My sister would say that Ms Dickenson has already garnered more than enough exposure in my blog. So we turn now, instead of to a Protestant poet from New England, to a Southern Catholic writer. That's right, Flannery O'Conner. I've read enough of her short stories to appreciate her brilliance, but still find her enigmatic. I once read that it's impossibile to dissect her short stories to find the meaning; the meaning is in the whole. And as a Christian, she invariably includes a moment of grace in her plots. Granted, this moment of grace may be lost on the reader who's swept away in her sea of absurdity, but it's there.
In his book Everyday Apocalypse: The Sacred Revealed in Radiohead, The Simpsons, and Other Pop Culture Icons, David Dark writes, "Whenever someone speaks favorably of Flannery O'Conner, I want to hold their face in my hands and look deep into their eyes to see if I can't detect some maniacally enlightened clarity of vision. If you're not against her, you're for her. And if you're really for her, I can't help but think that you've been, to adapt a phrase Faulkner applied to Joyce, electrocuted by divine fire..."
So I now turn back to Flannery O'Conner as a break from the final chapters of A Brief History of Time. Signing off for tonight...
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