Episode 3: A Good Man is Hard to Find

By

This episode discusses Flannery O'Connor's story "A Good Man is Hard to Find" in the context of unlikable characters and how they function in fiction.

Sacred cheese of life!

emmaburns.org

 


 


Comments

Post a Comment

Please leave a comment! I'd love to hear from you.

Popular posts from this blog

When is a story not a story?

By
I'm reading Maggie Stiefvater's book Shiver, about a girl who's in love with a werewolf. I think she might be one herself, not sure. I just started it. It's one of those YA books where nothing really happens. I find that un-compelling even though it's a perfectly fine book. This seems to be more common with SF-ish ones. Why do you think that is? Sometimes people fall in love with worldbuilding and utterly forget that they have to TELL A DANG STORY. Something gripping that makes me want to turn the pages, sheesh. There are enough clues that I'm certain what's going to happen. Even if I'm wrong, it's not a state of being that makes me carry the book around the house and read ahead breathlessly. And I'm home sick today. See.  Who is it, Niven? I think Niven. The one who wrote dozens of stacks of novels that are all worldbuilding and no story. Worse is when someone is working out ideas about something and using characters to discuss it. Oh just k...
Read more

46 We Have Always Lived in the Castle

By
Image
Shirley Jackson’s novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle raises questions like: what if my little sister was a murderous psychopath? And: how burned down does a house have to be before we’ll move out? And: Why do the villagers hate our family so much? The last question is because of the first one, really. Merricat poisoned most of her family and killed them. It’s not even really clear why. Because she got sent to bed without any supper? What had she done? None of that matters because Merricat is the narrator so we see what she sees. She hates and fears the villagers because they hate and fear her. She loves Constance, her older sister, who doesn’t like sugar on blackberries and so did not get poisoned, and Uncle Julian, who only got poisoned a little, so is stuck in a wheelchair with his mind wandering. It’s Cousin Charles she hates the most. He comes sniffing around after the family money and after Constance. Merricat wrecks his room, and when he sends her to bed without any supper...
Read more

45 I Capture the Castle

By
Image
This 1949 novel is one of the best ever. Do yourself a favor and read it before I talk about it. It seems criminal that I'm not writing a book about a giant unwieldy house while reading this. How could it be? I adore this book, then I got all mad at the ending, then when I went over it again, I had misread it—the ending is exactly right. Hurray! Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle is overtly a retelling of Pride and Prejudice except instead of being about either of those things, it’s about genteel poverty and what it’s okay to do to get out of it. The poverty is no joke in this book. Get ready to appreciate your fridge and pantry, as well as electricity and hot and cold running water. And that closet full of clothes. The characters deal with it, but aren’t about that, really, any more than the Bennets are about being on the edge of homelessness at any moment, if anything happens to Mr. Bennet. It’s huge and central to their lives, but they are about so much more. Cassandra is...
Read more