro]

"A Temple of the Holy Ghost"

I saw Flannery O. as the 12 year-old smarty pants girl. I can just see her falling out of her chair, laughing so hard, and her mother, Regina, trying to ignore her rudeness.

To me the beauty of this story is that we get to experience her Catholic spirituality in her calming while at prayer at the Benediction and her private prayers. This story is really based on her experiences with her older cousins and her mother.

I do remember when I was a child being taught at Sunday School that my body was a temple of the holy ghost. That was a very important time.


"O'Connor wrote of the story in a letter, "As near as I get to saying what purity is in this story is saying that it is an acceptance of what God wills for us and acceptance of our individual circumstances." In fact, the hermaphrodite's body is certainly a temple of the holy ghost in the mind of the child: as she watches the priest raise the host, which in the Catholic faith is believed to literally become the body of Christ, she remembers the hermaphrodite's words."

[Zorro]

Everitt wrote: "What makes a great short story? Is it a story, an impulse and it's response, something else?
I've also seen many people I respect say O'Connor is America's finest short story writer, even above Poe and O Henry. Do you agree? "

Annie Proulx is my favorite short story writer - maybe because of the western settings.

I think that each of the writers had a time or an era when they were the best of that time. Tastes/understandings change.

Flannery O'Connor may outlast them all because interest in her work seems to be growing.

[Franky]

Diane wrote: "I am beginning to see that reading and understanding Flannery O'Connor could take a lifetime of study. "A Good Man is Hard to Find" was really the only story I had read of hers before our goodread..."

I believe the same thing. Her stories have so much underlying messages and are so powerful. They really hit you with something. The only novel I read was Wise Blood also, but it seemed to lose a little steam at points.

[Diane, "Miss Scarlett"]

The last story in this collection was my favorite. "Displaced Persons" was such an ironic title, since the real displaced people were not the family that took the job at the farm, but all the farm workers and owner who were suspicious and resentful of them. O'Connor certainly has the darker aspects of human nature pegged. That may be the reason her stories are so fascinating; we recognize parts of our own darker traits in her characters.

[Zorro]

Diane wrote: "That may be the reason her stories are so fascinating; we recognize parts of our own darker traits in her characters. "

Isn't that the truth! I can nearly always pick myself out in her stories. I think reading FO is so spiritually important to me for that reason. It is almost like an "examination of conscious" before confession - 'I think am I guilty of that?' I think she would love this way of looking at her stories!

Also, In Displaced Persons, we see so much of her MOTHER and the people who worked on the farm. Her mom did bring people to the farm from war-torn Europe, I think through Catholic Charities. There were two Negro workers at Andalusia. The priest did visit, etc.

Flannery was so dependent on her mother, but as in any daughter/mother relationship, when the grown daughter cannot leave home, there will be tension.

[Randall]

"Diane wrote: "my favorite. 'Displaced Persons'"

Zorro wrote: "Isn't that the truth! I can nearly always pick myself out in ..."

This is also my favorite, out of all of her stories. It was my introduction to FO. I saw it on TV as part of a PBS series on short stories. This was somebody I had to read, I told myself.

I don't know anything about Flannery's mother, but I hope she wasn't as defensively small-minded as the woman in this story (something that really hit me on this re-reading): always telling herself she was the real poor person, she was the real victim -- she's so much like alot of people are today; it's too bad FO isn't around today, she wouldn't be able to write fast enough, IMHO.

I recently read a peice about Bruce Springsteen, interviewed by Walker Percy's nephew, talking about how his song-writing is so much influenced by FO and her sense of "original sin." It's not just wrong-doing, Springsteen said (I believe there's a different Catholic term for that kind of sin: all you Catholics have got to give this protestant a life-line here) but rather, what Diana above called "the darker aspects" of us all, manifest in this fallen world.

So, if you're a Boss fan, the next time you play "Nebraska," or "Darkness on the Edge of Town" or "The River," give a tip of your hat to Flannery O'Connor. I imagine she'd have a good ole, good-natured laugh.

[Sue]

Thanks for that insight into Springsteen, Randall.

[Wendy]

I've sort of come into this conversation late, so I'm sorry if I am duplicating something someone said, but I ran across this recording of O'Connor reading "A Good Man" and it was so fascinating hearing her read it as opposed to how it sounded in my head. I thought some of you might like to hear her read it to. (And, of course, I can't get enough of those Georgia accents.)

http://www.openculture.com/2012/05/ra...

[Richard]

Wendy wrote: "I've sort of come into this conversation late, so I'm sorry if I am duplicating something someone said, but I ran across this recording of O'Connor reading "A Good Man" and it was so fascinating he..."

Wow, Wendy! I cannot believe you found this. I think it may be the same recording I heard years ago in college, perhaps on audio tape. Her dry sense of humour really comes through in her voice, doesn't it?

[Franky]

Wendy wrote: "I've sort of come into this conversation late, so I'm sorry if I am duplicating something someone said, but I ran across this recording of O'Connor reading "A Good Man" and it was so fascinating he..."

This recording is an extra on one of the DVD film versions of O'Connor's work. I'm not sure if it was Wise Blood or The Displaced Person. I just remember renting it and seeing it there.

Anyhow, awesome fine there. I read this story at least once a year, so it is so awesome to hear the author read this again.