Declare Books Supposing 3 by Flannery O'Connor: The Violent Bear It Away / Everything That Rises Must Converge / Wise Blood
Original Title: | Three by Flannery O'Connor |
Edition Language: | English |
Flannery O'Connor
Paperback | Pages: 496 pages Rating: 4.31 | 1773 Users | 97 Reviews
Narrative During Books 3 by Flannery O'Connor: The Violent Bear It Away / Everything That Rises Must Converge / Wise Blood
Flannery O'Connor is a diminutive, sprite-like woman who writes some of the most powerful fiction (of its type) that I have ever read. If you like Faulkner, you will most likely enjoy O'Connor's work as well. It is a kind of theater of the macabre, southern, holy, and surreal all at once. The characters arrive in the story as if in a fever dream, emerging from some faint mist that she has shrouded them in so that they may pop out at just the right moment; they take on their lives fully-formed, portraying real people with extraordinary personal problems embedded deep in their psyche. O'Connor's action takes place deep in the minds and beliefs of her characters, with their thoughts boiling out into the area around them to wreck havoc. I have seen stills from a movie created about Wise Blood; the characters look like they fell out of a Magritte painting, which I think is an apt tone to give to them. There isn't much action in the two main novels in this collection (at least not in the traditional sense of action), but the work still draws you in nonetheless. With that in mind, I believe that O'Connor should be read for one of two reasons (though you can get a casual reading pleasure from them both as well): 1) To study, digest, and think about. Her work is incredibly complicated, with symbolic set pieces strewn throughout. Quite frankly, when I finished a recent reread of Wise Blood, I felt like I needed to sit and talk about it for an hour with other readers just to scratch the surface of the meaning. The same could be said of The Violent Bear it Away--each of these two novels captures your (can I call it this?) critical-thinking attention and will not let it go. 2) As a writer. Just as Faulkner, Joyce, and Woolf should be read by serious writers in order to explore both their style and the ways in which they bend and break the rules of language, so too should O'Connor be studied for the ways in which she extrapolates character in the simplest of beliefs. O'Connor has a way of stretching these beliefs into monstrous proportions, pulling them like taffy to find all the little nuances that lie within. As a writer, I found it fascinating that she could pull and pull on a character like that, finding new truths hiding deep within that she would then share with the reader. Though in The Violent Bear it Away it gets a bit tiresome at in the first 30 pages, the rest of the two main novels in this collection are to be studied and admired for their scope. The Signet edition of O'Connor's work is a steal. For less than ten dollars (when I bought it) you can get two of her novels, plus a collection of short stories.Mention Epithetical Books 3 by Flannery O'Connor: The Violent Bear It Away / Everything That Rises Must Converge / Wise Blood
Title | : | 3 by Flannery O'Connor: The Violent Bear It Away / Everything That Rises Must Converge / Wise Blood |
Author | : | Flannery O'Connor |
Book Format | : | Paperback |
Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
Pages | : | Pages: 496 pages |
Published | : | August 21st 1986 by Signet Classics (first published 1962) |
Categories | : | Fiction. Classics. Short Stories. Literature. American. Southern. Novels. Literary Fiction |
Rating Epithetical Books 3 by Flannery O'Connor: The Violent Bear It Away / Everything That Rises Must Converge / Wise Blood
Ratings: 4.31 From 1773 Users | 97 ReviewsWrite-Up Epithetical Books 3 by Flannery O'Connor: The Violent Bear It Away / Everything That Rises Must Converge / Wise Blood
Flannery OConnors writing feels like it was originally written in Russian but translated into English by Constance Garnett. Quick-notes: Wiseblood: A comic novel that is simultaneously surreal and terrifying. There are scenes and images in here that will never leave me. You have to keep telling yourself this is a parody of a certain type of blind religious conviction. At least I think it is. The Violent Bear it Away: My favorite piece out of the three. Again, disturbing religious extremism. What2/5 StarsThis is going to be an extremely short "review," only because this was read in class, and I didn't enjoy it. What I did, however, appreciate was O'Connor's descriptive writing and well-rounded story-lines. But nothing else was phenomenal, and frankly, it was quite boring to read through.Not my type of literature.
Why Do The Heathen Rage? By Flannery OConnorTilman had had his stroke in the state capitalWow! Action and tragedy from the very start.To laugh at itit is a very short storyonly some 20 (?) pages long, so we need to get going to finish early.Like the other Flannery OConnor stories, this one is an example of superb writing, creative descriptions of people, nature, the weather and situations. It has a powerful message, shocking statements and moral conclusionsCome to think of it, this is Perfect
I suppose it's no longer possible to quote the most famous line from "Wise Blood" here in public. Certain forms of reticence are easy to understand and sympathize with, but not altogether positive in their effects. "Jesus is a trick on n-words" doesn't quite cut it. I suppose we could propose replacing "kyke" with "the k-word" in Gatsby, but that sounds like a tired dodge to avoid dealing with the issue. You can't take the word out of Hazel Mott's mouth any more than you can out of Huck Finn's.
Favorite quotes:His grandfather had been a circuit preacher, a waspish old man who had ridden over three counties with Jeasus hidden in his head like a stinger WB9the old mans words had been dropping one by one into him and now, silent, hidden in his bloodstream, were moving secretly toward some goal of their own VBA 159He proceeded about the Lords business like an experiences crook VBA 160The schoolteacher spoke slowly, picking his words as if he were looking for the steadiest stones to step on
Around the Year Reading Challenge #10: A book by an author you should have read by nowSo, Flannery O'Connor always seems to come up in conversations about spiritual writing, and I've heard her work referred to as the "epitome" of Catholic writing. Every time she comes up, I'd remember this book on my shelf and think, "I should have read that by now!" (along with about 1,000 other books).Well, I finally did it! And I did it big. Since my only O'Connor included three books in one volume, I read
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