Wednesday, January 11, 2006

 

Book Review: The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor

Writing Style-8.7
Originality-7.2
Plot-7.1
Literary Merit(whatever that means)-8.4
Overall-7.9

I’m a huge Flannery O’Connor fan. I believe with the completion of The Complete Stories I’ve read pretty much all that she’s done. The Complete Stories is, guess what, all of her short stories; and I’ve also read her two novels, Wise Blood and The Violent Bear it Away. Am I forgetting anything?

Even though she’s my favorite short story writer, I still like her novels better simply because I prefer to read novels as opposed to short stories.

The Complete Stories presents all of her published short stories in the chronological order in which they were published. So it starts with stories that she wrote in college, which are pretty good but not nearly as good as they get later. You can tell when she really hones her southern gothic voice.

For those not familiar with O’Connor, she was a devout Catholic born and raised in rural Georgia. She’s known primarily for her short stories. Even her novels read more like a bunch of short stories with the same characters mashed together to form a novel, particularly Wise Blood was like this. Her stories are usually deeply religious, but they manage to complicate the religious issues and morality so effectively that even a devout agnostic, like myself, can love them. Her ability to do this reminds me a lot of Dostoyevsky.

She can make you empathize with horrific sinners and hate a community’s most upstanding Christian. A common theme throughout these stories is pointing out religious hypocrisy. Often, the main character, or a major character, will be a devout Christian but O’Connor will sometimes subtly, sometimes not so subtly, bring you to the point of asking, “Just how Christ-like is this Christian, really?”

Other common themes are racism and classism, pretty typical stuff for southern literature.

I can’t recommend O’Connor enough, especially for Southern Lit fans. Most people probably read “A Good Man is Hard to Find”, one of her most popular stories, at some point in school. The main character is an old lady (a devout Christian) who is reading in the news about a serial killer. She becomes terrified of this character, or this type of character, as old ladies are apt to do when reading or watching the news. So, while traveling with the family on vacation in Florida, the car breaks down, and they are confronted with a serial killer fitting the same description. Does this ring any bells? If not, this is a pretty good place to start. Plus, it’s a whole new world when you don’t have to read something for school. Then, if The Complete Stories is too daunting you could move on to Everything That Rises Must Converge, a great short story collection. Or, if short stories aren’t your thing then try one of the novels. Certainly, don’t eschew the novels just because you think of her as a short story writer, they are also top notch. And who knows what she would have gone onto if she hadn’t died at the age of 39 (I think?).

This is my dog, Flannery:

Comments:
Awww... She's so cute.

- Laika
 
I wish we could get Flan and Laika together. Flan would like-a the Laika. Flan is a little racist, she strongly prefers black dogs that look like her.
 
Post a Comment

<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?