A review by dukegregory
The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor

4.0

Short story collections that amass an author's entire career in one compendium take me ages to get through. It has nothing to do with the quality of the writing. It's just such a heft of things to read, and I have an obsession with going through them chronologically even though that always leaves me normally bored out of my mind by the first stories, and then I also get carried away by the novels I'm reading concurrently, and it just becomes a project unintentionally. Flannery took me months, but it was a wonderful back-and-forth between myself and the Southern Gothic queen while it lasted. I'm late to the Flannery party, but her name brand, the stunning paperback cover, and the pleading of Rachel Lu got me to find some of my new favorite short pieces. I don't want to go on, because everything has seemingly been said already about these stories: grace, grotesque, racism, grotesque, she had lupus!, grace, religion, dialect, anti-intellectualism, grace. It's all about grotesque grace! I may be affected by having just watched Raging Bull last night, but I think there're tendencies that Flannery and Marty share. There's an obsession with dissecting people deemed stupid, revolting, wrong, offensive through indictments masquerading as character studies. There is a fascination with amoral people as spectacle. The characters' performances of self serve as the foci. How is a supposedly religious woman performing Christian teachings? How is an atheistic rationalist performing said atheism? Identity and the associations that characters construct with cultural touchpoints result in rigid moralism which, in turn, reveals the twisted employment of those same touchpoints to delude themselves. Self-awareness is vanquished. This then expands into a general dialogue that O'Connor engages with about hate. The grotesque nature of these stories comes from moments of utter chaos that are bred from the faux-sense of "order" that the characters curate through their immense superiority complexes, their need to indulge in hate to feel better about themselves. Echoes of the pre-Emancipation South can be heard in spades. Sexism thrives. Intellectualism is an endeavor for the oddities of the community. All of that said, so much of these stories is hysterical, melodramatic, tragic, campy, and more. Flannery really did that.


"The Geranium" - 2
"The Barber" - 3
"Wildcat" - 2
"The Crop" - 2
"The Turkey" - 2
"The Train" - 2
"The Peeler" - 2.5
"The Heart of the Park" - 2.5
"A Stroke of Good Fortune" - 3.5
"Enoch and the Gorilla" - 4
"A Good Man Is Hard to Find" - 5
"A Late Encounter with the Enemy" - 4.5
"The Life You Save May Be Your Own" - 4.5
"The River" - 4
"A Circle in the Fire" - 2.5
"The Displaced Person" - 4.5
"A Temple of the Holy Ghost" - 3.5
"The Artificial Nigger" - 4
"Good Country People" - 5
"You Can't Be Any Poorer Than Dead" - 3
"Greenleaf" - 3.5
"A View of the Woods" - 5
"The Enduring Chill" - 5
"The Comforts of Home" - 4.5
"Everything That Rises Must Converge" - 5
"The Partridge Festival" - 5
"The Lame Shall Enter First" - 5
"Why Do the Heathen Rage?" - 2
"Revelation" - 3.5
"Parker's Back" - 3
"Judgment Day" - 3