Flannery O'Connor

The Complete Stories, by Flannery O'Connor.
A dear friend suggested a few Flan stories to me, and I guess I got hooked. With this volume consumed, I can now say I have read all of the published short stories of this fantastic writer.
O' Connor's work is fantastic in the way my dictionary describes the word. "Conceived by unrestrained fancy." These stories are nearly always shocking, actually very shocking. They are powerful character driven things, and rather than describe them as "horror" stories as I see some reviewers do, I would moreso call them "grotesques."
They involve characters that are not so much "horrible" or "horrorful" as much as they are simply ludicrous, or incongruously composed or disposed. Caught up in all manner of inner bigotries, hypocrisy, fanaticism of one sort or another (most often religious). O'Connor characters often turn out to be homicidal, suicidal, brutal, obsessed, the opposite of what they appear to be, and always, if nothing else... shocking!
I am no connoisseur of the short story genre but all I know is that these stories without fail, intrigued me. Opened a door to further contemplation, and went a bit beyond what they said.
For sheer brilliance of sentence structure, visualization, suspense, I think it would be fair to say that there are few writers that have ever written as clearly as Flannery O' Connor.
When I am reading literature, characters better dang well talk good, and talk like people, not like characters. The dialogue in this collection is one of its strongest points. Impeccable down-south vernacular.
As for verisimilitude, well that is another mentionable thing here. If they are anything, these stories are bizarre, and yet they retain that quality of appearing to be true. Appearing to be possible. But the last thing that they are (hear me now, if hearing nothing else), these are NOT happily-ever-after stories.
Hell no.
They are most often direct flights into the realm of the reprehensible and least optimistic aspects (propensities) of human nature.
For those who care, my own favorite story was probably The Lame Shall Enter First.

All the best to you,
Cip!

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A Fantasy Classic

The Well At The World's End by William Morris.

Don't let the dismal fact that this book is twenty-zillionth on the bestseller list discourage you.... it is well worth reading the thing.
I first came to this book through the published endorsement (hence, not personal) of the great C.S. Lewis, who made his first reading of The Well in November of 1914. He read it many times thereafter.
In my ONE reading of the two volumes, I can attest to the fact that this is a beautiful story, a rich fantasy, a vibrant fairy-tale with no fairies.
Among other things... a love story.
Strictly speaking, as regards genre, it is a "romance". The chivalric, bardic story of Ralph of Upmeads, the least likely of the King's four sons, who devotes his life to the quest of the Well at The World's End... a fabled well which promises to reward its discoverer with perpetual youth.
If you are in love with Tolkien's The Lord of The Rings (and who isn't) you should definitely consider having an affair with The Well At The World's End. Let me defuse the daunting issue of Morris's use of archaic language. Be ye warned, in every sentence you will constantly encounter words such as forsooth, hitherward, quoth, whither, rideth, erstwhile, deem, draweth, betwixt, and I wot not else.
At first I thought this would be really intolerable. But I quickly adapted to it, and even found it kind of "not vile".
Remember... Volume 2 is essential. It's not a sequel, it's a conclusion. Get both volumes, and escape the world of car horns and remote control for a bit.
And as regards it's place on the bestseller list? I am reminded of the wise words of the great Henrik Ibsen, who once suggested that "the solid majority is always wrong."

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Bonhoeffer

No theologian of our century has so seriously questioned the premises of our Christian beliefs as Bonhoeffer has. And no one has dared to thrust the Church into the "world" and so honestly explored the implications of doing so, as him. And certainly no one has brought to the world a vision of Christ large enough, embracive enough, to make full-hearted involvement in the secular efforts of our time a Christian imperative. At the mere age of 39, such a light as this was extinguished, and who has there been to take his place?
When we are reading L&PFP, we are reading fragments of incomparable genius... fragments that at one point or another were packed in tin cans and buried in the garden of Dietrich's best friend/nephew-in-law (Eberhard Bethge). Because of Bethge's own arrest in October of 1944, many letters were lost... these that survive reveal to us enough of Bonhoeffer's wrestlings with "religionless Christianity" and the "non-religious interpretation of biblical concepts" to conclude that his ideas came from no one who preceded him.

The friendship that Dietrich shared with E. Bethge was indeed profound, and as such, he speaks with him in these letters with greater intellectual depth and honesty than is evident in most of his other correspondence. At one point he even expressed the opinion that the success of any of his thought and writing depended on whether or not he would again be given the opportuinity to freely interact with Bethge. That time never came for Dietrich. On April 9, 1945 he was executed at the concentration camp at Flossenburg.
Especially poignant is the abrupt end of the contact between Dietrich and Eberhard, and the frustrated attempts of his parents and fiance to locate him. Unbeknownst to all of those closest to him, Dietrich had been transferred to Buchenwald, and one can only inadequately imagine the pain of such loss of contact. Bonhoeffer is a hero of the Christian faith, and I feel that in many ways, the reading of this book ought to be some sort of non-optional Christian event.

On February 23, 1944 he wrote: "The important thing today is that we should be able to discern from the fragment of our life how the whole was arranged and planned, and what material it consists of. For really, there are some fragments that are only worth throwing into the dustbin (even a decent 'hell' is too good for them), and others whose importance lasts for centuries, because their completion can only be a matter for God, and so they are fragments that must be fragments... If our life is but the remotest reflection of such a fragment... we will not bemoan the fragmentariness of our life, but rather rejoice in it."