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Page Ten

THE MICHIGAN DAILY

October 7, 1956

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THE MICHIGAN DAILY


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FLANNERY

O'CONNEF

APARTMENT

FURNISHING

A Discussion of the Young Southern Writer's Work

I

FOR THE FRUGAL
... attractive and sturdy desks without drawers

By JAMES DYGERT
HISTORY, it has been claimed,
stumbles along in cycles. If so,
the most pathetic victim of this
fact is the American male. Caught
up in the do-it-yourself whirl, this
wretch finds himself closely akin
to primitive man, who of neces-
sity did it himself.
A fortunate Ann Arbor student
who locates an apartment is even
closer to his ancestors, by virtue
of the necessity of do-it-yourself
furnishing. Unless he is a mil-
lionaire or the offspring of a fur-
niture dealer, he invariably must
furnish it himself.
Happily, student apartments are
less than huge; else this would be
a superhuman task for us unli-
censed carpenters. Any housewife
can tell you it's easier to furnish
one room than two.
One very helpful hint for the
student who moves into an apart-
ment for the first time is that he
hang a curtain across the room,
thus converting his one room into
a two-room job. There are many
apartments in Ann Arbor draw-
ing higher rents on this principal.
IN ONE such apartment in town,
each room approximates, in size,
a closet, making the apartment
about the size of two closets. As
is invariably the case, one of the
rooms is a kitchen and the other
a living-room-dining-room-bed-
room-study. The tiny bathroom, of
ocurse, is outside the apartment
off a hallway where it also serves
the residents of several other two-
room apartments in the structure.
Obviously, the chief challenge
of this mode of living is to require
as little room as possible, both for
your furniture and for your acti-
vities. If you live in such an apart-
ment, here are some hints gleaned
from some of the campus' most ex-
perienced cubicle dwellers:
1. Construct book cases out of
Mr. Dygert is a former Daily
City Editor who here brings his
essentially rational mind to
bear on the emotional problems.
of students who need advice in
the "basic stuffs" of life.

FOR THE COMPULSIVE
... the advantages of a closet within a closet
and

By ROY AKERS
ONE might suspect that the lass,a
sailing as she does under the
-ame of Flannery O'Connor, is1
straight from Dublin. But she ain't.
This gal is from Georgia, andC
don't you all forget it. And shec
writes in the tradition of thoses
who have exploited the clay hills,
pecker-necks and cornpone into
what might be termed-in its
higher moments, at least-a lit-t
erature of sorts.-
Perched somewhere on the to-
tem pole, between the Faulknerizedt
prose of Truman Capote and the
clean-cut storytelling of Shirleyt
Apn Grau, Miss O'Connor's pin
feathers shine brightly in thel
noonday sun among those of the
more talented, young Southern
writers. She has, to date, motheredt
and cradled one novel and a vol-
ume of short stories.
Her first creation, Wise Blood,
is-to quote the publisher's some-
what misleading blurb-"A Search-
ing Novel of Sin and Redemption."
But it doesn't quite come off that
way. Like W. Somerset Maugham's,
The Razor's Edge, and William
Faulkner's Requiem For a Nun, it
fails not in execution but, rather,
in its final intent. The road to sal-
vation is an uphill path, and the
character fabricated by the nov-
elist is detoured, just as easily as
his mortal brother, toward the
enchantment of the lower valleys.
Wise Blood is really the story of
Hazel Motes, a would-be evangel-
ist, who preaches on street cor-
ners for The Church Without
Christ. Haze, a recently discharged
soldier, has founded his own
church in an effort to formulate
his own beliefs. And that, in ef-
fect, is the irony of his own life
he has no beliefs. In endeavoring
to find belief in disbelief he fin-
ally dies, and the book finds its
ending with his body lying a semi-
tragic figure in the gutter.
THE duality of good and evil in
man does not ideally find
fusion. One of them must emerge
above the other and become the
dominant factor. And Haze's
death-if it proves anything-is
that death, although it may be the
great healer, is not necessarily the
great redeemer.
Still, as a study of a lost man's
search for something in nothing-
ness, Wise Blood might well stand
as a case history. It is an excellent
study of evil and tends to show the
underlying cause of it-a lack of
love.lFor lovehwas the onething
Hazel Motes had neither known
nor experienced.
One of the glittering facets of
this book is Miss O'Connor's un-
canny knack of description. Mrs.
Wally Bee Hitchcock, for instance,
is summed up in the following sen-
tence: "She was a fat woman with
pink collars and cuffs and pear-
shaped legs that slanted off the
train seat and didn't reach the
floor." Or Onnie Jay Holy, Haze's
self-appointed disciple: "He looked
like an ex-preacher turned cow-
boy, or an ex-cowboy turned mor-
tician. He was not handsome but
under his smile, there was an
honest look' that fitted into his
face like a set of false teeth"
MISS O'Connor's second pub-
lished work, A Good Man Is
Hard To Find, is a more mature
and artfully done work than her
novel. The writing in this vol-
ume of ten stories derives pain
from an already overworked lit-
erary clime. But Miss O'Connor
flourishes a talented, deadly pencil.
And both the talent and the pen-
cil are ably assisted by an ob-
servant eye, an attuned ear, and
an apparent knowledge of things
Mr. Akers 'has contributed
both book reviews and articles
to the Sunday Magazine. He is
an avid follower of Southern
writing.

we thought college girls learned
about only in books. Her talent,
if not her worldly wisdom, gained
polish in a college writing class.
One has the feeling that Miss
O'Connor writes from the inside
out through an obviously thick
skin with all the aloof detachment
of a smug, female penguin peep-
ing through the knothole of a high
board fence while standing on
thick ice. Still, it is downright un-
nerving to read her book and re-
main equally detached. The too
few femme fatales in this would-
be reviewer's past have been mostly
of the barmaid, "B" girl and taxi
dancer variety. And, in looking
back upon an apparently wasted
life, Poor Old Akers can only con-
clude that-taken as a group-
they were a pretty naive lot.
Miss O'Connor has some of Wil-I

liam Faulkner's preoccupation with
evil. And, for ribald humor, she
can sometimes outdo Erskine Cald-
well. But always she remains
cloistered in the role of writer,
never taking it upon herself to
either praise or condem. She is
that rarest of woman scribes-
one who has control both of a
pencil and her tongue.
We don't know why the pub-
lisher made "A Good Man Is Hard
To Find" her title story; except,
maybe, because it is just that-a
good title. It might have beep
best to leave the story out alto-
gether, and let Miss O'Connor re-
write it. From a look at some of
her other stories the reader is
well convinced that she is cer-
tainly capable of the task.
ONE of the stories contained in
this volume, entitled "Good


Country People," is a piece of
writing of which Miss O'Connor
might well be proud. The story
deals with Mrs. Hopewell and her
crippled daughter, Joy. The mother
is a woman with an affinity for
aphorisms, and she has a deep
and abiding faith in what people
say. Mrs. Hopewell places the
same confidence in gossip and the
Bible .that the more conventional
middle class displays toward the
Bible, Dwight D. Eisenhower and
the Reader's Digest.
Her mind is a reflection of that
peculiar paradox in American rea-
soning: the intelligence that -
while knowing an army of a mil-
lion soldiers could be wrong -I
would never doubt a jury of twelve
men of being true.

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