![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
writes from the perspective of a young girl better than anyone i can think of.
i'd been hearing about her, that she was sassy, sardonic... southern, and a master of the short story, so traveling through taos, i went into a bookstore looking for the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy (the first part) which apparently is NOWHERE to be found in my parents house! the bookstore failed me in that respect, but i did run across a novella by chabon, the final solution, and a good man is hard to find, a collection of short stories by o'connor, purportedly her best. i'd read the first 3 or 4 short stories and was enjoying them, but all the sudden this morning i was reading "a temple of the holy ghost" and was BLOWN AWAY by the precocious little girl character that is the protagonist for this short plot.
to elaborate i'd like to share with you a short passage that perfectly encapsulates exactly the way my mind worked as a child (and more frankly, does still from time to time). i like to think, i was not the only one, but who knows.
the little girl is sitting in her room, rememebering the fair last year where she decided to be a doctor....
i'd been hearing about her, that she was sassy, sardonic... southern, and a master of the short story, so traveling through taos, i went into a bookstore looking for the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy (the first part) which apparently is NOWHERE to be found in my parents house! the bookstore failed me in that respect, but i did run across a novella by chabon, the final solution, and a good man is hard to find, a collection of short stories by o'connor, purportedly her best. i'd read the first 3 or 4 short stories and was enjoying them, but all the sudden this morning i was reading "a temple of the holy ghost" and was BLOWN AWAY by the precocious little girl character that is the protagonist for this short plot.
to elaborate i'd like to share with you a short passage that perfectly encapsulates exactly the way my mind worked as a child (and more frankly, does still from time to time). i like to think, i was not the only one, but who knows.
the little girl is sitting in her room, rememebering the fair last year where she decided to be a doctor....
She had since then changed and decided to be an engineer but as she looked out the window and followed the revolving searchlight as it widened and shortened and wheeled in its arc, she felt that she would have to be much more than just a doctor or an engineer. She would ahve to be saint because that was the occupation that included everything you could know; and yet she knew she would never be a saint. She did not steal or murder but she was a born liar and slothful and she sassed her mother and was deliberately ugly to almost everybody. She was eaten up also with the sin of Pride, the worst one. She made fun of the baptist preacher who came to the school at commencement to give the devotional. She would pull down her mouth and hold her forehead as if she were in agony and groan, "Fawther, we thank Thee," exactly the way he did and she had been told many times not to do it. She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.
1 comment | Leave a comment