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A review by gabesteller
The Complete Stories by Bernard Malamud, Robert Giroux
5.0
I used to be a fake who said Flannery was one of my favorite authors AND YET if you kidnapped me and threatened my family I would have to admit i had only read a few of these stories
But now having Done The Work I can say folks she is even better than i remembered!!
Originally I read her for a religious lit class but what struck me this time and why I feel like she's so interesting to read at moment in the culture is she is a total master of portraying self justification. So many stories have these self satisfied condescending younger characters cringing at the racial attitudes of their parents/ bosses, and both are skewered for their arrogance and confidence that they have Figured It All Out. On top of these I was struck by the stories “Circle in the fire” and “The Displaced person” which are really excellent provocations about who owns owns land, and how Bosses respond to migrant labor.
After all this I was basically ready to call her Left writer until i remembered She was actually pretty racist, and said positive stuff about segregation even until the last weeks of her life. I mean obviously theres separating art from artist etc so maybe it ultimately has little bearing on the work, but it is jarring even to the idea that she was working through her racism in her writing since her attitudes only marginally improved over her life (at least according to what I read).
Now I'm starting to consider that she herself may be just an extremely sharp observer of hypocrisy rather than a particularly political writer. in which case, I would prescribe her to read her own work cuz they seem pretty political to me, and it seems like hypocrisy on par with one of her own goddamn characters to have written them and still hold the views she did.
But now having Done The Work I can say folks she is even better than i remembered!!
Originally I read her for a religious lit class but what struck me this time and why I feel like she's so interesting to read at moment in the culture is she is a total master of portraying self justification. So many stories have these self satisfied condescending younger characters cringing at the racial attitudes of their parents/ bosses, and both are skewered for their arrogance and confidence that they have Figured It All Out. On top of these I was struck by the stories “Circle in the fire” and “The Displaced person” which are really excellent provocations about who owns owns land, and how Bosses respond to migrant labor.
After all this I was basically ready to call her Left writer until i remembered She was actually pretty racist, and said positive stuff about segregation even until the last weeks of her life. I mean obviously theres separating art from artist etc so maybe it ultimately has little bearing on the work, but it is jarring even to the idea that she was working through her racism in her writing since her attitudes only marginally improved over her life (at least according to what I read).
Now I'm starting to consider that she herself may be just an extremely sharp observer of hypocrisy rather than a particularly political writer. in which case, I would prescribe her to read her own work cuz they seem pretty political to me, and it seems like hypocrisy on par with one of her own goddamn characters to have written them and still hold the views she did.