Flannery O'Connor's Gentleman Callers - Coronavirus Blues (V)

A ring of the doorbell at the moment, unexpected or otherwise, doesn't fail to draw out a prickle of fear. You answer cautiously and are half-relieved if it's the shopping or a parcel. There's still that lingering doubt about just how many infected hands these boxes or that bread or those bottles have passed through, but at least it's not some maniacal chancer who is relishing the opportunity to get a little too close. Which had me casting my mind back to one of the greatest short stories ever written, Flannery O'Connor's 'Good Country People'.

Looking back through the posts I've written since the arrival of the Coronavirus, I'm clearly the type of person who is drawn to the macabre in a time of crisis. It's no surprise then that I thought it the perfect moment to treat myself to a rerun of this fantastic shard of Southern Gothic.

What I love most about 'Good Country People' [spoilers inbound] is how it skewers both banal cliche and vacuous erudition in equal measures. O'Connor's story of a pervert masquerading as a Bible salesman who convinces a lonely one-legged woman to go on a picnic with him, and then steals away with her prosthetic leg is the twist in the tale, but it is O'Connor's groundwork and setup - as in many of her best stories - that is its real strength. 

A Good Man Is Hard to Find, which includes 'Good Country People'

Hulga (originally called Joy but she changed it in a fit of rebellion) is a nihilistic atheist who at the age of ten lost her leg in a hunting accident. She lives with her disappointed mother Mrs Hopewell who converses through trite, meaningless platitudes. Here's one of Mrs Hopewell's conversations with her tenant Mrs Freeman:

     When Mrs. Hopewell said to Mrs. Freeman that life was like that, Mrs. Freeman would say, "I always said so myself."  Nothing had been arrived at by anyone that had not first been arrived at by her. She was quicker than Mr. Freeman. When Mrs. Hopewell said to her after they had been on the place for a while, "You know, you're the wheel behind the wheel," and winked, Mrs. Freeman had said, "I know it. I've always been quick. It's some that are quicker than others." 
      "Everybody is different," Mrs. Hopewell said. 
      "Yes, most people is," Mrs. Freeman said. 
      "It takes all kinds to make the world." 
      "I always said it did myself." 

Hulga sneers at this, but equally her own PhD in Philosophy will be just as inadequate in the dealings that take place in O'Connor's strange, seedy and violent universe.

It seemed to Mrs. Hopewell that every year she grew less like other people and more like herself - bloated, rude, and squint-eyed. And she said such strange things! To her own mother she had said - without warning, without excuse, standing up in the middle of a meal with her face purple and her mouth half full - "Woman! Do you ever look inside? Do you ever look inside and see what you are not? God!" she had cried sinking down again and staring at her plate, "Malebranche was right: we are not our own light. We are not our own light!" Mrs. Hopewell had no idea to this day what brought that on. She had only made the remark, hoping Joy would take it in, that a smile never hurt anyone. The girl had taken the Ph.D. in philosophy and this left Mrs. Hopewell at a complete loss. You could say, "My daughter is a nurse," or "My daughter is a school teacher," or even, "My daughter is a chemical engineer." You could not say, "My daughter is a philosopher." 
 
I don't think Flannery O'Connor gets enough credit for just how funny she is. There's something hilariously Tennessee Williams about that second quotation - two people not even making the effort to try to understand each other, trapped by convention and circumstance in the same house, and one of them spouting out lofty aphorisms with a mouth full of grub. And when the devil comes to call in the guise of a Bible salesman both are taken in and, for very different reasons, assume that he is 'the salt of the earth' or, in the words of the story's title 'good country people'.

Flannery O'Connor - she suffered from Lupus and loved peacocks

But to return to that ending, even when you are expecting it, it still shocks. Imagine the kind of reaction it would have received in the 1950s. Indeed, one woman wrote to O'Connor and informed her that her book 'left a bad taste in my mouth'. O'Connor's reply is priceless: "You weren't supposed to eat it!"  Do keep answering those doorbells carefully, and do give Flannery O'Connor a go if you're looking for something sensational to read.