In Praise of O'Connor

Gene Edward Veith, Jr. calls her "a writer of uncompromising theological orthodoxy" yet "unorthodox in her fictional style." Indeed, I must blame Veith for introducing me to the southern gothic writer Flannery O'Connor in the first place -- and for adding another entry to my favorite authors list. (You might as well blame Veith for "making" me read a lot of what I've read in the past three, four years.)
According to Robert Drake, O'Connor's "overriding strategy is always to shock, embarrass, even outrage rationalist readers." (Haha, I must be a rationalist.) My first read of A Good Man is Hard to Find honestly disgruntled me, and ever since, she has never failed to leave me dissatisfied with the way things are, and that, to my mind, is where the beauty of her writing lies.
When Paul Engle, her teacher at the University of Iowa, first met her, he could not understand a word she said, on account of her native Georgian dialect. I felt the same as Mr. Engle. I couldn't grasp what she was saying, but I knew it was something profound. A read through her first collection of short stories gave me a better picture of what she was saying, and it was an ugly, grotesque, and utterly beautiful picture.
Her stories, as Veith says, are "both funny and shocking." They will easily off-put an immature or uncritical reader, because each story is quite dark, but because of that darkness, the glorious light that flows from her pen is made all the more striking. Her characters will make readers uncomfortable (they have often made me uncomfortable), but that is simply because she is willing, unlike so many modern and contemporary Christian authors, to portray human nature and sin in all of its ugliness. The landscape she paints isn't that of bright, sunny optimism, but that of fallen humanity, and it's just about the most grotesque landscape one can find in Christian literature
But what is much more striking -- although this aspect is often under, but never far from, the surface -- is how she accomplishes the portrayal of God's grace into her writing. She leaves readers "reeling."
An example might be her profound use of irony through profanity. It is no secret that godless people are very likely to invoke God, and O'Connor exploits this brilliantly. In her novel Wise Blood, a character tries to run away from God and goes about seeking the most evil people to hang out with, but he finds himself with a boy who incessantly curses: "Sweet Jesus." And the character finds himself reminded again and again of the reality of God. The "where can I flee from your presence?" reimagined and made much more striking.
Another example is her masterful use of racial tension, for which she has sadly been called racist. In one short story, a man and his grandson go to a big nearby town. The grandfather constantly warns the boy against "niggers," but the boy is much more sensible than that. When they get lost in the town, the boy asks help from a Negro lady, whom he finds utterly beautiful, earning his grandfather's teasing. Eventually, a conflict arises in which the grandfather denies that the boy is his grandson. The grandfather is unable to fix the mess, and the boy doesn't want to. It isn't until they get to a white neighborhood with a lone statue of a black boy that they are reconciled, as they see how they have mutually rejected each other.

O'Connor isn't a Christian author in the sense that one usually thinks of. She was a Christian, in but not of the world. (She once stated: "I write the way I do because and only because I am Catholic." Her faith might not be obvious at first read, but you eventually realize that if she hadn't that faith she would never have written so.) It must be admitted, though, that she has had a much more secular readership than Christian. That really shouldn't be the case. We need more writers like her who remind us of human depravity, and we need more readers who are willing to be reminded of it. Even during her lifetime, she knew this, saying that "most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless, and brutal." I believe they're just absolutely beautiful.