Tarfunk Tuesday

Balderdash time- come up with a definition of “Tarfunk”

It’s actually just how Flannery signed the very last letter– really a quick note– six days before she died. A lot of her letters to her friend Maryat Lee were addressed to a silly variation of Rayber (the sciency skeptic of Violent Bear It Away) and signed a silly variation of Tarwater (the very reluctant prophet and main character of Violent).

So this is your weekly dose of F.O’C.

Happy Birthday to me! Books I got real cheap on ABEbooks – the short stories of Joseph Conrad (Flannery’s all time fave), JF Powers (one of her contemporary faves), Caroline Gordon (her mentor) and also GOrdon’s Civil War book which is apparently better than Gone with the Wind AND Red Badge of Courage. NOT PICTURED: FOC’s other all time favorite: Henry James.

I added to my Flannery Recommends section of my library.

The last week or so I’ve read several of Powers’ short stories and a couple of Conrad and Jameseses’s. And they’re pretty good- enjoyable, well-written, impressively engaging for only being a few dozen pages.

BUT

Now I get why Flannery is hailed as the definitive Grand Master of the short story, because so far, these don’t compare.

I mean, obviously, James and Conrad have her beat on the quality of English writing itself, but that’s their 19th-century advantage. No one from Georgia is going to write like that. I think O’Connor definitely could have, but it wouldn’t have worked for her audience or what she was doing.  

And Powers does have similarly good, sympathetic, believable characters, and he deals with the contemporary American race issues that Flannery wasn’t called to take on directly, (from her middle of the deep south home she shared with her mother). And those stories are very moving and well done.

They just aren’t nearly as memorable and funny as Flannery.

The only one I can think of who has similarly vivid storytelling in a relatively few pages is Stephen King in his short stories- BUT he doesn’t have anywhere close to the depth of meaning she has in everything she touches. He can kind of cheat a little with his super bizarre horror story aspect; Flannery has a little of that going on, but even when she’s just talking about a bunch of people on the bus or in the waiting room, it’s striking and sticks with you somehow.

Also, King’s dialogue has nothing on Miss Mary Flannery’s. 70s/80s Maine just doesn’t measure up to 40s/50s Georgia.

Before, I was somewhat skeptical, (believe it or not), thinking, okay, how much better than everyone else can she really be at this short story thing, is it just a Catholic bias to want our girl to be the very best? Well, no, she is objectively really great.

I still need to read Caroline Gordon, it could be a girl thing to be better at short stories… I’ll let you know.