Flannery O'Connor

 I never liked jazz music because jazz music doesn't resolve. But I was outside the Bagdad Theater in Portland one night when I saw a man playing the saxophone. I stood there for fifteen minutes, and he never opened his eyes.

After that I liked jazz music.

Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way.

-Blue Like Jazz, Donald Miller

With the exception of a four-year stint in New Hampshire, I was born and raised in Tennessee.  All told, I spent the next best thing to 30 years there.  I also spent a couple weeks in Mississippi over the years (one of which was gutting houses after Katrina, so perhaps not the greatest time to be there), and several months working in Georgia.  Despite that, I never understood the appeal of the southeastern US.

    But since this week’s book was Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to Find and other stories, I can now officially say...yeah, I still don’t get it.  Everything east of the Mississippi and south of the Mason-Dixson is still the armpit of America, IMHO.  I’ll stick to the plains, the Rockies, the Great Lakes (except Minnesota), or New England, thank you very much.

    Nor, frankly, do I get Flannery O’Connor.  Not on a visceral level, anyway.  And I really wanted to.  I mean, lots of my favorite authors and musicians love her works.

    Unfortunately, as far as I'm concerned, she reads like a South Park Goth kid moved into a Cumberland County trailer park and converted to Roman Catholicism.  I’d add “while smoking kitchen sink meth,” but all the kitchen sink meth smokers I ever had to deal with were way more upbeat.  As were most of the oxy addicts.

    Of course, I suspect I’m reading her wrong.  I think you’re supposed to buy the book and read one short story every other year.  Instead of binging them all at once because you have to return the book ASAP because it’s an interlibrary loan.  On further thought, that’s probably why I can enjoy even the more depressing Matt King and Tyler Childers songs:  they’re short and interspersed with other songs.

    Now granted, O’Connor had lupus and was therefore on steroids for much of her career.  More than likely, prednisone, which is known in our household as “[redacted] in a bottle” for its effects on the Beloved on the occasions she’s had to take it for respiratory and joint problems.  Seriously, that [redacted] will [redacted] you up in the head.

    Still, I finished half the book and found myself wanting to shop for black nail polish, mascara, and razor blades.

    I don’t deny her skills.  Her descriptions absolutely nail the human condition in general and the Southern, in particular.

    

    But while I appreciate unflinching looks at the pathologies of existence, I also appreciate hope.  As mentioned in the Chucky review, I’m a bit burned out on nihilism.  Whenever I run across it, I want to just say, “Look, if life’s really that meaningless, then why not just punch out and have done?  Get busy living, or get busy dying.”

    My favorite works are those that not only contain true evil, but plumb the depths of the motivations of the bad guys to make them understandable.  Only then can a work force the reader, listener, or viewer to confront the evil that lies within.  And I like my anti-heroes, too, because seeing a character do the right thing but for mixed reasons also forces one to examine one’s own life.

    But I also like there to be a glimmer of hope somewhere in there.  The idea that we may live in a crapsack world, but that it’s still worth living and working to improve.  That’s why I like there to be actual heroes, even if they’re side characters, because they present something to be aspired to.  As much as I like Harry Dresden, I prefer the books that have Michael Carpenter in them, as well.

    Flannery, on the other hand, never really presents any heroes. On a couple occasions, you think she might finally take pity on you and have one story with a happy ending, but instead, she consistently snatches cynicism from the jaws of optimism. She almost had me going with "Good Country People," but by that point, I was pretty well jaded.

    Of course, perhaps the reason people like her is that they contrast her works with her personal life.  Perhaps the appeal of Flannery O’Connor is that she could take those unflinching looks at human depravity and existential dread and still hang on to a hopeful lifestyle...even with her own health affliction.  She wrote and edited and lectured and worshiped despite her suffering and death sentence.

    I just wish the hopeful part came out a bit more.