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.

G.K. Chesterton

So begins my first blog post. I have thought of creating one for some time now but have only brought that idea into fruition today on a whim. I simply want an outlet for the thoughts that crowd my head and take up most of my day. I take full responsibility for whatever errors I make in this blog.

This is a blog intended for whatever I wish to blog about, and I can think of no one better (or, really, no one else) to blog about first than one of my favorite authors: Gilbert Keith Chesterton, the prince of paradox.

Theodore Roosevelt

Mr. Chesterton is perhaps most famously known for his Father Brown stories, but my admiration for his works did not start with these. A year or so ago, I had been reading Gene Edward Veith's Reading Between the Lines, one of my favorite books on literature and the philosophies which accompany it (sparking in me an interest in philosophy). In the list of authors he recommended (which included Flannery O'Connor, about whom I would love to write in the future) I found the name of Chesterton and looked for one of his works.

I first read The Man Who was Thursday, which, like nearly all of his fiction, contains his wit, paradox, social commentary, and Christian symbolism. It read like a very intelligent thriller -- or, perhaps, a proto-thriller. His style contained nearly everything I looked for in an author, and I looked for other books of his on Project Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org/). I went on to read The Napoleon of Notting Hill, which is absurd but not nihilistically so, The Club of Queer Trades, a series of stories about men who practice unique professions, Manalive, which is one of my favorite works of fiction ever, and The Ball and the Cross, which portrays the quarrel and eventual friendship of an atheist and a Catholic. These novels are brimming with wit, humor, sarcasm, and profundity which I rarely find all bunched together in the works of other authors. 

Of course, I read the Father Brown detective stories and found them to be a perfect complement to the Sherlock Holmes stories I had been reading. Brown, opposite to Holmes, relies more on insight than intellect and generally makes for a more satisfying read. (Of course, Chesterton was a brilliant author, while Doyle was not really an author to begin with.) 

I have not read enough of his non-fiction. I began What's Wrong With the World and found much that I am sure he would still say about the society today, but there seems to be too wide a temporal gap between him and us. I also began Orthodoxy and Heretics, both of which I have yet to finish. I hope to read The Everlasting Man, which "baptized" C.S. Lewis' intellect, just as George MacDonald "baptized" his imagination.

Here are some of my favorite quotes and passages from some of the books I mentioned:

"Truth must of necessity be stranger than fiction. For fiction is the creation of the human mind, and therefore is congenial to it." The Club of Queer Trades

"I don't deny that there should be priests to remind men that they will one day die. I only say that at certain strange epochs it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, actually to remind men that they are not dead yet." Manalive 

"The intellectuals among whom I moved were not even alive enough to fear death. They hadn't enough blood in them to be cowards. Until a pistol barrel was poked under their very noses they never even knew they had been born." Manalive

"... we were all in exile, and ... no earthly house could cure the holy home-sickness that forbids us rest." Manalive

"I have called this book 'What is Wrong with the World?' and the usphot of the title can be easily and clearly stated. What is wrong is that we do not ask what is right." What's Wrong With the World

"It is the one great weakness of journalism as a picture of our modern existence, that it must be a picture made up entirely of exceptions... journalism cannot be reasonably expected... to insist upon permanent miracles. Busy editors cannot be expected to put on their posters. 'Mr. Wilkinson Still Safe,' or 'Mr. Jones, of Worthing, Not Dead Yet.' They cannot announce the happiness of mankind at all. They cannot describe all the fork that are not stolen, or all the marriages that are not judiciously dissolved. Hence the complete picture they give of life is of necessity fallacious; they can only represent what is unusual. However democratic they may be, they are only concerned with the minority." The Ball and the Cross

 "Nothing is plainer from real history than that each of your heretics invented a complete cosmos of his own which the next heretic smashed entirely to pieces. Who cares now exactly what Nestorius taught? Who cares? There are only to things that we know for certain about it the teaching of Arius, the heretic who came before him, and something quite useless to [an atheist], the heretic who comes after." The Ball and the Cross

"The cross cannot be defeated, for it is Defeat." The Ball and the Cross

"The father believed in civilization, in the storied tower we have erected to affront nature; that is, the father believed in Man. The daughter believed in God; and was even stronger. They never of them believed in themselves; for that is a decadent weakness." The Ball and the Cross

"... it was your Jesus Christ who started all this bosh about being God." 

"No, the idea is older; it was Satan who first said he was God." 

"Then, what... is the difference between Christ and Satan?"             

"It is quite simple... Christ descended into hell; Satan fell into it."   

"Does it make much odds?" 

"It makes all the odds... One of them wanted to go up and went down; the other wanted to go down and went up. A god can be humble, a devil can only be humbled."  The Ball and the Cross

"Obviously one should not trust any God that one can improve on." The Ball and the Cross

"He was not 'a thinking machine'; for that is a brainless phrase of modern fatalism and materialism. A machine only is a machine because it cannot think." The Innocence of Father Brown

"Humility is the mother of giants. One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak." The Innocence of Father Brown

"'How do you know all this? Are you a devil?' 

'I am a man,' answered Father Brown gravely; 'and therefore have all devils in my heart.'" The Innocence of Father Brown

"I did try to found an heresy of my own; and I when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy." Orthodoxy

"Complete self-confidence is not merely a sin; complete self-confidence is a weakness." Orthodoxy

I had not bothered to underline passages (or, rather, highlight, since I read Chesterton from a Kindle) in certain books, but had I done so, they certainly would have been included in this list. These quotes fail to demonstrate how well Chesterton weaves narratives, although I sometimes wish he would end certain books in different manners. (Apparently, most of this post has just been quotes. If you aren't impressed by his quotes, that is perfectly fine.)
I hope that this will not be the last time I blog about Chesterton. I also hope to add more to this blog.