Flannery; Sebastian

The more of Miss Flannery O'Connor I read, the more I realize how rich her works are. Presently I'm making my way through Everything That Rises Must Converge, and enjoying it thoroughly. Her stories are at times hilarious, and at times horrific. Sometimes it's hard to tell which. If there's a unifying characteristic of her main characters, it's that they're terribly unaware; the arc of each story is generally one in which this complacent ignorance is shaken apart. Grace is a fundamentally discomfiting, if not violent, undertaking.

"Well, I've never read O'Connor, but I'd like to start", you might say. "Should I then presume? And how should I begin?", you might continue, if you have a penchant for quoting Prufrock. The novels, Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away, are excellent, but the short stories may be better to start with. I'll recommend my favorites (so far): "A Good Man Is Hard to Find", "The Artificial Nigger", "Good Country People" and "Greenleaf" are particularly good.

In other news, another thing I've been making my figurative way through is George Ritchie's complete Bach organ works. (They're not quite complete, though; I noticed that he's missing the chorale partita on Christ, der du bist der helle Tag.) The nice thing about these discs, other than the fine musicianship and recording quality, is that Ritchie has used a variety of American instruments, two of which are by Paul Fritts, who built our organ here at Notre Dame. (This reminds me: come, if you like, to my recital on April 18th—at 5:00pm, Eastern.) One could listen to Bach every day and still only understand a tiny bit of his genius, I think. Heck, one can play Bach every day and still only understand a tiny bit of his genius.