Where the Woods Gape Like a Dark Open Mouth and Pretense Falls Away “She would of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.” – The Misfit 🎧 Listen to Audio Here Historical and Literary Context A Good Man Is Hard to Find was first published in 1953 in the collection of the same name. O’Connor wrote it during the post-World War II era and the early Cold War period, a time of significant social change in America, and in the...
“I suddenly felt the longing for a sign, if only of courtesy, if only for the sake of the woman I loved, who knelt in front of me, praying, I knew, for a sign. It seemed so small a thing that was asked, the bare acknowledgment of a present, a nod in the crowd.” ~ Brideshead Revisited 🎧 Listen to audio here Understanding Charles Ryder’s Conversion in Brideshead Revisited When we read a great novel and later discuss it in class, we might leave with a sense of deep confusion...
“Behind the newspaper Julian was withdrawing into the inner compartment of his mind where he spent most of his time. This was a kind of mental bubble in which he established himself when he could not bear to be a part of what was going on around him. From it he could see out and judge but in it he was safe from any kind of penetration from without. It was the only place where he felt free of the general idiocy of his fellows. His mother had never entered it but from it he could see her with...
“Everywhere I go, I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them.” ~ From a letter O’Connor wrote to her friend “A” (Betty Hester) dated February 8, 1958, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor, edited by Sally Fitzgerald. 🐦⬛ Before class, please invest in a careful read of the introduction in The Complete Stories. At the end of the post, I’ll include video links for a...
🎧 Audio Recording Here Finding Balance Between Modern Brevity & Classical Richness Keep it short The current push for brevity, what we might call the “Twitter-ization” of language, seems at odds with Waugh’s luxuriant descriptions and careful metaphoric constructions. Consider his famous “Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint” – a metaphor that doesn’t just describe but evokes an entire aesthetic and emotional world in a way that...
