Each time I read a Flannery O’Connor story, I come away from the experience with expanded and different impressions. My most recent reading of “The Geranium”—the first story in O’Connor’s 1947 thesis collection—provokes me to offer the following observations:

As a retired, southern gentleman—though I use the word “gentlemen” more than somewhat ironically—Old Dudley presents himself as a curmudgeonly though often pathetic old man who seemingly regrets his transplantation from the apparent comfort of his home in a southern boardinghouse to what he considers the unpleasantness of his unloving but dutiful daughter’s apartment in New York City.

Kafka by Robert Crumb and David Zane Mairowitz

Fantagraphics Books

978-1-56097-806-0

Trade Paperback

Franz Kafka said, “What do I have in common with the Jews?