Not all of Flannery O'Connor's stories and novels involve some aspect of the grotesque, murderous plots, and unspeakable monstrosities, but a good amount of them do. In this chapter, Miss O'Connor, defines the Southern Gothic genre she helped create, housing such Southern notoriety as William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, and Carson McCullers, to name a few. It's a fantastic introduction for anyone interested in Southern Literature and the substantial provenance the grotesque has within it. Here's an exert from her essay "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction," Chapter II of "Mystery and Manners":
"Even though the writer who produces grotesque fiction may not consider his characters any more freakish than ordinary fallen man usually is, his audience is going to; and it is going to ask him–or more often, tell him–why he has chosen to bring such maimed souls alive. Thomas Mann has said that the grotesque is the true anti-bourgeois style, but I believe that in this country, the general reader has managed to connect the grotesque with the sentimental, for whenever he speaks of it favorably, he seems to associate it with the writer's compassion."
View the entire essay here:
Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction - Flannery O'Connor
Quite nice. Sorry to bump such an old post, but I liked the section cited above and felt I should comment. The idea that the audience may be the one to decide what is grotesque is interesting. Seeing the grotesque in what perhaps was not intended to be grotesque says more about the reader than the author, and is honestly more interesting, I say.
ReplyDeleteStill, grotesque can be a much more fluid term than most realize. I'm been writing for years what I call domestic grotesque fiction, which, as the term implies deals with the familial aspects of the grotesque, and while I'd cite O'Connor as an influence, I'm not sure we write the same type of books.