Finished: The Complete Stories (Flannery O'Connor). A collection of short stories all about the South. Thirty-one short stories, over 500 pages, and well written, but many of them so much alike! Flannery O'Connor died in 1964, so though most of the stories weren't given a time frame, it seemed as if most of them took place between the late 1940's and the very early 1960's. It was so stark and alarming to hear characters in almost every one of the stories using the "n" word in their every day discussions. The word just flowed freely right out of their mouths. When I think of it, though, I shouldn't be so shocked. I was a youngster in the 1960's, growing up in Texas and spending so much time in small town Louisiana visiting my grandparents. That's sadly how so many people talked back then in the south. Not everyone did though. We would have had our hides tanned if we used that word! Anyway....I read so much genuine "southerness" in O'Connor's stories...however, I was really disturbed by her other dark, writing characteristic; almost all of her stories had very shocking scenes in them...most of them involving a sudden, unexpected death. Two of the most disturbing stories involved very young children (ages 5 or 6) committing suicide. The River just broke my heart, as did The Lame Shall Enter First.

The very first of the stories I read, A Good Man Is Hard To Find, had me going along all nice and humorous, or so I thought...and then, wham...a family with three small children is mercilessly slaughtered by an escaped convict, with the grandmother killed last. It was so shocking! I'd say my favorite of O'Connor's stories, Everything That Rises Must Converge, dealt with a bus ride after integration had been established, and how the different white patrons on the bus reacted and thought to themselves when black people got on at different stops. There was one white young man who tried to get his mother to see that times had changed. He even purposely chose to sit by a black man and imagined all the ways he may shock his mother into reality and acceptance. The story culminates with the mother unknowingly insulting a black woman who is on the bus with her young three year old son. The white mother tries to give the boy a penny as they all get off at the last stop. The white son sees his mother reaching for her purse and is trying to warn her and stop her and tell her not to do it, but she ignores him and does it anyway. The black mother is so outraged that she smacks the white lady to the ground and huffs off. The white mother is in turn baffled and shocked by the behavior, and her son is mortified at his mother...until he notices her limping and slurring and flailing to the ground. He screams for help as she dies on the sidewalk! Ugghhh! Most of the stories had depressing endings or premises just like that. Oh, and I can't forget the story, Good Country People, about a traveling bible salesman that decides to seduce the 30 year old, prosthetic leg wearing, daughter of a lady he's trying to sell bibles too. The daughter is charmed by him and goes up into the hayloft with him, where he proceeds to steal her prosthesis, put it in his sales bag with his fake bibles, and run away! He steals her fake leg. Huh.

I put Flannery O'Connor on my list because she was highly recommended by many other authors and almost made the top 100 list of my authors. I'm glad I've done my due diligence by reading her stories, but I can't say that she was my favorite of writers. I'd take a Harper Lee and a To Kill A Mockingbird as my literature to represent the south over O'Connor, any day, hands down.