Saturday, April 05, 2008

Flannery O'Connor FTW!


Flannery O'Connor was a practitioner of the Southern Gothic writing style.  One of the best, at least until she died of lupus (I know House says it's never lupus, but in her case it was).  Anyway she wrote a story called 'Good Country People' that was about a bible salesman named Manley Pointer (subtle huh?) who meets a bitter, ugly girl named Hulga who has only one leg.  Manley takes Hulga up into a hayloft and seduces her.  In the course of this he convinces her to take her wooden leg off. 

When Hulga realizes Manley isn't a 'good country person' (it turns out his bibles are hollowed out and contain whisky and condoms), she wants to put her leg back on, but he grabs it and climbs down the ladder, leaving Hulga up in the hayloft all alone, legless.  Good times huh?

I wonder why no one ever gave Paul McCartney a copy of that story?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Okay so this is where I'm not nearly as literary as you. Every time I see Heather Mills I think of that Friends episode in which Joey puts his date's wooden leg in the fireplace. And then I laugh, because Joey is funny.

-=Nay