Southern Gothic

I am not quite clear on what does and does not fall into the definition of Southern Gothic. But I would be interested to know what single book that falls within your definition of the genre, is the best.

The stones of Venice?

The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers.

>1 scunliffe: This would make a great thread.

Good article here, although repetitive in places: https://oxfordre.com/literature/view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.001.0001/acr...

As to your question, I would go with Outer Dark

Any of those books by William Faulkner about the Sartoris family. Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor. I think Toni Morrison's Beloved is arguably Southern gothic, though more people would probably put it in the magical realism slot.

>5 nohrt4me2: As an English expat transplanted to the U.S. many years ago, I am. surprised that I only recently came across the term 'Southern Gothic.'
But apparently I have been reading and enjoying the genre.
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is one of my all time favorites and right now I am part way through Wise Blood and its gallery of grotesques. Read most of the Faulkner novels, and I think I would add Sanctuary to the Gothic list. Beloved is also high on my all time favorites and I would agree that if anywhere it fits with Magic Realism.
Please keep the recommendations coming!

Wonder if John Kennedy O'Toole's Confederacy of Dunces would be considered Southern Gothic? New Orleans doesn't always consider itself part of the South.

>4 SassyLassy: Thanks for the article link, it certainly addressed my question. And I have added Outer Dark to my TBR list. So far the only McCarthy book I have read is Blood Meridian. The awful scene where the descending train of bad guys pushes over the cliff an innocent mule train is such a powerfully shocking image that it occasionally (as now) comes back to haunt me.

I would highly recommend the Library of America editions Complete Novels by Carson McCullers, and Collected Works by Flannery O'Connor. O'Connor's short story collections are absolutely brilliant, as are her novels Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away. I have all five Library of America volumes of William Faulkner's novels, but so far I've only read As I Lay Dying. After a discussion with a close friend in the 75 Books group I've decided to read one Faulker volume a year, starting in 2022.

>9 kidzdoc: The first Faulkner that I read, some 60 years ago, was The Sound and the Fury. I twas quite a challenge, and now having read many more of his works, I would say that it is the most difficult to understand, and the most rewarding when you succeed. So I would recommend it as your 2022 read.

>6 scunliffe: Tip for reading Flannery O'Connor: You can enjoy her novels as freak shows, and they're interesting on that level but a lttle inexplicable. They make more sense if you have some understanding of Catholic theology and the sacraments. She is trying to say serious things about the fallen nature of humankind and the need for grace. She has a very dark view of human nature. Her collected letters are helpful in amplifying the religious aspects of her work.

Plays of Tennessee Williams are pretty much Southern gothic, IMO, maybe none more so than Suddenly Last Summer.

>11 nohrt4me2: You can enjoy her novels as freak shows, and they're interesting on that level but a lttle inexplicable.

Haha, I daresay! I'm currently more than halfway through O'Connor's Wise Blood and I'm still not sure what to make of it. Where I'm currently at, if I didn't know that she was a Christian writer, I might actually wonder if she were the opposite. I did enjoy her A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories, though.

>13 Majel-Susan: I am halfway through it too. We should compare notes at the end

>14 scunliffe: Oh, sweet! Yes, let's.

I'm actually reading it for my Monthly Author Reads group, since O'Connor was voted for this month. Perhaps we will find other company there as well who opted to read Wise Blood.

>14 scunliffe: >15 Majel-Susan: Maybe you could post your thoughts here too, and this could become a sort of reference thread for southern gothic.

>16 SassyLassy: Of course, I wouldn't mind. I must admit, though, that I don't know anything about Southern Gothic, to be able to contribute much in that context. In the meantime, I'm reading up on your link in >4 SassyLassy: to get a better idea of what it means.

>15 Majel-Susan: I have not read a lot of O'Connor beyond some of A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories, but after finishing True Blood I may well go back for more. The impact of the grotesque characters is heightened by their existence in a novella rather than just a short story. And. if you have a liking for dark humor, which I do, there is no shortage here.
Following the hint in one of the earlier posts in this thread, concerning O'Connor's strong Catholic faith, I see there is some controversy about exactly how that reveals itself in her writing. My own take is very simple (always a danger in pseudo-academic discussion.). It seems to me that she is just poking fun at Evangelist teachers and the gullibility of those who take them seriously. Would love to hear other opinions.

I don't think "Wise Blood" is meant to be a satire only about evangelicalism, though O'Connor certainly understood that brand of Christianity very well as a Catholic outsider in in a fundamentalist/evangelical community.

I think that in her mind, any Church without Jesus Christ is basically just a scam.

It's pretty clear from her letters that O'Connor thought that corruption ran through all organized religions because all religions are run by people, and people are fallen creatures. She thought Lourdes was a scam and only went at the end of her life to get her relatives off her back.

What kept Catholicism from being a total scam, in her opinion, was the Real Presence in the sacraments. She said once that if Jesus wasn't present in the bread and wine at communion, "to hell with it."

I find a lot of O'Connor somewhat opaque, but reading her letters and the short story, "The River" (which I found shocking and sad) shook some things loose for me.

>18 scunliffe: As >19 nohrt4me2: has pointed out, I wouldn't say that O'Connor was simply poking fun at Evangelist preachers, although I will say I was a little surprised by their prominence when I first read A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories.

While hypocrisy does play a certain role, I don't feel that her stories center primarily around it or any particular sect of Christianity, but rather a kind of spiritual loneliness or hunger that I believe even non-Christians would be able to relate to.

I don't know much about Evangelist preachers, but while their beliefs and fervour would not be exclusive to themselves, what they do possess which is unique is their expressiveness and their charisma. That is one reason I think that O'Connor utilised them so often, not so much to jab at evangelism in particular, but because their words are full and loud. They heighten the contrast and the depth of the characters' inner world that echoes all the more hollow and empty.

As for Haze Motes' particular Church without Christ... I'm still thinking that through in relation to his personal fears about redemption.

Not to derail this very interesting Flannery O'Connor discussion—I think I mostly read her in my 20s, before I had a lot of knowledge of the Evangelical roots of her writing, so I'd really like to go back and read them with that in mind—but Book Riot had a listicle in its newsletter today: 20 Must-Read Southern Gothic Novels. As with anything with "Must-Read" in the headline, your mileage will definitely vary.

>21 lisapeet: Glad to see that African-American works are included on the list. Those are the ones I have actually read.

No Flannery there! I think she was hard to understand in the 1960s. Given that all the old pre-Vat2 Catholics are dying off, she might be close to indecipherable now unless we can accept new interpretations of her work without regard to their stated intent in her letters. Critics have been hesitant to go outside her rather strict Catholic parameters, but maybe it's time to take a more reader-response approach to her work.

I had a lot of students in our tutoring center some years back struggling with "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." They all homed in on Gramma's "you could be my own son" speech at the end. I encouraged them to lay out all their speculations about what that meant rather than to confine their essays to a single one. They came up with some interesting things ... and they liked the variety of interpretations strategy because it made their papers longer.

Because writing papers for college English is all about wringing out five-page essays.

>22 nohrt4me2: Haha, I can relate to your students! XD

It hadn't occurred to me how O'Connor's writings would have been most relevant to the pre-Vatican II era, but that might explain how, while I can grasp her stories in a broadly Christian context, I'm not quite able to understand how she is frequently lauded as a specifically Catholic writer, beyond the fact of being a Catholic and a writer. But then again, it could simply be me not having a in-depth understanding of Catholic theology.

>20 Majel-Susan: " not so much to jab at evangelism in particular, but because their words are full and loud. They heighten the contrast and the depth of the characters' inner world that echoes all the more hollow and empty."

I like that thought very much, thank you.

I knew I was in danger of over-simplifying, so let me pose a question.
We know the importance of Christ to O'Connor. Which category would she be most offended by.....those who had no belief in Christ, or those who did believe in Christ but not with the Catholic insistence on transubstantiation? No prophet at all, or a false prophet?
And would Motes be in a category of his own? I find him quite an enigma.

>24 scunliffe: Ooh, I don't know O'Connor well, but I doubt that she would take grave offense to non-Catholics who didn't hold with transubstantiation. It is, after all, not an easily accepted concept and sometimes takes even some Catholics by surprise.

Indifference is another possibility.

Motes works with desperation to resist his beliefs. He is most certainly not indifferent, but he meets with it everywhere; and in fact, he spends plenty of time preaching about it:

"Go ahead and leave! The truth don’t matter to you. Listen,” he said, pointing his finger at the rest of them, “the truth don’t matter to you. If Jesus had redeemed you, what difference would it make to you? You wouldn’t do nothing about it."

Enoch Emery is another, possibly the only other, who is not indifferent, but he's of a different flavour. I haven't got it figured out yet, but somehow Motes and Emery are connected, like a mirror or something.

It's a crazy story, though, and I'm not sure how many layers of thought I can hold onto in order to make some sense of it. But, I definitely agree with you; enigma is a good word for Motes.

Oh well, no doubt good food for dissertations.
And what does one make of a character who disappears from the story dressed as a gorilla? He is, after all, the owner of the True Blood.
Time for something a little simpler. Enid Blyton maybe?