First Post

For the first piece of literature I include I have to start with the blog’s name sake, Flannery O’Connor’s A good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories. I like, most other AP lit students, learned about the power of the short story from the title short story its self. But it was less the art of short stories I feel in love with, and instead, it was what really started my love affaire with the southern Gothic Style. The brutal, blunt artistry with with O’Connor explores human nature and higher beings fascinates me and was the perfect stepping stone into the heavier longer Southern Gothic works of Faulkner and Morrison. Writing and artistry aside, Flannery O’Connor is a Bad Ass Southern Woman, so I have to read her work.

Flannery O’Connor’s work fully embodies this feeling of southern for me: the complexities, the sorrow, the beauty, the wit, and the fun. Of course you should read the title short story, A Good Man is Hard to Find. But Good Country People and The Displaced Person are also extrinsic stories in the collection that I feel continue this southern gothic embodiment.

Another Classic, Another Bad Ass Southern Woman, Another Node to Souther Gothic or Noir.

Sally Mann has many iconic classic photographs. But it is this well know, often misunderstood, photograph that embodies this feeling of southernness and its complexities best.

This is not the place for a full artistic review, rather to guide you toward a specific feeling of the south.