Tuesday, August 18, 2009

The N-Word and Christ

When we went to Disney World last year, I took along Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood. It’s my idea of irony: going to the South to the “happiest place on earth” with a wackily gothic author.

So this year I repeated it (yes, we went again) and upped the ante. Along with A Good Man is Hard to Find, by Flannery O’Connor (1953), I also brought The Groucho Letters: Letters To and From Groucho Marx (1967) and Witold Gombrowicz, A Guide to Philosophy in Six Hours and Fifteen Minutes (1971). The only one I actually finished while there was the Guide to Philosophy. (It and the Groucho Letters are highly recommendable.)

But I finally finished the other two as well. At first it’s a little difficult for me to get into O’Connor’s world (see title of post for reasons why), but once I got going, it became more and more engaging and ultimately awesome. I almost feel like reading them once is just a warm-up to reading them again, which I’ll do eventually, but not yet, because “the list” beckons.

2 comments:

ImageNations said...

didn't know that 'a good man is hard to find' is a book. watched a movie with that title some time ago (last year or early this year).

Goedi said...

Ah. Yes. "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is the name of the collection of short stories and the title of the first story in the collection. All worth while.
I wasn't clear on that.