Visionary Vibes: A Blog by Aberjhani

Exploring the Wonder and Enigma of Flannery O'Connor (part 2 of 3)

12/19/2019

From the time when her first short stories and novel were published, O’Connor was identified as a writer with a rare kind of gift. Her specific brand of genius allowed her to adapt powerful religious principles, aesthetic technique, and social observances to create highly original and often shocking literary art which leaned heavily toward the Gothic and grotesque.

She painted with words in the same manner she painted with colors. Stroke by carefully-rendered stroke, she created broken-soul characters who were oddly warped by the jarring impulses of their own scarred personalities, a condition which could make them as misplaced within the confines of their own skin as it could within society.

The Church of Hazel Motes’ Truth

One archetypal example is Hazel Motes, the anti-hero main character in Wise Blood described by Gooch as “a slightly demented saint in the making.” Motes could also be described as a prototype for any number of O’Connor’s characters driven by pain and confusion to rage against their perception of divine, or human, authority over their lives. Hazel Motes is bold enough to propose starting “the Church of truth without Jesus Christ Crucified.” His own ambitiousness and the ambiguities of human mortality inherent in anyone’s life defeat his intentions and ultimately lead to his destruction.

It is not only the daring with which O’Connor wrote such tales as Wise Blood that made her an exceptional writer but an ear for true-to-life dialect and a command of language that enabled her to bend narrative prose into lyrical poetry like this:

“The smokestacks and square tops of buildings made a black uneven wall against the lighter sky and here and there a steeple cut a sharp wedge out of a cloud.” Or the following: “The outline of a skull was plain under his skin and the deep burned eye sockets seemed to lead into the dark tunnel where he had disappeared.”

Such statements, beaded as they were with strong philosophical nuances, would make any writer in any language an exceptional one.

The N-Word Factor

For many African Americans, O’Connor is not an easy read because her fiction is very true to the Southern rural language of her times. That means the word “nigger” tends to flow like breath out of many of her characters’ mouths with such a total disregard for its social, political, or spiritual implications that their use of the word might prompt many a hardcore rapper to reconsider his or her fondness for it.

The degree to which O’Connor herself may have been racist is an issue biographer Brad Gooch does periodically address: “She had returned to settle in a society predicated on segregation and had taken on its charged voices and manners as the setting of her fiction.”

In short, from O’Connor’s perspective as a literary artist, to avoid racially derisive language, and in some cases customs, would have meant dodging an ugly truth rather than confronting it head-on. Moreover, readers should note she was far from being alone in this regard among white and black American writers in the previous century.

NEXT: Exploring the Wonder and Enigma of Flannery O'Connor (final part 3)

If you missed part 1 of Exploring the Wonder and Enigma of Flannery O'Connor and would like to read it Please Click Here.

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Aberjhani is a multi-genre author of history, memoirs, poetry, fiction, and journalism. His most recent book is Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah.

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Author Miriam Center Honored with Congressional Birthday Wish

8/9/2016

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Literary and political gadfly Miriam K. Center. (photograph by John Zeuli)

Members of the U.S. Congress rarely make it a point to enter an acknowledgment of a writer’s birthday into the official Congressional Record. Why should they? Writers have birthdays, get stomach aches, laugh through good days, and moan through bad days just everybody else. No big deal.

But author, poet, playwright, and social activist Miriam K. Center is far from typical and U.S. Representative Earl L. “Buddy” Carter felt her 90th birthday, on August 10, was worth officially noting during the second session of the 114th Congress on July 18, 2016 (See complete statement below).

While I may not see eye-to-eye with Congressman Carter when it comes to political matters (I admit to being challenged that way when it comes to Republicans) I do appreciate his cultural instincts where Miriam K. Center is concerned.

Literary Adventures in 1990s Savannah

Front cover of the novel Scarlett O'Hara Can Go to Hell by Miriam K. Center. (First published in 2000 by Black Skylark Singing Press)

It was my blessed good fortune to befriend Ms. Center during the mid-1990s in Savannah, Georgia. We shared a lot of good classically-themed literary adventures together, including, as members of the Savannah Writers’ Workshop, organizing and producing the city first literary festival in 1998. Participants on that notable occasion included authors Terry Kay, Rosemary Daniell, Bruce Feiler, Iris Formey Dawson, and Michael Porter.

We were also fortunate to still have with us at the time: the late Margaret Wayt DeBolt (1930-2009), Arthur Gordon (1912-2002), Ja A. Jahannes (1942-2015), and Tom Coffey (1923-2015).

Center also served with Robert Keber, Carolyn Siefferman, and me on the editorial board for the 1999 Savannah Literary Journal. In 2000, I had the honor (some might say “nerve to”) of publishing her boldly-titled maybe-or-maybe-not autobiographical novel Scarlett O’Hara Can Go to Hell as part of the developing Black Skylark Singing imprint. One has to give Rep. Carter kudos for mentioning the book in his birthday acknowledgement and resisting any urge to modify the title:

RECOGNIZING MIRIAM CENTER'S 90TH BIRTHDAY
                                 ______
                     HON. EARL L. ``BUDDY'' CARTER
                               of Georgia in the House of Representatives
                         Monday, July 18, 2016

Mr. CARTER of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Miriam
K. Center of Savannah, Georgia, for her 90th birthday on August 10th.

   At 90 years old, Ms. Center continues to be an impressive member and contributor to the coastal Georgia community.

   She graduated from Savannah High School in 1944 and promptly joined the Savannah volunteers to help American troops fighting in World War II. After the war, Miriam married Leo Center and helped him found a prominent, local Savannah business. Miriam and Leo had 3 sons together,Henry, Tony, and Scott.

   Since then, Miriam has been greatly involved in public service as she
served as Chair of the Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Planning
Commission, ran for election to the Georgia State Senate, and for
Savannah Alderwoman. In 2000, she wrote a book entitled Scarlett O'Hara Can Go to Hell and produced the currently showing play, Johnny and Me, which chronicles her friendship with Savannah's Academy Award winning songwriter, Johnny Mercer. She is also a frequent guest writer to the Savannah Morning News.

   Miriam has traveled the world, visiting England, France, Spain,
Greece, Israel, Russia, and much of North America.

   Ms. Center, I hope you have a happy 90th birthday.
                                    (2nd Session of 114th Congress)

Knowing Ms. Center, and barring any unforeseen extraordinary occurrences, she will not only have a happy 90th birthday but an outright party-thumping blast of a celebration.

Having shared as many cultural escapades with the author as I have, she’s bound to make one or two guest appearances in the pages of my current book-in-progress. More than likely they will take place in the sections dealing with my days of working as a bookseller when John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil made him a bestselling author and encouraged people in Savannah extend general interpretations of the word “nutty.”

Johnny Mercer and Miriam

Given all that Center has accomplished up to this point, it’s not surprising that her play Johnny Mercer and Me is currently slated to open September 22 at Savannah’s stately Lucas Theatre. Part of the proceeds from the ticket sales will go toward helping preserve and maintain the theatre.

Much gratitude to photographer extraordinaire John Zeuli for use of his beautiful photograph of Miriam.

Aberjhani
© Bright Skylark Literary Productions

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10 Books Keeping One Writer’s Company During the 2015-2016 El Nino Winter

11/4/2015

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Among the many literary marvels for which the world can be grateful to Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison are the numerous interviews she’s given over the years. Her inspiring genius sparkles as brilliantly in conversation as it does in her novels, librettos, children’s books, and lectures. In one such interview conversation, she expressed as her biggest fear that of being stranded somewhere without a book of some substance to keep her company. That makes flawless sense to those of us addicted to books at an early age.

I would not go so far as to call myself an abibliophobe but I am far more comfortable in spaces and places that accommodate books with some degree of delight than in those which ban them from the premises. To avoid such a potentially traumatizing condition, I try to stay as well-supplied with more books than I am likely to read––for pleasure that is––in a month, as a Beverly Hills fashionista remains stocked up on shiny shoes, bags, and credit cards.

El Nino on the Way

So with meteorologists predicting a 2015 - 2016 winter El Niño that could make some of us spend more time indoors than usual, lining up reads for the chilly wet days and evenings ahead is not a bad idea. My own mixed bag of pages includes biography, literary fiction, history, poetry, and social criticism. A couple of the titles I’ve already read once or twice but feel the need to revisit; several have been on the bookshelf for several months and patiently awaiting my attention. They now have it.

The list, which features a comment or two on why I chose a given title, could change over the next month or so. But, for now, you might call those already on it my literati posse for the duration of the 2015-2016 winter El Niño. The numbers are not to imply any kind of ranking but may say something about how my cerebral passions and priorities tend to cross-pollinate:

MY 2015-2016 EL NINO WINTER READING LIST

1. Tiny Windows (poetry) by Duncan McNaughton. One of the founders of San Francisco’s New College of California Poetics Program, McNaughton’s work as an educator and poet has long captivated and empowered many. Tiny Windows is his latest and to me that makes contemporary poetry a lot more interesting than before its publication.

2. Black Prophetic Fire (history and social criticism) by Cornel West and Christa Buschendorf. This book follows the same tradition as the great volume of dialogue between James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni (as well as those with Baldwin and other profound thinkers). It’s also reminiscent of the excellent Literary Conversations series, but with the dialogue centered by Cornel West’s expansive brilliance it obviously reaches beyond literary concerns.

3. Jean-Paul Sartre: A Life (biography) by Annie Cohen-Solal. I’ve read novels, plays and essay on philosophy by Sartre but this will be my first time reading a full-length comprehensive biography on him. As it happens, Cornel West wrote the foreword for this “Sartre Centennial” edition so that had some influence on my decision to buy this specific title.

Biographer Annie Cohen-Solal. (1988 photo by Martine Franck)

4. The State of the World Atlas (globalization reference) by Dan Smith. This is the ninth edition of Smith’s book. He finished it in London in 2012 and it was published in 2013, which means significant changes have already occurred since it the last printing. It makes a good comparative reference though for helping to place current events in a developing historical context.

5. God Help the Child (novel) by Toni Morrison. I actually started reading this before the official publication date earlier this year. Because it is Morrison I chose to save it for a special occasion and El Niño popped up it so here we are.

Nobel Prize in Literature winner Toni Morrison. (photo by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders)

6. Life of William Blake with Selections from His Poems & Other Writings (biography plus) by Alexander and Anne Gilchrist. This was the first major biography on Blake and is still considered among the best because the Gilchrist husband and wife literary duo met with contemporaries of Blake to complete it.

7. Pedagogy of the Oppressed (philosophy of education & social criticism) by Paulo Freire. This modern classic by a highly-revered author has been recommended to me many times over the years. With the various demographic shifts and cultural migrations currently taking place, now seems like a good time to give it some serious attention.

"Pedagogy of the Oppressed" author Paulo Freiere. (Image source: Mohawk Valley Freedom School https://mvfreedomschool.wordpress.com/2014/03/10/pedagogy-of-the-oppressed-reading-group-wednesday-march-5/

8. Race to Incarcerate: A Graphic Retelling (criminal justice, comics, graphic novel) by Sabrina Jones and Marc Mauer with a foreword by Michelle Alexander. There’s no such thing as overstating the crisis of oppressive human rights violations represented by the so-called “high school to prison pipeline” in the United States and its devastating impact upon African-American communities. The modern industrial prison complex is dangerously emblematic of apartheid-like practices. Dismantling it means coming to terms with how it came to be and why it continues to expand.

9. American Poets: The Journal of the Academy of American Poets (Vol. 49). True, this is not an actual book in the literal sense but it just arrived in the mail so feels right to place on the list. A quick peep inside indicates an interesting interview with U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, some new poems by Joy Harjo and Yusef Komunyakaa, and notes on some older ones by Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Hayden, Sylvia Plath, and W.B. Yeats. There’s a big announcement also from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation regarding their acquisition of Mark Strand’s personal library.

10. Dark Faith: New Essays on Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away edited by Susan Srigley. That title kind of says it all doesn’t it. Reading of course is not the only way to stay pleasurably engaged during cold soggy El Nino days and nights. It is, however, for this author one of the most sweetly enduring and warmly compatible.

by Aberjhani

©November 2015
Bright Skylark Literary Productions

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Authors Harper Lee's and Toni Morrison's New Books Likely to Influence Millennials' Dialogues on Race (part 2)

3/15/2015

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Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison addressing PEN World Voices event hosted by American PEN Center. (photo courtesy of American PEN Center)

Unlike her fellow author Harper Lee, Toni Morrison has remained astonishingly prolific throughout her literary career. Though mostly celebrated as a creator of highly-inventive and intensely provocative fiction, she is also in fact an author of popular children’s books, intriguing opera librettos, and intellectually-probing nonfiction as well as an editor. Following the announcement of her forthcoming eleventh novel, God Help the Child, the February 9, 2015, edition of The New Yorker Magazine published “New Fiction” by her in form of an excerpt from the novel.

[If you missed the first part of this article and would prefer to start at the beginning please click here]

U.S. President George W. Bush presents "To Kill a Mockingbird" author Harper Lee with Presidential Medal of Freedom at White House, Washington DC Nov 5 2007. (photo by Mandel Ngan AFP File article)

Although deeply embedded in African-American history, Morrison's writings have always gone beyond standard representations of African Americans as victimized or marginalized individuals drifting along the outskirts of white concerns. She has instead presented them as central cosmic presences wading their way through currents of unique human experience shaped by powerful confluences of historical developments. As an author, Toni Morrison in some important ways is to American fiction what the late W.E.B. Du Bois and Howard Zinn were to American history: a revisionist of themes and texts who expanded narratives on the American story to validate the testimonies of those whose lives and voices had been classified as “minor.”

The Color of a Mother's Pain

The passage from God Help the Child published in The New Yorker focuses on the development of the relationship between a very light-complexioned black woman and a daughter who, unexpectedly and inexplicably, is born with very dark skin. The child’s skin is so dark, in fact, that the mother holds a blanket over her face and then has to resist the urge to kill her. She later instructs her daughter to address her as “Sweetness,” and the daughter herself is given the far less elegant name of “Lula Ann” Bridewell. In addition to suffering painful embarrassment over her daughter’s complexion, Sweetness also fears for her safety in the world:

“With that skin, there was no point in being tough or sassy, even when you were right. Not in a world where you could be sent to a juvenile lockup for talking back or fighting in school, a world where you’d be the last one hired and the first one fired. She didn’t know any of that or how her black skin would scare white people or make them laugh and try to trick her.” (Toni Morrison, from Sweetness as published in The New Yorker)

This predicament allows Morrison to examine the often controversial subject of intra-racial color prejudice among African Americans. Some have theorized that such prejudice has its roots in the internalization of negative images projected by American Whites during slavery––and through mass media in the decades that followed–– onto African Americans. It further intensified into a form of self-hatred frequently reinforced by stereotypes proliferated throughout what passed for popular American culture in the 1900s.

Others contend it is a completely different species of neuroses formed from the triple pressures of social, economic, and political oppression. Either way, intra-racial color prejudice represents yet one more facet of the bizarre negative psychological complexities generated by obsessions with notions of racial superiority in contrast to principles of human diversity.

A Framework for Millennials

Many television viewers were delightfully stunned by Toni Morrison during her appearance on the Stephen Colbert Show last November when she commented candidly on race as a “social construction” from which certain people profited. With those comments, as she has done for her own generation and the generations of American writers who have followed in her footsteps, she gave Millennials a very valuable tool in the form of one model for addressing one of the world’s most persistent problems: racism.

The day after Morrison’s appearance on the late night talk show, readers born long after the publication of her first novel, The Bluest Eye in 1970, and many born not-so-long afterwards, took to social media to express how much they had enjoyed watching her. Many also, however, confessed that they had never read any of her books.

Anyone in need of incentive to get started reading Morrison might consider that, as nearly as anyone can tell her works have been translated into nearly two dozen languages, is taught in schools around the world, and has sold in huge quantities for which there are no precise figures. That kind of achievement––even without mentioning such honors as the Pulitzer Prize, France’s Legion of Honour Award, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom–– is its own greatest endorsement.

by Aberjhani

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Exploring the Wonder and Enigma of Flannery O'Connor (part 2 of 3)

The Church of Hazel Motes’ Truth

The N-Word Factor

Author

Author Miriam Center Honored with Congressional Birthday Wish

Literary Adventures in 1990s Savannah

RECOGNIZING MIRIAM CENTER'S 90TH BIRTHDAY
                                 ______
                     HON. EARL L. ``BUDDY'' CARTER
                               of Georgia in the House of Representatives
                         Monday, July 18, 2016

Johnny Mercer and Miriam

10 Books Keeping One Writer’s Company During the 2015-2016 El Nino Winter

El Nino on the Way

MY 2015-2016 EL NINO WINTER READING LIST

Authors Harper Lee's and Toni Morrison's New Books Likely to Influence Millennials' Dialogues on Race (part 2)

The Color of a Mother's Pain

A Framework for Millennials

Aberjhani

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Categories

Exploring the Wonder and Enigma of Flannery O'Connor (part 2 of 3)

The Church of Hazel Motes’ Truth

The N-Word Factor

Author

Author Miriam Center Honored with Congressional Birthday Wish

Literary Adventures in 1990s Savannah

RECOGNIZING MIRIAM CENTER'S 90TH BIRTHDAY ______ HON. EARL L. ``BUDDY'' CARTER of Georgia in the House of Representatives Monday, July 18, 2016

Johnny Mercer and Miriam

10 Books Keeping One Writer’s Company During the 2015-2016 El Nino Winter

El Nino on the Way

MY 2015-2016 EL NINO WINTER READING LIST

Authors Harper Lee's and Toni Morrison's New Books Likely to Influence Millennials' Dialogues on Race (part 2)

The Color of a Mother's Pain

A Framework for Millennials

Aberjhani

Archives

Categories

RECOGNIZING MIRIAM CENTER'S 90TH BIRTHDAY
______
HON. EARL L. ``BUDDY'' CARTER
of Georgia in the House of Representatives
Monday, July 18, 2016