Thursday, February 02, 2006

We have this stomache thing going on around here. Number 3 son had it last week and is fully recovered. Everyone else but Mrs. Curley and I are down with it now. I had to fetch an egg this morning-hazardous duty I was told as we have a rooster which attacks number 2 son everytime he goes to feed the chickens or fetch an egg. I think it was tooooo cold this morning for the rooster to care. I came away unscathed. As soon as the help gets healthy we're going to pluck some chickens and load up the freezer.

Found the missing 1099, so the taxes are essentially done.

I have been reading a collection of short stories by Flannery O'Connor. I had never read her before, but was finally convinced after reading several people I admire refer to her writing with esteem. After reading the first couple stories, I must confess, I came away thinking some disturbing thoughts about Flannery O'Connor. Having read a few more, I can say that everything she writes isn't so disturbing, but I can't say I understand the attraction to her. Maybe I am too obtuse to understand the point of her stories. I could use some help here....

UPDATE: re: flannery O'Connor, found this quote over at Amy Welborn's Openbook

''O'Connor is important to the way this movie is constructed," he continues. ''What you do is you consider some so-called religious thinking without the didacticism of the classical approach. You look for the allegorical intentions of what we're taught in the Bible, and then find some way to have it revealed or expressed by common experience. You'll find this happening over and over again in O'Connor, who was a rather classical Catholic thinker who wrote about nothing but backwoods north Georgia rednecks." (my emphasis).

Finally, while I did mention this book a few weeks ago, it has finally been released: I got my signed copy of this book in the mail today from my youngest sister, author Agnes Penny...Get a copy for the wife or mother in your life! (From TAN books)

From Bethany, the small holding in Bethune...Oremus pro invicem!

5 comments:

TS said...

Her stories are a bit of an acquired taste. I like Walker Percy better, he's much more lyrical.

Her collection of letters, "Habit of Being", is exceptional. I've blogged some excerpts at http://flanneryoconnor.blogspot.com/

Jim Curley said...

TS- I will have to check it out, and read some Walker Percy, who I have never read.

Thanks.

TS said...

You might try Percy's "The Last Self-Help Guide". Funny & interesting.

Jim Curley said...

TS-Just read this comment from your flanneryoconnor blog quoted from Amy Welborn (July 15, 2004), which might put things in better perspective:

"The pride is so fierce, the blindness so dark, it takes an extreme event to shatter it, and here is the purpose of the violence. The violence that O’Connor’s characters experience, either as victims or as participants, shocks them into seeing that they are no better than the rest of the world, that they are poor, that they are in need of redemption, of the purifying purgatorial fire that is the breathtaking vision at the end of the story, “Revelation.”

Anonymous said...

Can you tell Jeff how to obtain a signed copy of that book and send him a hint to give it to me?

I'd love it.

LeXuan