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re: "The Train" by Flannery O’Connor

R/T — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 15:25:00 +0000

The sixth and final story in Flannery O’Connor’s 1947 master’s thesis collection, “The Train,” is a somewhat gothic tale in which nineteen-year old Hazel (Haze) Wickers suffers social awkwardness and nighttime terror during a train ride for undisclosed reasons to Taulkinham. O’Connor readers will recognize Haze, with his last name changed to Motes, as the protagonist who will reappear in the novel Wise Blood; in this short story appearance, however, Haze—like his later incarnation—proves himself to be on the run from something in his past but now finds himself agitated by his surroundings and other people.

Confronted and inexplicably annoyed by everyone else on the train—including Mrs. Wallace Ben Hosen (on her way to visit her daughter in Florida) and the porter (a black man from Chicago even though Haze recognizes him as someone from his own hometown of Eastrod, Tennessee)—the hypersensitive Haze is most perplexed by his mother whose spectral influence disrupts almost every aspect of her son’s experience on the train. A confused Haze remembers that he traveled as a little boy with his mother, a woman who “always started up a conversation with the other people on the train,” but then he also recalls that his “mother had never talked much on the train; she mostly listened.” Readers should not construe this contradiction as an author’s error; Haze’s mixed memory is symptomatic of the young man’s disordered mind, and Haze’s bewilderment is intensified when he conflates his claustrophobic entrapment in his sleeping berth with his mother’s closed coffin.

“The Train” stands out as one of the best stories in O’Connor’s thesis collection. Most remarkable is the young author’s management of the central character’s grotesque, unstable personality. Even if readers are unfamiliar with Haze’s later appearance in Wise Blood—a most highly recommended novel featuring Motes as “a Christian in spite of himself”—readers will appreciate “The Train” as a powerfully successful portrait of a disturbed young man who appears as someone who is in desperate need of being saved from complete chaos. Clearly, the haunted and disturbed Haze Wickers cannot function very well on his journey (i.e., a pilgrimage of sorts) without something or someone else.

re: "The Crop" by Flannery O’Connor (1947)

R/T — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 15:54:00 +0000

The fourth story in Flannery O’Connor’s master’s thesis collection comes as no surprise in that it is somewhat typical of apprentice stories by young authors. As happens in such stories, the protagonist is a struggling writer, becoming a rather obvious projection of the story’s author.

In “The Crop,” O’Connor’s projection is forty-four year old Miss Willerton, the kind of woman people once labeled by society as a “spinster.” Willie, as she is known to her family (with whom she lives—although some critics have erroneously suggested she lives in a boardinghouse with people who are not her relatives), aspires to write stories and novels. However, as the unsuccessful artist preoccupied with stereotypes and romantic fantasies, she spends “more time thinking of something to write about” than she does actually writing.

Seeking a “social problem” about which to write, Willie decides upon a sharecropper as her central character because he “would make as arty a subject as any” and “would give her [the author] the air of social concern which was so valuable to have in the circles she was hoping to travel.”

But problems threaten to arise at one point. “She liked to plan passionate scenes best of all, but when she came to write them, she always began to feel peculiar and to wonder what the family would say when they read them.” Imagining herself as part of the story, Willie becomes a sensuous character who replaces the sharecropper’s wife and is on the verge of living happily ever after within her imagined world.

Instead, Willie is thrust back into reality when she must stop writing and go instead to the market for eggs and tomatoes. Her experience at the market disturbs her. She encounters “nothing in it but trifling domestic doings—women buying beans—riding children in their grocery go-carts—higgling about an eighth of a pound more or less of squash—[and] what did they get out of it?” Willie wonders, “Where was there any chance [in such a world] for self-expression, for creation, for art?”

As the story continues, and as readers discover that the ill-equipped Willie will abandon the sharecropper idea and instead write about something else about which she knows next to nothing, readers should give careful consideration to Willie’s question in the market because it seems to me that O’Connor’s own voice seeps into the narrative at this point. It is as if O’Connor is pondering a choice in her own life: either she could choose the “trifling domestic doings” traditionally thrust upon a woman in the 1940s, or she could choose life as a writer in which there would be a “chance for self-expression, for creation, for art.” All readers ought to be grateful that O’Connor chose the second option and spent her short life going well beyond Willie’s limitations and failures.

re: "Wildcat" by Flannery O’Connor (1947)

R/T — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 17:04:00 +0000

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. O’Connor, although I think I understand what you were attempting in this story, I think your strengths as a writer will be better utilized in different directions. “The Geranium” and “The Turkey” are the kinds of stories you ought to be further developing. Of course, that is simply one reader’s opinion.”

re: "The Barber" by Flannery O’Connor (1947)

R/T — Fri, 26 Nov 2010 20:50:00 +0000

In the second story from Flannery O’Connor’s master’s thesis collection, which includes a total of six stories, the protagonist Rayber makes a serious mistake by arguing politics during several visits to his neighborhood barbershop. The small town college professor boasts that he will vote for candidate Darmon, an apparently integrationist liberal in the upcoming Democrat primary; others in the barbershop who champion Darmon’s more traditional southern segregationist opponent, Hawkson, deride and taunt Rayber by asking him, “You a nigger-lover?”

Rayber fails to understand or accept the attitudes of those he regards as rude and ignorant, and he remains convinced that he can either convert or enlighten his critics by offering rational, sensible argument in support of his superior position. However, blindly insensible about the folly and pointlessness of his intellectually crafted rhetorical stance, especially when he is forced to acknowledge that he has misunderstood and underestimated the attitudes of his audience, Rayber ultimately abandons the strategies of ethos, logos, and pathos, and he turns instead to sputtering irrationality and physical violence. In the end, Rayber accomplishes nothing more than embarrassing himself and driving a wedge more deeply between himself and others in the small southern town of Dilton.

O’Connor’s readers will be able to make at least two significant observations upon reading “The Barber” (a not particularly commendable apprentice story) and upon comparing Rayber’s experiences with those of other O’Connor protagonists: first, this is one of the rare moments when O’Connor employs a theme that has—at least superficially—a political angle; however, she will return often to the problems either caused or encountered by so-called intellectuals, especially in the context of the author’s employment of social criticism; and second, this is one of the few stories in O’Connor’s oeuvre in which religious or spiritual concerns are almost entirely absent.

re: "The Turkey" by Flannery O’Connor (1947)

R/T — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 15:25:00 +0000

In one of Flannery O’Connor’s earliest stories featuring Christian grace as a theme, young Ruller wanders about on the outskirts of his small hometown as he imagines himself instead to be in the old West and on the trail of cattle rustlers. Then, quite suddenly, a dying turkey that apparently had been shot by a hunter stumbles into Ruller’s view and intrudes in profound ways upon his make-believe world.

While Ruller doggedly pursues the mortally wounded fowl through the hedges and brambles, and while imagining himself to be the hero of his family and the townspeople when he returns with a turkey for dinner, this young son of an apparently strict Christian family carelessly entertains himself with guilty, immature, profane pleasures. “God dammit to hell, good Lord from Jerusalem,” he says. “Our Father Who art in heave, shoot ‘em six and roll ‘em seven,” he giggles. Then, in addition to remembering his scolding mother and grandmother, he remembers the minister who had said “young men were going to the devil by the dozens this day and age; forsaking gentle ways; walking in the tracks of Satan. They would rue the day [ . . . and there] would be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

Ruller, though, remains undeterred in both his quest and his profanation. Finally, he seizes the dead turkey, but he then—quite significantly—Ruller wonders. “Maybe that was why the turkey was there. [ . . . ] Maybe it was to keep him from going bad. [ . . . ] Maybe God was in the bush now, waiting for him to make up his mind.”

Then, with the captured turkey “comfortably over his shoulder,” he thinks that “God had stopped him” from further sinful indiscretions “before it was too late. He would be very thankful. Thank You, he said.” Ruller believes—in his youthful, innocent mind—that the turkey had been a providential sign and gift from God, the divine power whom he had foolishly ridiculed and taunted only moments earlier. Ruller, however, has more surprises waiting for him as he returns home, walking through town, with the captured turkey. Perhaps those, too, Ruller will discover, are signs from God.

At this point, I hesitate to offer any more “plot spoilers,” and offer instead my succinct observation that “The Turkey” stands out as one of the best stories in O’Connor’s thesis collection, and—more importantly—it is an early example of O’Connor’s fictional world in which God’s grace is a powerful, inescapable phenomenon. If readers want to preview the profound contours of this author’s future fiction, there is no better place to start than by reading “The Turkey.”

(Here is a final observation: Yes, readers may recognize the influence of Faulkner and other writers in this apprentice story; however, all fledgling authors must resolve what Harold Bloom calls the “anxiety of influence,” and O’Connor—in her future fiction—will successfully abandon the influences of other writers and find her own distinct voice, one of the most important and powerful voices in American literature.)

Joyce Carol Oates on Flannery O’Connor

R/T — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 00:09:00 +0000

For an excellent collection of articles about Flannery O’Connor, visit Joyce Carol Oates’ website at the following address:

http://jco.usfca.edu/onoconnor.html

Re: "The Geranium" by Flannery O’Connor (1947)

R/T — Wed, 24 Nov 2010 15:12:00 +0000

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. Old Dudley foreshadows other O’Connor characters whose singularly ordinary lives are negatively distinguished by alienation, isolation, and emptiness. However, although no such transformation occurs in “The Geranium,” O’Connor in her later fiction will use these kinds of deficits in her characters’ lives as opportunities for significant personal and spiritual transformations.

In the youthful and inexperienced O’Connor’s use of third-person narrative, a narrative that moves awkwardly and unclearly at times between character and narrator, both the narrator and Old Dudley frequently engage in what many readers in the 21st century will regard as racist diction and attitudes; this will become an occasionally recurring difficulty in some of O’Connor’s fiction, and more than a few readers and critics over the years have objected to this aspect in the author’s novels and stories. However, even though I do not present this as an argument to those unmovable readers who will remain convinced that O’Connor’s personal voice infiltrates the voices of her narrators and characters, I offer this perspective as an alternative view: In the 1940s and 1950s, American diction and attitudes—especially regarding racial matters—differed significantly (though not necessarily excusably) from those in the early 21st century, which means that Old Dudley and the narrator in “The Geranium” must be considered within the historical and geographical context of the story; the carefully attentive reader should notice that Old Dudley’s diction and attitudes (i.e., his interactions with Rabie and Lutisha at the boardinghouse, and with the neighbor in the New York City apartment building) are very much involved in contributing to his alienation, isolation, and emptiness.

Finally, the relationship between Old Dudley and his daughter deserves considerable attention from readers. Although only slightly developed as a strand in the warp and weave of the story’s theme(s), the strained parent-child relationship in “The Geranium” serves as a significant “preview of coming attractions.” In other words, any reader of O’Connor’s novels and stories should be keenly alert to ways in which parents and children so frequently must navigate the unpleasant difficulties in their relationships. (Note: Biographical critics often point to the relationship between Flannery and her mother Regina as the foundational source for much of these portrayals; however, I am reluctant to embrace such a facile explanation for O’Connor’s complex fictional renderings.)

Next, as an acknowledgement of the American holiday in which a fowl features prominently (i.e., Thanksgiving), when time permits in the next day or so, I will offer observations and comments about “The Turkey,” the fifth story in O’Connor’s thesis collection. Then, if all goes as planned, I will focus on the rest of O’Connor’s thesis stories in their manuscript order (i.e., “The Barber,” “Wildcat,” “The Crop,” and “The Train”).

Note:
As the first story in Flannery O’Connor’s 1947 master’s thesis at the University of Iowa, “The Geranium” appeared previously and separately in Accent (v. VI, Summer 1946); the story later appeared in The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971) and O’Connor: Collected Works (The Library of America, 1988).

Coming Soon: Flannery O’Connor

R/T — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 14:47:00 +0000

More than half a century has passed since Flannery O’Connor’s first novel, Wise Blood (1952), intrigued readers and baffled most critics. O’Connor, in her brief life (1925-1964), went on to publish another novel (The Violent Bear It Away, 1960) and a collection of short stories (A Good Man is Hard to Find, 1955). Another collection of short stories (Everything That Rises Must Converge) was posthumously published in 1965.

Also, Sally Fitzgerald (O’Connor’s close friend) edited and published Mystery and Manners, a collection of O’Connor’s “occasional prose” (i.e., articles, speeches, and essays), and The Habit of Being, a collection of O’Connor’s correspondence. Moreover, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux—in 1971—published The Complete Stories, and The Library of America published O’Connor’s Collected Works in 1988.

In the last thirty to forty years, critics and scholars have offered up thousands of books, articles, and dissertations that have a single purpose: understanding and explaining the fiction of the singular author from Milledgeville, Georgia, a town that H. L. Mencken would certainly have disparaged as being at the center of the “Bible belt,” a community that Ralph C. Wood has embraced as being part of the “Christ-haunted south.”

Now, with all of that having been noted (and with an acknowledgement to someone who has urged this project), I humbly plan on occasionally using this blog as a forum for offering a bit more to the aforementioned single purpose: understanding Flannery O’Connor’s stories and novels. As I do so, readers will discover that I work within certain subjective limitations: (1) I am congenitally opposed to post-modern literary criticism (i.e., feminist and gender criticism; Marxist criticism; cultural studies; new historicism; post-structuralism and deconstruction, etc.), although that opposition may be an advantage in reading O’Connor; (2) I am not Roman Catholic but a lapsed (formerly fundamentalist) Methodist, and that is very much, I think, a disadvantage in reading O’Connor; (3) and I am unabashedly fascinated with everything written by O’Connor.

So, with the preface now having been offered, I invite you to “stay tuned” for more about the southern writer whose remains—in my opinion—the most important American author in the 20th century.

Why I cannot (and will not) persist in my attempt to read FINNEGAN’S WAKE

admin — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 19:22:00 +0000

Here is a typical “sentence” from James Joyce”s Finnegan’s Wake:

“It is the circumconversioning of antelithual paganelles by a huggerknut cramwell energuman, or the caecodedition of an absquelitteris puttagonnianne to the herreraism of a cabotinesque exploser?”

(Note: I borrow the foregoing excerpt from a recent Wall Street Journal article by the superb critic Terry Teachout; the article focuses on modernism in the arts, especially music; the article–as included at Frank Wilson’s blog [Books, Inq.]–coincides with my recent attempt to give Finnegan’s Wake another chance.)

The so-called sentence from Joyce’s novel stands as succinct, unimpeachable evidence in support of my claim that Finnegan’s Wake remains unworthy of any sensible reader’s extended expenditure of time. There are too many books, and life is too short. So, sorry Joyce, I have no more time for your bizarre linguistic contortions.

Now, with Finnegan’s Wake tossed upon the out-the-door rummage pile, it is on to more worthy authors’ works: Flannery O’Connor, William Shakespeare, William Blake, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, Kazuo Ishiguro, A. S. Byatt, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, Salman Rushdie, and Eudora Welty (to name only a select few of my favorites from my eclectic shelves) offer plenty to keep me busy for a lifetime. Therefore, goodbye, Finnegan’s Wake.

Reading “The Barber” by Flannery O’Connor

admin — Fri, 14 May 2010 22:05:00 +0000

Someone recently asked me about which of Flannery O’Connor’s stories might be read as an exclusively secular story, one that shows few signs of O’Connor’s well-deserved reputation as a superb Catholic writer. Although there are several short stories can be characterized as at least somewhat secular, with limited overt religious themes, a good place to start our secular search would be “The Barber,” one of the author’s thesis stories written during her graduate studies at University of Iowa.

In this apprentice story by a young O’Connor, a social commentary and character study set in the American south, an earnest though obtuse liberal named Rayber supports a like-minded local politician in the forthcoming Democratic primary, and Rayber is eager to share his enthusiasm with others. At the local barbershop, Rayber confidently sets about his self-appointed mission to persuade everyone there that the progressive, pro-integration candidate deserves to be elected because change for the area is both important and essential. However, Rayber—pretentious and self-important in his insensitive intellectual approach to the issues at stake—is not at all successful in his arguments among the uneducated, irrational racists in the barbershop. Rayber, because of his intellectual arrogance and shortsightedness, is unevenly matched against the overpowering crude mockery of his numerous opponents. At the story’s end, readers are left to consider the unresolved tensions between a humiliated, defeated Rayber (representing a sensible political ideology) and an inflexible group of local bigots (representing the more conservative deep south).

So, what are readers to make of this early O’Connor story? Not yet certain of her “mission” as a Catholic writer (for lack of a better phrase), O’Connor—like countless other fledgling writers—can be seen attempting interesting experiments with narrative, humor, dialogue, and theme; later in her career as a writer—as students of her work already know—O’Connor will build further on these experiments, and—because she will be more confident and more skilled—she will move away from secularism and become a profoundly prophetic Catholic voice in American literature.