Now that you have immersed yourself in some wonderfully powerful texts from Flannery O'Connor, I invite you to leave comments here so you can have further debates about her work with your fellow APES. Accessing this site may give you some secret insights or it may just be a little fun. The Misfit may say "there is no pleasure in it," but that's why he's a Misfit.
Here's one of her quotes to get us started:
"The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location."
Has Flannery, in the stories you read, found that location? Have you?
1 comment:
Flannery O'Connor was the first writer I ever encountered who tackled the complex issues of faith with some thought. She despises shallow thinking, and most often it is her smartest characters who are the least equipped to truly reason out their own eternal significance. The freaky nature of her stories appealed to me when I was a student. I wanted to believe that no church would ever allow her work to be taught or referenced, but I realized as I grew older that that was just as arrogant an attitude as her self-righteous characters. Churches should embrace her unflinching attitude and teach their worshipers to have a real faith that makes a difference. I even read about a church that used Flannery O'Connor short stories as a study in their Sunday school classes. Sounds like a church I would have liked. In her novel "Wise Blood," the main character Hazel Motes creates the "Church Without Christ," a rather nihilistic invention, but when you think about it, that is the church so much of the world "attends." A world without Christ may well be the world of Flannery O'Connor. And if that doesn't scare you, you aren't reading deep enough. O'Connor will sucker punch you every time if aren't paying attention. As Christ himself often said when he taught in parables, "He that has ears to hear, let him hear" (Matt. 11:15).
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