Two Books I Spent My Summer Reading

The Violent Bear It Away was one of only two novels published by Flannery O'Connor in her lifetime. The other, Wiseblood, is perhaps more widely read, but I came to The Violent by way of her short story "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," which we read in the book club I attend. When our conversation turned to unlikeable characters, I mused about whether an effective book-length narrative could be sustained using such odious personalities. The club facilitator responded, "That's so interesting, Byron, because O'Connor actually wrote a short story that became a sort of early version of a novel she published many years later."

We soon read both that story (entitled "The Lame Shall Enter First") and the novel that grew out of it. Three O'Connor works in three months—this was how I had my first experience with her, an author I avoided for such a long time, assuming that her being a Southern woman writing before the Civil Rights Era had to mean she was a prim, mannerly beldam who wrote about sippin' mint juleps on the veranda while Aunt Tillie shelled peas. Boring, in other words. But boring she was not.

"Is that the one about the woman with the prosthetic leg?" one friend asked. "That was brutal." Anyone who's ever read O'Connor's fiction seems to have the same opinion, that she wrote incendiary prose about people whose very souls flamed, often violently. "Brutal" is certainly not the worst word you could use.

In The Violent Bear It Away, two men vie over the soul of their teenage relative who wants no truck with either of them but finds his future inextricably bound up with that of his mentally disabled cousin, a boy whose soul he feels compelled to save by bringing him to God. Things, it's safe to say, do not go according to plan for anyone involved. The most interesting thing here is that everything that happens here happens behind, between, and beneath what happens here.

Lacking in anything resembling plot or characterization is David Markson's The Last Novel, the other book I read, which felt like a major change of pace after all that Southern Gothic psychodrama. Regular readers of this blog might remember, a few months ago, when I mentioned another couple of Markson books, This Is Not a Novel and Vanishing Point. The Last Novel is a third title cast in the same mold—his final literary breath before dying, back in 2003.

The Last Novel has the same textual qualities as its predecessors. It's a work of literary collage, pieced together from the author's note cards. As such, it offers scads of fascinating tidbits.

Chekhov died in Germany, and when his casket arrived in Moscow, by freight car, the crate containing it was labeled, "Oysters."

Voltaire wrote that the first priest was the first rogue to cross paths with the first fool.

William Carlos Williams called Emily Dickinson "a real good guy."

And so on.

I don't know how much novel there was to be found here, or in either of the other Markson books I've read, but at least The Last Novel kept me engaged, compelling me along with its tireless references and unexpected humor.

Next season, I anticipate turning to Buddhist literature and rereading a specific Camus novel. Because intention guides me. Because I prize meaning. Because I'm a guy who knows how to have a good time.