“The Geranium,” “The Displaced Person,” and “Judgment Day”
I’m fond of saying I love Flannery O’Connor; I am also considering using some of her work in my dissertation. However, I must admit that I haven’t read enough. What I have read has been terrific: “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is still one of my favorite short stories.
What I was reminded of as I read these three O’Connor stories yesterday was the intricate craftsmanship in an O’Connor story. I think it was Hemingway who said something to the extent of, “In a good story, 90% isn’t stated.” Well, if this is the real judge of good short story writing, then Flannery O’Connor is one of the best. Almost every one of her lines says more than it says – or, perhaps, they all do more than they simply say.
If you’ve never read her before, be prepared to meet spiteful, hypocritical characters that are hard to like; be prepared to be shocked by the bursts of violence. Don’t expect to be coddled; don't expect to find stories with trite, happy endings. Don’t expect to be comforted – well, at least not in the normal sense. In worlds of egotistical and myopic characters, worlds of bitter labor and little reward, the hand and grace of God (mind you, not in any overt or saintly way) is at work – and this should be comforting.
It must stated off the bat that there is not too much biography in this biography. Some of this is the fact that we don't know a whole lot about St. Thomas; some a result of Chesterton’s rambling structure, using points about St. Thomas as springboards to criticize of Chesterton's contemporary thinkers or personal ideas he saw as important – but they are wonderful ramblings: full of life and wit and lightheartedness and seriousness: in a word, a vibrant orthodoxy.
You get a flavor of Thomas’ philosophy from the book, but the taste, while succinct, is also thorough. In explaining some of the foundation of Aquinas’ philosophy, Chesterton states:
“To this question, ‘Is there anything?’ St. Thomas begins by answering, ‘Yes’; if he began by answering, ‘No’, it would not be the beginning, but the end. That is what some of us call common sense. Either there is no philosophy, no philosophers, no thinkers, no thought, no anything; or else there is a real bridge between the mind and reality.”
Particularly interesting to me was a view into Aquinas’ use of Aristotle to combat narrow Augustinian pessimism or Manichaeism: the idea that the natural world is corrupt and evil, and only the spiritual is positively good. Using Aristotle’s anti-dualism (the soul is not separate from the body as in Plato, but instead the soul is the form of the body), St. Thomas reaffirms the ancient Catholic truth that all creation is good. The physical and natural is real and holy and dignified, even if affected by the Fall: “Any extreme of Catholic asceticism is a wise, or unwise, precaution against the evil of the Fall; it is never a doubt about the good of the Creation.”
I fully recommend this book for anyone with an interest in Aquinas or philosophy, or Catholic thought. For me, more than inspiring me to go back and relook at Aquinas (which I should do) this book have reminded me to get back into the books and ideas and words of the genius of Gilbert Keith.
