flannery

Flannery O'Conner, who said, "I doubtless hate pious language worse than you because I believe the reality it hides." (I took the drawing from a woodcut by Barry Moser).

She has been on my mind because a new biography is being reviewed everywhere at the moment. I like this review. She wrote about an upside down world, which is this world. I find it hard to spend time there (and have not for a long while) but am helped by the poking and prodding that happens when I think about her stories - especially the one (I think it is at the end of A Good Man is Hard to Find) about the the one that ends with a woman witnessing a long procession of people she has despised ascending to heaven, herself at the end.

David Dark likes her a lot. I just finished his book, The Gospel According to America. I thought it would be a challenge to America. It is, but it has also challenged me a lot. I am trying to face up to that now.

Now on to Surprised by Hope.