Think about it for a moment: have you ever seen them together?
Joyce Carol Oates is likely the perfect reviewer for Brad Gooch's new Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor. She is in the first place a brilliant essayist and a subtle interpreter of texts; and in the second place, she is as fascinated (or obsessed) with violence in her own writing as O'Connor was. Oates is the author of one of the best essays ever written on boxing; she wrote a spectacular piece, years ago, on James Dickey. O'Connor is surely a hero of hers, for any number of reasons.
Oates's essay-review in The New York Review of Books will reward any reader interested in O'Connor, or, well, most anything.
.
1 comments:
A nice piece, idiosyncratic, which a good reader of O'Connor should be. The religion thing doesn't seem to set as well in her reading. But I love to be reminded of things like "The School of Southern Degeneracy," which may make the spring a return to Ms. Flannery and all her works. An now segueing from France during the occupation over to Wittgensteins. Too much fiction in the ms pile to attract me elsewhere, alas.
Post a Comment