O'Connor is one my favorite Catholic writers next to Walker Percy and more recently Mary Doria Russell.
She is best quoted as saying "for the near blind you have to draw really large pictures and for the hard of hearing you must shout really loud." She said this in response to the many people who were offended by her use of shocking characters and circumstances in her stories.
Edwin Friedman, author of Friedman's fables, had a similar philosophy. He wrote his fables to induce anxiety. Sometimes you have to shout really loud.
While on our way to Savannah, Georgia, we stopped in Milledgeville. There is not much in Milledgeville except the family residence of Flannery O'Connor. She spent the last decade of her life here battling the disease that consumed her at age 39. She wrote some her best stories. Sometimes I wonder what she would have written had she lived longer.
If you have never read O'Connor start with "The Misfit" or "Parker's Back." Out of all the literature I read at Wheaton College, I return most often to O'Connor and George Herbert.
Here is a question: Should we shock or induce anxiety in order to jumpstart life-transformation?
2 comments:
That's so awesome! I really like O'Connor's work, and I'd love to see the residence. Was it far out of the way?
It's about 45 minutes NE of Macon, Georgia. If you go, take the time to walk some of trails. There are no pea fowl on the premises. Apparently they died out in the 80's.
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