A review by alisarae
A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories by Flannery O'Connor

5.0

We always read in the context of other media that we are exposed to, and in my case what immediately sprung to mind was the docuseries Woodstock 99: the violence broiling just underneath the surface, ready to erupt at any moment; the entitlement that no one bothers to offer an excuse for; the tragedies that are never mourned or brought to justice. In O’Conner’s day, northern critics rubbernecked at her “southern” violence (I’m paraphrasing from the introduction); in Woodstock 99, the violence was chalked up to a Gen X sense of entitlement. But I do see similarities between the two and that brings me to my point: Flannery O’Conner is not merely a Southern writer nor a Catholic writer, but an American writer. Her “sardonic wit”—which, as far as I can tell, is an acknowledgement of the pitifulness, irony, and hypocrisy in her characters—makes me think millennial Twitter humor comes from an older American tradition of recognizing a problem and laugh-crying at our inability to change the tides of cultural influence. Finally, I see the connections between O’Conner and Shirley Jackson as outsiders caught in the web of small town tradition, illness, and a challenge to the popular imagination of 1950s womanhood.