While I've read and loved every word of Flannery O'Connor's short fiction, I have yet to tackle either of her novels. About time I changed that. Loved it, but maybe less than her short stories (she is one of my three favorite short story writers with Hemingway and George Saunders). Hard to say as she knocks everything out of the park. Crazy about her work.
Gist is protagonist Hazel Motes returns home to a fictionalized southern city following World War II with an unspecified war wound that has left him disabled. The grandson of a preacher, he never bought into salvation and has some theories on original sin. An avowed atheist living off his pension, Motes spreads a gospel of anti-religion. His ministry, the product of a life-long crisis of faith and the potential horrors he experienced in war, is based on his knowledge of theological issues. It forms a compelling argument, but dude has no charisma and finds it difficult to convert any would-be disciples.
Favorite scene is when the character Enoch shakes hands with a “gorilla” to get free entry into the theater. It is obviously a guy in a gorilla suit, but dude thinks it is real and starts talking to him, telling him how he enjoys his monkey business or whatever. Finally, the guy tells him to fuck himself.
I love O’Connor’s ironic humor and meditations on religion. As a devout catholic, O'Connor isn't afraid to be critical of faith in the South.
For example, though he is a committed atheist, Motes sees his becoming a traveling preacher like his grandfather as unavoidable, part of his destiny. “There was already a deep black wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin,” O'Connor writes. “He knew by the time he was twelve years old that he was going to be a preacher.”
With his unconventional doctrine, that there is no truth to be found through faith, there is only what can be seen. “'There’s only one truth and that is that there’s no truth,’ he called. ‘No truth behind all truths is what I and this church preach! Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to never was there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it. Where is there a place for you to be? No place.'”
However, he uses a conventional religious format to preach against the bullshit that people are “unclean” and can only be redeemed through Jesus. In the end, though, he sees himself as being “unclean” and blinds himself as a type of penance. In my interpretation, this is for giving in to his destiny and being an utter failure, unable to make others see the truth. Worse, the characters Asa Hawks and Hoover Shoats use his religion of truth to grift the people Hazel is trying to reach. His blinding suggests that this is also bullshit. There is no truth.
Unappreciated when it was published in the 1950s, it definitely deserved its place on The Guardian's list of 100 greatest novels. Should be required reading for students of English lit. It's shameful it never crossed my path as a student. She and Faulkner are the undisputed masters of Southern literature, IMO.
No comments:
Post a Comment