Short Reactions to Short Stories: Celebrating Short Story Month on a time crunch
May is Short Story Month! Woo! I don't know how it started or who started it, but lots of litblog folks are playing along at home, including Matt and Callie and Dan and Jeff and probably lots of other people I'm not aware of at this moment. (Is there a sign up sheet? I always miss the sign up sheet. Drat.)
I guess you can count me in, what with my recent surge of interest in the form. To kick things off, I read "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor the other night, and, from the perspective of one participating in intense critical discourse, I'd like to take this moment to say holy fucking shit, have you read this story? I had not. I had some memory of being in high school and reading something O'Connor wrote, maybe, and thinking it was sort of...symbolic and meaningful, in a stuffy and dull "answer the essay question" way. I have no idea what story it was. I think there was a sky? I don't know. But something somewhere suggested to me it was time to go back and revisit O'Connor's work. So I grabbed the A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories collection, and I read the title story, and, and, and it's like...holy fucking shit! What is that? What do you even do with that? Wow, ya know?
I guess you can count me in, what with my recent surge of interest in the form. To kick things off, I read "A Good Man is Hard to Find" by Flannery O'Connor the other night, and, from the perspective of one participating in intense critical discourse, I'd like to take this moment to say holy fucking shit, have you read this story? I had not. I had some memory of being in high school and reading something O'Connor wrote, maybe, and thinking it was sort of...symbolic and meaningful, in a stuffy and dull "answer the essay question" way. I have no idea what story it was. I think there was a sky? I don't know. But something somewhere suggested to me it was time to go back and revisit O'Connor's work. So I grabbed the A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories collection, and I read the title story, and, and, and it's like...holy fucking shit! What is that? What do you even do with that? Wow, ya know?
Posted by Darby M. Dixon III at 1:10 AM.
6 comments. Post a Comment.
Yeah, I know. I love that story. One of these days I'm going to re-read a bunch of her stuff -- I think it gets better as you get older.
7:15 AM, May 07, 2007
I love it three. And it still delivers the punch every time you read it--I've probably read it 20 times, and taught it a dozen.
11:43 AM, May 07, 2007
Darby, just pick up a copy of the Collected Stories and get lost in the pages... It is intense, hilarious, dense, deeply meaningful work. (I *adore* Flannery O'Connor.)
12:42 PM, May 07, 2007
oh that story is so awesome
didja know she was also a cartoonist?
http://www2.gcsu.edu/library/sc/collections/oconnor/foccart.html
i might blog about that, actually...
5:45 PM, May 07, 2007
I bet the story you read, the one with the sky in it, was "Revelation." Anyway, I'll have to check that one out that you recommended.
9:32 PM, May 07, 2007
I've yet to read a better story writer than Flannery O'Connor. You should read her diaries, too. They're hilarious (and insightful, of course). Simultaneously arrogant and self-deprecating. At one point, she's talking about a reading she attended. She says she had the nicest crutches there.
12:41 PM, May 10, 2007
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