Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion of Walker Percy

[Jim Forest <jhforest AT gmail.com>]

The New Yorker Online Only

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/09/the-writers-voice.html#ixzz1Y22Xg6Nl

September 15, 2011 / The Book Bench

The Writer’s Voice

Posted by Mark O'Connell

A few months ago, I went through a major Flannery O’Connor phase. I read her novels for the first time, and re-read the short stories, none of which I had looked at in years. In the middle of this surge of renewed enthusiasm for her work, I stumbled across this fantastic 1959 recording of O’Connor reading “A Good Man is Hard to Find” at Vanderbilt University.

http://manasto.tumblr.com/post/107920720/a-good-man-is-hard-to-find-by-flannery-oconnor

The most striking thing about it is the way in which O’Connor’s bone-dry Georgia drawl seems not merely to suit her writing perfectly, but also somehow to embody it. There’s a kind of bleak drollery inbuilt in her speech that seems to me to be the very voice of her fiction. The most remarkable thing about listening to this recording, though, was not getting to hear O’Connor herself talk, but rather the fact that when I when I went back to read her work, I would hear this voice echoing along in my head as I read the printed words. It brought a phantasmal new dimension to my experience of her writing.

It could simply be that I’m losing my mind (always a possibility), but I suspect that this might not be an uncommon phenomenon....

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Jim & Nancy Forest
Kanisstraat 5 / 1811 GJ Alkmaar / The Netherlands

Three new books:

All is Grace

my revised and expanded biography of Dorothy Day:

http://www.jimandnancyforest.com/2006/03/24/all-is-grace/

Saint George & the Dragon

a children's book:
http://www.jimandnancyforest.com/2011/04/04/saint-george-and-the-dragon/

For the Peace From Above

a resource book on war, peace and nationalism:

http://www.jimandnancyforest.com/2011/09/08/for-the-peace-from-above-an-orthodox-resource-book-on-war-peace-and-nationalism/

Photo journal of a long weekend in Gent:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/sets/72157627495002848/with/6070960058/

Jim & Nancy web site: www.jimandnancyforest.com
Jim's books: http://www.jimandnancyforest.com/books/
Photo collections: www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/collections/
In Communion site: www.incommunion.org
Forest-Flier Editorial Services: www.forestflier.com
On Pilgrimage blog: http://jimandnancyonpilgrimage.blogspot.com/
A Tale of Two Kidneys blog: http://ataleof2kidneys.blogspot.com/

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