#and everything by flannery oconnor

[hopeless-eccentric]

fucked up short stories from freshman year my beloved

[kaurwreck]

I've been kicking myself for not reading Dostoevsky earlier, but I think I found my way to him precisely when I could best engage with his works.

I'm not sure if I would have been willing to embrace the compassion and affection I have for his characters, and I'm not sure they wouldn't have agitated wounds that were then still struggling to scar, had I tried to read Crime and Punishment even as recently as a few years ago.

[alwaysmercy]

All Saints’ Day 2022

The weather is finally changing here in Northern California. It’s November and the long, hot days of summer have given way to cold nights and mornings, and the rains have arrived! I’ve bundled myself up in layers– turtleneck, sweater and scarf, while my suitcase is packed with breathable lightweight clothes, sandals for the heat and DEET to ward off malaria-carrying mosquitos of Kenya. It’s an odd juxtaposition.  Sort of like the feast day that the Church celebrates on November 1–All Saints’ Day. It is a day of joy mingled with sorrow. Joy for those who have gone before us and now stand with all the other saints before Christ. Sorrow for those of us who miss them.

In her Southern Gothic sort of way, Flannery O’Connor captures the oddity of this feast day. A devout Catholic, O’Connor had the gift of creating grotesque and “out there” characters who, nonetheless, are as redeemable as the rest of us. In Revelation, one such character, Ruby Turpin, prides herself as someone who has done everything right and deserves to be first in everything. In the end, her self-deception is revealed as she has a vision of the line of saints on their way to heaven. In her mind, she and “her kind” would be first in line–her good deeds and righteous way of living gives her that. However, what she sees are the misfits of the world–those who she looked down on during her life–being first in line while  “her kind” are trailing far behind.*

“Thus, the last will be first, and the first will be last.”-Matthew 20:16

My numerous trips to Kenya over these past sixteen years have certainly helped me see my own pride and self-righteousness. Confronted with the immense suffering due to poverty and illness, my teachers became those who were considered “less than”. In the world’s eyes, they had nothing to offer me, but in the eyes of Christ, they gave me everything. They gifted me with their presence and allowed me to see their joy and their sorrow.

Deaconess Pamela, on the left, January 2022. I’ve known her since 2006. She has been one of my mentors during my Kenya journeys.

Deaconess Pamela, October 2022, days before she died. She is now with the saints in heaven. I hope to attend her funeral while I’m in Kenya.

As I prepare to depart for Kenya this week, I pray that I might be ever mindful of the ultimate gift of mercy–Christ Himself.  I pray that whatever I am called to do, I do with mercy and compassion. That whatever words I speak are ones of love, especially as I care for those suffering in body and soul.

The focus of this trip will be palliative care–comfort care for those with chronic or terminal illnesses.  I will spend part of my time teaching palliative care alongside a Kenyan team. Together, we will train nurses, community health offices, deaconesses and a few volunteers.

This will open the door to home based palliative and hospice care in the community surrounding our up and coming palliative care and hospice center, Rehema Open Door.

You can learn more about this project of mercy by going to our website Always Mercy 

*  https://catholicreads.com/2017/07/06/revelation-by-flannery-oconnor/  provides a great synopsis of Revelation.

[veronicrochet]

currently: working on some mini crochet pumpkins and reading Flannery O’Connor’s “Everything that Rises Must Converge”.

[azspot]

About the Negroes, the kind I don’t like is the philosophizing prophesying pontificating kind, the James Baldwin kind. Very ignorant but never silent. Baldwin can tell us what it feels like to be a Negro in Harlem but he tries to tell us everything else too. M. L. King I dont think is the ages great saint but he’s at least doing what he can do & has to do. Don’t know anything about Ossie Davis except that you like him but you probably like them all. My question is usually would this person be endurable if white. If Baldwin were white nobody would stand him a minute. I prefer Cassius Clay. “If a tiger move into the room with you,” says Cassius, “and you leave, that dont mean you hate the tiger. Just means you know you and him can’t make out. Too much talk about hate.” Cassius is too good for the Moslems.

Flannery O’Connor

[galadrieljones]

What are some of your favorite classic novels/authors? What are some of your least favorite?

Hey shakes! Thank you for the ask. Sorry I didn’t get to it last night!!

Okay, so classics. This might depend on what ppl consider to be a “classic?” Idk what the “canon” consists of anymore and stopped caring many years ago. Here’s a list of arguably “classic” novels/authors I love:

Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor (short stories but still)

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

McTeague by Frank Norris

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

The Quick and the Dead by Joy Williams

Ask the Dust by John Fante

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

True Grit by Charles Portis

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Housekeeping by Marilynn Robinson

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

...and like, there are more. I just can’t think of them right now.

And here are some authors I personally...disliked while reading in either undergrad or grad school:

Henry James (all of it, i hate all of it)

William Dean Howells (i hate most of it, too many “chatty” dinner parties)

Edith Wharton (not my thing, sorry, too frilly)

Graham Greene (overrated, i feel, mostly by dudes)

David Foster Wallace (god bless his soul, but i don’t like his writing)

Any/all of the Beats (enough already)

Virginia Woolf (i like Mrs. Dalloway though)

John Updike (i love some of his stories, but his novels are so boring and hugely depressing to me)

Michael Chabon (shorten your sentences, shorten everything, what are you compensating for)

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates (I’m personally not inspired by 1950s-60s suburban angst very often, unless it’s dreamy)

Michael Cunningham (not my thing, too much interiority)

...and if you/anyone likes these authors that’s great, like I think they are all actually very good writers for obvious reasons, just not for me. 

Ask Me Anything!

[fsgbooks]

Subscribe to the FSG Work in Progress email newsletter for a chance to win a complete set of our beautiful Flannery O’Connor reissues: Wise Blood, Everything That Rises Must Converge, The Complete Stories, The Violent Bear It Away, and Mystery and Manners! 

https://fsgworkinprogress.com/2018/03/15/flannery-oconnor-sweepstakes-3/

[comfortcomes]

what are some of ur favorite books? like non-fiction, poetry, literary fiction, etc

my favorite book is infinite jest lol... flannery oconnor and lorrie moore collected stories and salinger glass stories, 10:04 by ben lerner, the empathy exams, white noise, the brothers karamazov, ariel, incarnadine by mary szybist... idk this is a random list theres a lot more i cant think of (but also i hate everything so not that many more)

[breakfastwitheidola]

had mood-occasion to open the letters of flannery o’connor this morning, excerpts

To Ben Griffith, who sent her a story for criticism

As soon as I read your story I thought of two other stories that i felt you should read before you start rewriting this one. One of these is “The Lament” by Chekhov, the other “War” by Luigi Pirandello. Both of these stories are in a book called Understanding Fiction by Cleanth Brooks and R.P Warren, which you may know but should if you don’t. It is a book that has been of invaluable help to me and I think it would be to you. 

Your story, like these other two, is essentially the presenting of a pathetic situation, and when you present a pathetic situation, you have to let it speak entirely for itself. I mean you have to present it and leave it alone. [...]

The first thing is to see the people at every minute. You get into the old man’s mind before you let us know exactly what he looks like. You have got to learn to paint with words. Have the old man there first so the reader can’t escape him.  [...]

Let the old man go through his motions without any comment from you as author and let the things he sees make the pathetic effects. Do you know Joyce’s story “The Dead”? See how he makes the snow work in that story. Chekhov makes everything work--the air, the light, the cold, the dirt, etc. Show these things and you don’t have to say them.  [...]

The deaf and dumb child should be seen better--it does no good just to tell us she is seraphically beautiful. She has to move around and make some kind of show of herself so we’ll know she’s there all the time.  [...]

If you do rewrite it, I hope you will let me see it again. This is just the repressed schoolteacher in me cropping out. 

Please do bring your wife and children over any time you get ready. Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner, and Bean [ducks] are slated for the deep freeze in August but Clair Booth Loose Goose is going to live a natural life until she dies a natural death. My mother is head of the horse department, so I will have to ask her about an Oveta. I hope you enjoy North Carolina. 

[P.S.] The television was mildly ghastly and I am very glad to be back with the chickens who don’t know I have just published a book. 

[essaypremium-blog]

Flannery OConnors stories

Flannery OConnors stories How does religion figure into Flannery OConnors stories? Flannery OConnor: Good Country People, A Good Man is Hard to Find, and Everything That Rises Must Converge PLEASE NOTE: This course is all about writing analytical papers that require documentation from primary sources, i.e., footnotes/endnotes/in-text notation, etc. You cannot write an analytical/research paper…