Last year, while digging deep into serial killers in fiction, one of my writing friends introduced me to Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard To Find.” The story was absolutely brilliant. O’Connor felt like my favorite parts of Jackson and Hemingway. Not just in the plot, but in the language and pacing of each paragraph. It had that Hemingway aspect of “know how complex it is and write it simply.” I was in love.
The more I write, the further I feel like I get from this basic principle that guided my writing in the early days. Part of it is my foray into speculative fiction. I realize there are plenty of books and stories out there that fall under the umbrella of literary-speculative. Some even said Casual borders on that. But I finished the bulk of Casual five years ago, and since then my writing has gotten a lot more plot focused. I’ve lost my connection with language and telling things simply. Or maybe it’s just the New Year and I have that “ah! I need to do something!” feeling growing in me. Whatever the reason, I think I need to go back to the older stories I’ve known and loved and remember why they felt so powerful to me. Additionally, I need to find today’s writers who write like this. I know I’ve read some of them over the years, but I’ve stopped reading shorts this past year. It’s time to bring back the curios.
My first focus is Flannery O’Connor’s collection of shorts A Good Man Is Hard To Find. It starts with the titular story, which I already looked at in my serial killer series. The second story was “The River”.
I didn’t expect it to be as good as A Good Man. Every author has to have some hits and misses, right? But this one was even better. The River tells the story of a young boy, Henry, whose father hires a babysitter to take care of him because his mother “is ill.” The babysitter is a revivalist Christian who informs the father she will take the son to a faith-healer’s sermon in the river.
A Bit On Flannery’s Faith
Check out this article on Flannery’s faith and writing. I’ll admit, it goes a bit over my head as far as the different branches of Christianity are concerned. But the takeaway is that Flannery O’Connor was a devout Catholic. How devout? As an author, she sometimes had to read books that were on the Church’s Index of Forbidden Books. She made sure to always seek priestly dispensation before doing so. Her stories featured the beliefs and structure of the Catholic faith such as grace, redemption, the fall, sin, and judgement. But her characters were usually a combination of atheists and/or Protestants. This is most likely more of a cultural thing than a faith-driven decision. O’Connor lived in the American South, surrounded by Protestants. These were the people she knew and the situations she saw. Additionally, her one Catholic story was not nearly as well-received as her stories that featured Pentecostal characters.
A Bit On My Faith
I grew up Pentecostal. Weirdly, when I was in first grade, my friend took me to Vacation Bible School. I was so in love with the experience that I became a Christian and started begging my parents to take me to church. I can’t remember what I liked about VBS. Was it the teachings? Or just some positive adult attention? I suppose that’s not important. What is important is that my parents also converted. My father stopped drinking alcohol and became a devout Christian, reading the Bible, attending church, and joining the worship team as a guitarist. We moved a lot, but we generally sought either Four Square or Rhema Bible Churches. These were the speaking-in-tongues and falling down when anointed by the Holy Spirit type of churches. Because of my father’s involvement with the worship team, we would usually become friends with the core worshipers, including the pastor. We spent a lot of our free/social time with church friends.
At my peak, I was going to church 5-6 days a week with an additional night of Pioneer Girls at my best friend’s larger church. At twelve, most of my identity revolved around my life at church, and I dreamed of going to Rhema Bible College.
When we moved to Arizona, we were less involved in the church. Around that time, several events came together that made me question my faith. I won’t go into detail here and now, but I left the church without much resistance from my parents when I was a junior in high school. By then, each of my brothers had left and my parents were also going less regularly. To this day, my parents remain faithful Pentecostal believers, while I am spiritual but not Christian.
Why is that little jaunt down memory lane important to my reading? I’ll just say that reading “The River” brought up several psychological wounds I didn’t expect… and knowing what I know of Flannery’s subject matter, continuing her book, I better buckle in and prepare for more.
To the Story
Returning to the story, we’ve got little Henry taken home by Mrs. Connin. She’s more or less a sweet lady (if a little unaware of the kids around her). Henry, on the other hand, seems to be a little jerk. He lies and tells her his name is Bevel (the same name as the preacher Mrs. Connin plans to take him to see) and later steals her book that has been passed down in her family for generations.
Mrs. Connin has two sons and a daughter, and the two sons immediately tease Henry, taking him to a pigpen where they plan to throw him in. There’s a scene in the story where Henry dreads going to the pigpen. He was recently beaten up at a park, and that beating was not so bad because he hadn’t known it was about to happen. But this one is much worse because he’s forced to walk towards it, knowing what to expect. This scene was so poignant for me. Henry is a small kid. Three or maybe four? Small enough to fall asleep in his babysitter’s lap on the trolley. He should be innocent, but even at such a young age, the world is introducing him to pain and hardship. He’s learning fear and survival.
He was coming very slowly, deliberately bumping his feet together as if he had trouble walking. Once he had been beaten up in the park by some strange boys when his sitter forgot him, but he hadn’t known anything was going to happen that time until it was over. He began to smell a strong odor of garbage and to hear the noises of a wild animal. He stopped a few feet from the pen and waited, pale but dogged.
The River, Flannery O’Connor
This simple paragraph is heartbreaking enough, but later we learn about his home life. His parents party every night, getting drunk with their friends and paying no attention to him. In the morning, he’s left to fend for himself — scrounging the kitchen for food. There’s more bad behavior, such as dumping the ashes deliberately on the carpet or tearing the pages of his books, but these are clearly cries for attention.
While Henry is at the river, the travelling preacher who “isn’t there to heal anyone”, baptises him. The child doesn’t understand what’s happening, but he understands the action is supposed to make him count. Only when he returns home, he’s still invisible to his parents. They take the book he stole and ignore him except to ask what he told the other adults about his mother’s hangover. He goes back down to the river and decides that he’ll look for the salvation the preacher promised on his own. He goes out further and further until the current takes him away.
And. Scene.
O’Connor nails her endings, for sure.
It’s a small story, but it has so much packed into it. The characters are vibrant and memorable. They feel like whole people. Every scene is impactful. And the language is simple but powerful. THIS is how I want to write.
When the boy is floating away at the end, I felt my spiritual life come rushing back. This is me surrendering. This is me drowning. This is fear and hope rolled into one. This is the current of faith.
