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Bud Grossmann’s
Words of the Week
for the Week of
April 15, 2007
Previously unpublished fiction.
© 2007 by Bud Grossmann.
All Rights Reserved.
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Paperback, 2007
© 2007 by Bud Grossmann
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IN PRAISE OF FLANNERY O’CONNOR
From: David C. Fischer <d—@juno.com>
To: "Jacqueline Carlin" <j—@centurytel.net>
Date: Tue, 10 Apr 2007 12:23:34 -0500
Subject: Allowed to write; called to prophesy.
Jackie, sometime soon, I hope, I will have finished the short, dense F. O'Connor novel I am reading, The Violent Bear It Away, and will have only one more piece to read, the one I skipped to save for you, as I worked my way through this fragile, yellowed, three-book paperback. What will then remain is the short story I have designated as Probably My Favorite Short Story of All Time, If I Had to Name My Favorite Short Story, and I hope to read it aloud to you, in person, rather than on the phone, so I can watch to see if Flannery O'Connor and I are losing your attention (or, quite possibly with this particular story, offending you) anywhere along the way. I am nervous about the prospect of reading to you and of the possibility that I myself won't like the story as much as I remember liking it when I read it years ago, aloud to my then young teenaged daughter.
The title of The Violent Bear It Away comes from Matthew 11:12, apparently a version other than the King James (which reads "...and the violent take it by force"). Do Catholics have a widely beloved English translation of Scripture? As I began to read the dark, dark novel, I prepared myself to dislike it, but braced myself to complete it. I think I'm halfway through, and I have come to love it (oh, I'm sorry, Jack, I so carelessly, lazily use the word love). I marvel at how O'C., a female author not yet thirty at the time she wrote it, so convincingly and completely portrayed the thoughts and emotions of an old man, his perhaps 30-something nephew, and the nephew's nephew, a fourteen-year-old with an old-man view of life. I marvel at her courage to make pronouncements of theological faith, doubt, and disbelief (non-belief?).
On Terry Gross last night, which I listened to with half an ear, the program murmuring in my living room while I, in my office, was setting down word after word for you on my computer screen, a Hollywood actor-and-screenwriter (someone who wrote two Jack Black scripts) remarked that he could give up acting if he were forced to, but he would wither and die if he weren't allowed to write. I'm not sure I'm quoting him accurately, but that's okay. I'm telling you what he said even if he didn't say it only because that's how *I* feel, too. Except of course I don't act, so no one will have to go to the trouble of staying away from movies or plays in which I wasn't permitted to appear.
You know what I am about to say: Thank you, Jackie, for letting me write. Letting me write, and letting me — your —, is plenty enough repayment for an occasional — for the office. I've probably read something that F. O'C. said, on what moved her to pound away, long and painful hours of the day, on her little Remington. I don't recall it, but, whatever her motivation, I am glad she pounded. I myself need someone to read what I have to say. A seemingly appreciative audience of one will sometimes do, and for the moment, that, Mrs. Carlin, is you.
DCF
♦
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