Customer Reviews

Flannery O'Connor's South

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Coles describes the "social scene" and the civil rights movement in Georgia during the early 1960s. Contrasts O'Connor's "northern reader"-- and the perspective of the South that he or she brings to a reading -- with the version of reality that O'Connor saw and portrayed in her fiction.

Discusses her view of the grotesque, her treatment of black characters, and the various philosophical and religious themes seen in her work. Provides a fairly close, but informal reading of "The Displaced Person." Sees it as reflective of the South as a region, and asserts that, through this story, O'Connor "pursued her main business of storytelling as a means of showing the depth of God's mysteries." Contends that the result is "a series of reminders about God's earth as well as His universe, [and] His Commandments," resulting in "a rare and exceedingly high kind of sociology, history, [and] social psychology."

Discusses her comment that the South's alienation was "`not alienation enough,'" and her belief that the South was finding itself forced not only out of its sins, but its "`few virtues'" as well. Considers such topics as: pride, intellectual conviction, "practical heresies, the South's "`old-time religion,'" and "backwoods fundamentalism" as seen in "Parker's Back," "Good Country People," and "The Artificial Nigger." Suggests that O'Connor's "own theological sophistication enabled her to connect the sights and sounds of back-country, southern twentieth-century life to a history that began in Christ's time, and even before."

Coles illustrates his points with lengthy explications of O'Connor's novel, Wise Blood and her story, "Parker's Back." Regards O'Connor as a "Southern intellectual" who "steeped herself" in literature, religion, art, psychology, and in "her own sharp fashion, the South's social and political matters." Sees this background evident in "her repeated jabs at social science, psychology, theorists, and ... the entire liberal, secular world." Reads "The Lame Shall Enter First" as O'Connor's attempt "to dramatize an incompatibility she has seen about her in this modern world: intellectuals who mock traditional religion, then take a certain religious way of getting along with others."

Contrasts intellectual and spiritual knowledge in "Good Country People," "The Enduring Chill" and The Violent Bear It Away. Refers to works by Simone Weil, St. Thomas Aquinas, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and Georges Bernanos.

Concludes that O'Connor was "a writer with few peers...of enormous promise...a soul blinded by faith; hence with an uncanny endowment of sight."

R. Neil Scott / Middle Tennessee State University

Coles book adds almost nothing to an ordinary reader's opinions on O'Connor's works. It fails utterly to discover, much less analyze, why her stories are so good. It is classic condescension from a man unqualified to discuss O'Connor's works, much less than evaluate them. Coles is the classic Northern know it all, so despised, and rightfully so, by Walker Percy, undoubtedly the most underrated and underead Southern novelist of our times. For most academic elites, O'Connor and Percy and to a lesser extent Faulkner (with Faulkner northern and non-Southern writers from France and Britain, for example, stereotype the South which they don't bother to understand and simply ignore Faulkner because they don't know how to deal with probably finest fiction writer of the twentieth century--James Joyce's and Beckett's works, except for Beckett's trilogy and Waiting for Godot, are praised by the "in critics" but seldom understood. Only Hugh Kenner was able to make BEckett respectable, but he wrote little on Ulysses and seemed to realize that Joyce was simply not the great writer, applauded but not read. Kenner's failure to discuss Faulkner or O'Connor were serious lapses by the finest critic of 20th century lit. Only with Pound did Kenner have a subject worthy of his critical genius. In any event Coles's book lacks the necessary understanding of the "real" south because of his rather shallow philosophy and his f ailure to do the necessary research that would have enabled him to write at least a passable book on O'Connor.

I should note that the hugely over-praised Raymond Carver wrote superficial fiction that was easily accessible to anyone with a high school education. Like Lowell in poetry compared to E.Bishop,, Carver's reputation will fade (has already faded) while O'Connor's work continues to grow in popluarity and in intelligent critical applause. It is certainly a cliche, but O' Connor's work speaks for itself and defies summary and analysis. Many people prefer her letters, which like Waugh's and Keats's are great reading, but they don't substitute for these writers works. Like Waugh, a conservative satirist and genius prose stylist, O' Connor's stories and two novels should be read and discussed orally in reading groups--written critiques simply can't explain the themes, plot and especially the characters and setting of their works. Also, of course, Faulkner, O'Connor, Bishop, and Waugh are still dismissed because they are politically incorrect and conservative, in the Burkean sense.