Flannery O'Connor
1965
Around 270 pages
I'm not going to lie to you, this is a tough time for us. We've got Pynchon on the horizon, and I believe Georges Perec is cooking up something weird down the pipeline. While ole Flann is not as bad as either of those bullies (yes, they bully me with their prose), her Southern Catholic stories are not my taste.
We get nine short stories here, and like many short story collections, it's a mixed bag. This was written near the end of Flannery's battle with lupus, so she's even more religious than usual. The stories deal with themes of spiritualism and race.
All the characters are so over the top, that I have a hard time connecting to them. If anybody expresses religious ambivalence, you know they are going to be struck down in some way. Extremists on either side usually eat it in her stories, in very dramatic ways. "The Enduring Chill" made me roll my eyes the hardest.
Not my thing.
RATING: **---
Interesting Facts:
The title "Everything That Rises Must Converge" refers to a work by the French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin titled the "Omega Point."
UP NEXT: God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut
1 comment:
It takes a lot of skill to write and assemble a set of short stories successfully. This book isn't successful.
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