Flannery O’Connor and judgement

Lately, as a break between Greek and Roman literatures, I’ve been reading Flannery O’Connor. Ain’t she just great? When I was reading A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories, I thought she must be the greatest writer of bigotry. As I recently read a few stories in Everything That Rises Must Converge, I would add that she must also be the greatest writer of self-righteousness: both “The Comforts of Home” and “The Lame Shall Enter First” depict a parent bringing a delinquent into their homes to save them; the mother in “The Comforts of Home” is the “bleeding heart” progressive type, who tries to help others out of naïve compassion and listens to no reason and ends up causing harm; the father in “The Lame Shall Enter First” feels virtuous and feels good about himself for rescuing a troubled adolescent, whilst neglecting his own son. Whereas many great writers—especially Tolstoy, Chekhov, and George Eliot—write with compassion and get you to understand different points of view and different kinds of people, Flannery O’Connor doesn’t. She judges. She condemns. She’s sharp, unsentimental, merciless. You can feel her contempt for all the characters as she cuts them open and studies them.

The interesting thing though is that when Flannery O’Connor writes about bigotry and racism, such as in “Revelation”, I can see that there’s some of her in Mrs Turpin, that she’s wrestling with her own bigotry, that she’s judging and condemning herself. It is foolish to dismiss her as racist and not worth reading—like that New Yorker piece from 2020—when she knew her own bigotry. 

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My list of the greatest short story writers would always have Flannery O’Connor. There’s something cold, harsh, intense about her—she is terrifying—but there’s also something striking and compelling. The contrast between her and Chekhov, my favourite short story writer of all, is fascinating: he’s warm, she’s cold; and she makes one feel deeply uncomfortable. 

I think the best stories in the first collection are “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”, “The River”, “The Artificial Nigger”, “Good Country People”, and “The Displaced Person”. 

The best stories in the second collection are “Everything that Rises Must Converge”, “A View of the Woods”, “The Comforts of Home”, and “The Lame Shall Enter First” (but then I have two stories left to read).