Who wants to go on a Southern Lit bender?

geo · Sat Aug 27, 2011 9:39 am

I'm planning on reading (or re-reading) the following short stories and was hoping some folks out there might want to participate in a discussion.

A Good Man Is Hard To Find by Flannery O'Connor
A Rose For Emily by William Faulkner
The Happy Memories Club by Lee Smith

These stories should be in just about any anthology of American Literature. I'm teaching a Lit course this semester and working up some notes anyway. All three of these stories are fabulous/

geo · Sat Aug 27, 2011 10:42 am

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~DRBR/goodman.html

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/wf_rose.html

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/is ... decfic.htm

Suzanne · Sat Aug 27, 2011 4:43 pm

I'll read them with you Geo.

Thanks for posting the links. I've never heard of Lee Smith, so I'm excited to read that one. I'll look forward to hearing your thoughts on these stories. Nice choices!

geo · Sun Aug 28, 2011 7:30 pm

Thanks, Suzanne. I've read all three stories and I'll post a few comments tomorrow. I forgot how freakin' awesome A Rose For Emily is. Or maybe I just didn't appreciate it as much when I was younger.

giselle · Mon Aug 29, 2011 2:41 pm

Looks good to me ... nice to be able to get the stories right off the web, quick and cheap. With all this natural disaster stuff happening, good timing to read short stories and think about something besides hurricanes and tornadoes and floods and earthquakes. And good to see some activity on the short story thread too.

Saffron · Mon Aug 29, 2011 6:36 pm


	geo wrote: I'm planning on reading (or re-reading) the following short stories and was hoping some folks out there might want to participate in a discussion. A Good Man Is Hard To Find by Flannery O'Connor A Rose For Emily by William Faulkner The Happy Memories Club by Lee Smith These stories should be in just about any anthology of American Literature. I'm teaching a Lit course this semester and working up some notes anyway. All three of these stories are fabulous/

I just read O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard To Find." I did not like it and I do not think I like O'Connor much. On the other hand, I love Lee Smith and William Faulkner. The Happy Memories Club is not one I've read. If I can get my hands on it, I'll read it.

geo · Tue Aug 30, 2011 9:50 am


	Saffron wrote: I just read O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard To Find." I did not like it and I do not think I like O'Connor much. On the other hand, I love Lee Smith and William Faulkner. The Happy Memories Club is not one I've read. If I can get my hands on it, I'll read it.

Hey, Saffron. So what about the story didn't you like? Was the violence too much?

My perspective is that this story works really well and on different levels. It reads almost like a 50s pulp fiction horror story – very tight and well-plotted, but there's enough going on beneath the surface that allows for different interpretations. It dives right into the action, grabs you right away, and adds just enough suspense and foreshadowing along the way to keep you interested and guessing what's going to happen. The Misfit is mentioned in the first paragraph and in the first dialogue, and again when the family is at the restaurant. So we get a sense that the Misfit will play a role in this story. The Grandmother is not a very sympathetic character and we don't really know much about the other characters, some of who are unnamed—the mother, the baby. O'Connor keeps an ironic distance from the characters which is perhaps why the violent end doesn't bother us too much. The story is darkly humorous.

It's interesting to note that Flannery O'Connor was a devout Catholic and she has said in interviews and in her writing that much of the purpose of her fiction is to enlighten her readers of certain religious truths. Her work grapples with "living a spiritual life in a secular world." Man is fallen and can only be redeemed through God’s grace. To some extent, she's proselytizing.

From "A Study of Flannery O'Connor" in the Bedford Introduction to Literature:


	Quote: "O'Connor used "violent means" to convey her vision to a "hostile audience." "When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs that you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it." But when the audience holds different values, "you have to make your vision apparent by shock—to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures."

Knowing that O'Connor probably included most of her readers among the damned, I still think we can enjoy a superbly well-told tale. It's telling to see what the Grandmother considers are qualities that make a "good" person. The Grandmother is religious only in a superficial way and comes out as a hypocrite. The larger question of this story centers around whether the Grandmother is redeemed at the end. What is the significance of her telling the Misfit: "Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children"? Is she reaching out to another human being? Does she feel a connection to the Misfit? Or is she just trying to save her own butt?

geo · Tue Aug 30, 2011 9:51 am

Definitions of Southern Gothic

- Characters portrayed in a modern, realistic, grim, gritty, disturbing, often shocking manner.
- “The Grotesque”: flawed, damaged, often dangerous characters; unpleasant cringe-inducing qualities.
- Southern culture at its worst (racial bigotry, self-righteousness, religious obsession and extremes; cruelty and violence, suicide and mental illness, overall cultural decay).
- Tennessee Williams: “Southern Gothic is about an underlying dreadfulness in modern experience.”

Contrast with a description of the ghost story by Jack Sullivan: The ghost story always assumes a rational and morally-ordered world, but then “begins to worry about that assumption when something inexplicably threatening creeps in.”

realiz · Tue Aug 30, 2011 11:52 am

Saffron, I agree with you somewhat, it was not a very likable story, but it was interesting and different. Gritty. I enjoyed it just on that level and t was interesting that there was not really a single character who you could really warm up to.

Thank, Geo, for your comentary. I wondered about the author and the underlying religious message. I got the feeling that the Grandmother was very superficially religious, very self-centered, and in the end was trying to save herself, except for the fleeting little hint that there could have been a little bit more to it. I think that is part of the appeal, that small uncertainty of the message.

I just read what I wrote, about not really being able to warm up to any character, but that is not completely true. I think there was a part of me that admired the old grandma. She had determination and spunk.

geo · Tue Aug 30, 2011 6:35 pm

O'Connor takes some pains to paint the Grandmother as petty and and manipulative. She's not above lying to family members to get her way. It starts with with her secretly taking the cat--Petty Sing--on the car trip against her son's wishes. She makes up the story about the secret panel in order to get to see the house of her former beau (before realizing that she's in the wrong state). And, finally, when they meet the MisFit, she shouts out, "I know who you are, you're the MisFit," thus sealing the family's doom.

There's another scene where she sees a black child in the doorway of a shack and says, "Oh look at the cute little pickaninny! . . . If I could paint I would paint that picture." She doesn't care to remark on the child's condition of abject poverty, only that it makes a "nice" picture.

But the Grandmother does have some positive traits, as Realiz says. She tries to teach the kids some manners and appreciation for the countryside. She gives the Baby some attention on the car ride. We can appreciate her complete lack of independence. She has to live with her son and his family, has no house of her own. Presumably she can't drive. She's about on par with the kids in terms of how much control she has in her life.

giselle · Tue Aug 30, 2011 7:27 pm


	geo wrote: Knowing that O'Connor probably included most of her readers among the damned, I still think we can enjoy a superbly well-told tale. It's telling to see what the Grandmother considers are qualities that make a "good" person. The Grandmother is religious only in a superficial way and comes out as a hypocrite. The larger question of this story centers around whether the Grandmother is redeemed at the end. What is the significance of her telling the Misfit: "Why you're one of my babies. You're one of my own children"? Is she reaching out to another human being? Does she feel a connection to the Misfit? Or is she just trying to save her own butt?

I found the religion focus in this story intriguing and I was interested to read about the authors religious beliefs ... my impression of the grandmother's insistence that the Misfit should pray really came off as useless and meaningless. If anything, it seemed to distract from any conceivable attempt they might have made to save themselves or their children. And it came across as disingenuous at best, why should she care for the Misfits mortal soul?

In the moments before she was shot and after her family was killed, my sense is that the Grandmother saw herself transformed into a religious figure, a disciple or maybe Jesus, and she reaches out to the Misfit and touches him saying 'you're one of my children' .. in some twisted way and under the extreme stress of knowing that her family is dead and that she had a significant part in that and knowing that she is about to die, I think she wanted to forgive the killer, as perhaps Jesus would.

It is a macabre story in many ways. The depth of evil of the Misfit and his henchman made me think of the Bad Man from Bodie, from EI Doctorow's Welcome to Hard Times. Yet the grandmother insists on trying to find good in the Misfit and his family. She is trying to appeal to a good side that he simply doesn't have. These attempts really highlight how completely evil he is.

One of the strangest lines in the story I think is Bailey's line, just before the Misfit is identified .. he says ... "Look here now, we're in a predicament!" He tries to go on but is shouted down by the Grandmother, identifying th eMisfit, which is unfortunate for all of them. If she had kept her mouth shut at that point, things may have turned out differently .. Bailey might have been able to talk their way out, although that seems unlikely. Still, it was their last, best chance.

When he speaks of predicament, I wonder who Bailey is really talking too? I felt this was aimed at the reader, not so much at the other characters. A sort of appeal to the reader. And what predicament is he referring too? The obvious answer is the car accident but I think this is intended to have wider meaning. A predicament of life circumstances (he doesn't seem happy) or a broader religious/spiritual predicament? And, of course, the situation is about to become far worse, and 'predicament' becomes a gross understatement.

I was also struck by how passively Bailey and his wife do as they are told by the Misfit. His wife actually says 'thank you' when the Misfit 'asks' her if she wants to 'join her husband' even when it is abundantly clear that ther husband and son were shot. Truely bizarre. I know they are being held at gunpoint but still their passivity and complete lack of resistance or of trying to deal with the Misfit was surprising, especially given the clear threat to their children's lives.

geo · Wed Aug 31, 2011 2:30 pm

Thanks, giselle. I doubt that O'Connor's only goal in writing was to convey Christianity to her (mostly damned) readers. There's a religious message in there for sure, but it's not the main point of the story. Overall I find myself just impressed with the craft of O'Connor's writing. Normally this kind of preaching would bug me, but it doesn't in this case because I can enjoy the tale for what it is. Harold Bloom, who comments on this story in his book, "How to Read And Why" quotes D.H. Lawrence as saying, "Trust the tale, not the teller."

The Grandmother seems to be trying to "save" the Misfit only because she doesn't want to die. However, at the moment she reaches out and touches the Misfit, she seems momentarily to rise from her selfishness. I like your interpretation that when she sees the Misfit as one of her children, she becomes Christlike. The Misfit himself seems to recognize this and after he shoots her he says, "she would have been a good woman if there had been someone to shoot her every day of her life." O'Connor seems to be commenting on our fallen condition. We would be good if someone was there to shoot us every day of our lives. But it's also possible to say that the Grandmother, seeing the Misfit in Bailey's shirt, 'is simply confused.

I think Bailey is alarmed when the men show up because these guys have guns and the kids are mouthing off to them. I think he says to the Misfit, "listen, we're in a terrible predicament," as a simple attempt to placate a man who he perceives as dangerous. As such he's much smarter than his mother, who just can't contain her glee in identifying the man. "I know who you are! You're the Misfit!"

Some of my students commented on how passive the mother is and how she goes willingly with the man who has just shot her husband and child. I saw the mother as just being a very passive person, and she's lost without her husband. She willingly goes because she actually believes she will rejoin her husband.

By the way, there's an epigram to this story that is missing in both the Bedford Book of Literature and in my earlier link to the story. Here's the epigram:

The Dragon is by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the Dragon.
- St. Cyril of Jerusalem

giselle · Wed Aug 31, 2011 3:36 pm

Thanks for your response geo, quite illuminating. Perhaps the modern reader has taken DH Lawrence to heart in a more extreme way ... reader-centeredness, a natural extension of self-centered western society, where the tale as interpreted by the reader always trumps the tale that the author wanted to tell. "Who cares what the author was saying, I'm reading it my way".

Along with the 'Christlike' transformation of the Grandmother, a further thought (possibly a far out one) that the Misfit resembles King Herod in some respects; orders murder of children and murders members of his own family and plots murder of Jesus ...

I observe that the actual killers of 5 out of 6 people (Hiram and Bobby Lee) attract little attention or interest, the focus is on the one who orders the killing. This makes sense to some extent, but someone had to pull the trigger otherwise these people would have walked free. Ordering killing vs carrying them out personally enhances the Misfit's power considerably.

I was wondering about the Misfit's statement 'She would have been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life' .. I took this as misogyny, particularly after the comment by Bobby Lee that she was a 'talker'. But I can see the religious analogy now that you point it out.

I had completely forgotten that the Misfit was wearing Baileys shirt when he shot the Grandmother. This is an interesting device, the Misfit is 'cloaked' as her son, the one person she clearly loved now mixed up with this embodiment of evil. I think it would be normal for a person to suffer hallucinations under such threatening circumstances and after loss of her family.

On the 'predicament' thing, it was just a feeling I had when reading it. I completely agree that Bailey was smarter than his mother and that she acted with 'glee' when she identified the Misfit. I like your word 'glee', her glee in taking centre stage for that moment, satisfying her need for attention, made me feel annoyed with her sympathize with Bailey and his family who are now doomed for sure.

One of the most curious things about this story is the way the Misfit claims that in his view the punishment did not fit the crime because he can't remember what the crime was or that he even committed a crime, yet the punishment was so severe. Is this selective memory or just a put on and meaningless claim of innocence? It does jive, I think, with the epigram ... one is headed down the road toward the Father of Souls, perhaps rather blithely, only to be unexpectedly accosted by the dragon! :shock:

I've started reading A Rose for Emily and will comment later. I am hoping it is a happier story!

realiz · Wed Aug 31, 2011 5:16 pm


	Quote: I forgot how freakin' awesome A Rose For Emily is.

I agree is is freakin' awesome. I've been thinking about reading The Sound and the Fury, so this has wet my appetite.


	Quote: I've started reading A Rose for Emily and will comment later. I am hoping it is a happier story!

Maybe in a sense. Both stories have determined older ladies in them, but Miss Emily proves to be the most determined to have what she wants. In the first part of this story, I pictured Miss Emily as a regal, delicate older woman, silver haired, forgetful, with her faithful servant by her side. I was surprised at the description of her later as small, obese, and sounding rather ugly. Maybe forshadowing the ugliness inside her?

giselle · Thu Sep 01, 2011 4:16 pm

A Rose for Emily is a well written story. I felt it gave me some insight into life in a southern town in those days. Miss Emily is a formidable woman, I got the feeling that the men around her didn't have a chance, and at least one literally did not. The politics of the time is prevalent too, you can feel the sense of southern confederacy and their pride, and resentment of the Yankee government. There were some amusing scenes, the skulking about by the city fathers to deal with the smell because they didn't want to confront Miss Emily and the nosiness and almost baseless speculation about Miss Emily's life by the townspeople.

Miss Emily could not let go of her father, to the extent that she replaced him even in death, and could not form a close relationship with another man -- at least that is how I understood it. Does this symbolize something broader about southern life at that time? I can see that possibility but I'm not too clear on how.

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