My reading of the third story in Flannery O’Connor’s 1947 thesis collection prompts me to make the following observations:

(1) This is perhaps the weakest story in O’Connor’s thesis collection.

(2) Blind Gabriel, both as young boy and as old man in the story, with his thinly disguised fear of the wildcat, gives readers something to think about—especially in terms of his claim of a primal awareness of matters beyond normal sensibility, and in terms of his thin veneer of courage that barely covers a not-so-insensible fear of something out there (ostensibly the wildcat)—but Gabriel’s story is encumbered by the author’s attempts at dialect (not very well managed) and the characters’ dialogue and diction (also not well managed).

(3) Again, with apologies to O’Connor, the influences of William Faulkner and Erskine Cauldwell are everywhere evident in the derivative and awkward (but mercifully short) “Wildcat.”

(4) If I had been her thesis advisor (which is a fanciful time-travel imagining that is presumptuous on a variety of levels), I would say, “Ms.

An earlier posting, viewable here, proffered the argument of J. Hillis Miller that the rational man of the modern world is largely responsible for humanity’s estrangement from the Divine, and I went on to suggest (building upon the work of Mikhail Bakhtin) that expanded “dialogue” and engagement with others might serve as mitigation for the aforementioned estrangement.

Professor D. G. Myers (of Texas A&M University) and I recently exchanged ideas about Portrayals of Mothers in American Literature.

Green Lantern #46

Creative Team
Writer: Geoff Johns
Artist: Doug Mahnke
Inkers: Christian Alamy, Tom Nguyen and Doug Mahnke
Colorist: Randy Mayor and Gabe Eltaeb

Story – Feared

Review
This is what I am talking about.

Angel with a Gun

By Joe DeCicco

Five Star / Thomson Gale

ISBN 1-59414-357-9

The year is 1972 and Michael Romano, at the beginning of Joe DeCicco’s debut novel, is living with his young wife and child in Queens, New York.