Monday, June 30, 2014

Grace and messes …

… The Millions : Mystery and Manners: On Teaching Flannery O’Connor. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Because her religion so profoundly formed her cultural and artistic senses, O’Connor is difficult for most students. In fact, many of the essential writers my students find the most difficult are Catholics: Thomas PynchonErnest HemingwayCormac McCarthyDon DeLilloJames Joyce, and Toni Morrison. This is not to claim that their Catholicism makes them innately worthy of study — a claim that would be laughed away by O’Connor — rather, that their works speak to the diversity and complexity of sacramental visions of the world. In an educational sense, the extent of their religious practice is less important than the appropriation of Catholic iconography, symbolism, narrative tradition, and even the ritual language of Mass. Whether respectful or parodic of the Word, they all have been formed by it. O’Connor was the most publicly Catholic of the bunch, and, notwithstanding Pynchon’s eccentricities, the strangest on the page. Which, I think, makes her worth teaching.

2 comments:

  1. One problem with teaching Flannery O'Connor is that lack of biblical and Christian literacy among most of the student population in the 21st century American classroom. O'Connor, you see, is speaking a "language" that most students do not understand. So such students have a cultural deficiency that cannot be easily resolved. This is not likely to change soon in our secular progressive society.

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  2. I have elaborated at my blog, Beyond Eastrod.

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