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A review by amittaizero
Three by Flannery O'Connor: Wise Blood / A Good Man is Hard to Find / The Violent Bear it Away by Flannery O'Connor
5.0
I checked this book out from the library of the college where I teach. I'd read [b:Wise Blood|48467|Wise Blood|Flannery O'Connor|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1389629799s/48467.jpg|1046530] earlier in the year, or perhaps last year.
O'Connor is Southern without the kitsch. She is dark, smirking, haunted, and almost unbearably subtropical. Reading O'Connor during the apex of a Southern summer is almost like getting into a hot tub on a humid day: chest crushing.
There's nothing saccharine about O'Connor's work (a feature of some Southern lit) but there's nothing exaggerated either. She seems to write what she knows either by direct experience or observation.
Poet [a:Maxine Kumin|78739|Maxine Kumin|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1273603680p2/78739.jpg] writes about visiting O'Connor's family home in Georgia (years after O'Connor's death). Kumin, a New Englander, admits: "What can an outsider know, except/the shell of things?"
"The shell of things" is what typifies most Southern lit, especially the contemporary. There's a tendency to continually want to revisit/romanticize the South of the sharecropper, the slave, the War, the tragic mulatto, the help.
O'Connor, along with [a:James Agee|29611|James Agee|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1257464997p2/29611.jpg], [a:William Faulkner|3535|William Faulkner|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1437805575p2/3535.jpg], [a:Dorothy Allison|5599|Dorothy Allison|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1203572721p2/5599.jpg], [a:C.D. Wright|80899|C.D. Wright|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1199452786p2/80899.jpg], [a:Randall Kenan|10524|Randall Kenan|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1186528437p2/10524.jpg], [a:Alice Walker|7380|Alice Walker|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1406752585p2/7380.jpg], and others, can be an antidote of sorts.
O'Connor is Southern without the kitsch. She is dark, smirking, haunted, and almost unbearably subtropical. Reading O'Connor during the apex of a Southern summer is almost like getting into a hot tub on a humid day: chest crushing.
There's nothing saccharine about O'Connor's work (a feature of some Southern lit) but there's nothing exaggerated either. She seems to write what she knows either by direct experience or observation.
Poet [a:Maxine Kumin|78739|Maxine Kumin|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1273603680p2/78739.jpg] writes about visiting O'Connor's family home in Georgia (years after O'Connor's death). Kumin, a New Englander, admits: "What can an outsider know, except/the shell of things?"
"The shell of things" is what typifies most Southern lit, especially the contemporary. There's a tendency to continually want to revisit/romanticize the South of the sharecropper, the slave, the War, the tragic mulatto, the help.
O'Connor, along with [a:James Agee|29611|James Agee|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1257464997p2/29611.jpg], [a:William Faulkner|3535|William Faulkner|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1437805575p2/3535.jpg], [a:Dorothy Allison|5599|Dorothy Allison|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1203572721p2/5599.jpg], [a:C.D. Wright|80899|C.D. Wright|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1199452786p2/80899.jpg], [a:Randall Kenan|10524|Randall Kenan|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1186528437p2/10524.jpg], [a:Alice Walker|7380|Alice Walker|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1406752585p2/7380.jpg], and others, can be an antidote of sorts.