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Which One Are You?
Jun. 20th, 2014 12:20 amSo far, from what I've read, there seem to be primarily two kinds of men in the short stories of Flannery O'Connor. First there's the cruel seducer, who's simple grin invariably hides a wolf's cunning. He is a man more than happy to trade you a broken heart for a wooden leg or keep you honest even if only at the barrel of a gun.
Then there's the frustrated academic, who lives at home with his mother, struggling to find a dignity elusive to learned introspection alone only to discover the harshest of final lessons. They remind me of Ignatius O'Reilly really, who like them are characters born sadly before the age of internet and blogs in which they would have shined. A Confederacy of Trolls if you will.
And during long mornings spent reading O'Connor on MARTA, (which sounds like a fine high school poem I know), I find she balances the testosterone rhapsody of the Hammett and Chandler that I end my evenings with. For while they provide me with the vicarious narrative of hard-boiled men, as quick with their fists as they are with their wit, O'Connor instead reveals an eternal truth to my own character.
The frustrated academic who lives at home with his mother and dreams of the savage joys known to the cruel seducer. A man willing to trade a thousand unpublished manuscripts of questionable genius for a single prosthetic limb hung like a trophy from the recollection. Which at the end of the day is no kind of man at all.
Well, maybe it's like this. Art can provide a mirror to the parts of us we can't or won't see. It is the responsibility of the audience to change themselves if they don't like what they see not for the artist to change what they see.
Shit, what do I know? Smarter folks than me get paid to debate this and if they know something I don't, then they don't seem none the happier for it.
Then there's the frustrated academic, who lives at home with his mother, struggling to find a dignity elusive to learned introspection alone only to discover the harshest of final lessons. They remind me of Ignatius O'Reilly really, who like them are characters born sadly before the age of internet and blogs in which they would have shined. A Confederacy of Trolls if you will.
And during long mornings spent reading O'Connor on MARTA, (which sounds like a fine high school poem I know), I find she balances the testosterone rhapsody of the Hammett and Chandler that I end my evenings with. For while they provide me with the vicarious narrative of hard-boiled men, as quick with their fists as they are with their wit, O'Connor instead reveals an eternal truth to my own character.
The frustrated academic who lives at home with his mother and dreams of the savage joys known to the cruel seducer. A man willing to trade a thousand unpublished manuscripts of questionable genius for a single prosthetic limb hung like a trophy from the recollection. Which at the end of the day is no kind of man at all.
Well, maybe it's like this. Art can provide a mirror to the parts of us we can't or won't see. It is the responsibility of the audience to change themselves if they don't like what they see not for the artist to change what they see.
Shit, what do I know? Smarter folks than me get paid to debate this and if they know something I don't, then they don't seem none the happier for it.
