{"id":816,"date":"2008-07-17T19:49:16","date_gmt":"2008-07-17T19:49:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.buffyholt.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/17\/the-grotesque-in-southern-fiction\/"},"modified":"2010-09-24T16:28:26","modified_gmt":"2010-09-24T16:28:26","slug":"the-grotesque-in-southern-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.buffyholt.com\/blog\/2008\/07\/17\/the-grotesque-in-southern-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"the grotesque in southern fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cWhenever I\u2019m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological. This is a large statement, and it is dangerous to make it, for almost anything you say about Southern belief can be denied in the next breath with equal propriety. <\/p>\n<p><center><img src='http:\/\/www.buffyholt.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/07\/flannery-oconnor.jpg' alt='Flannery O\u2019Connor' \/><\/center><br \/>\n<center>Flannery O&#8217;Connor<\/center><\/p>\n<p>But approaching the subject from the standpoint of the writer, I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. The Southerner, who isn\u2019t convinced of it, is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and likeness of God. <\/p>\n<p>Ghosts can be very fierce and instructive. They cast strange shadows, particularly in our literature. In any case, it is when the freak can be sensed as a figure for our essential displacement that he attains some depth in literature.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>-Flannery O\u2019Connor, \u201cThe Grotesque in Southern Fiction\u201d<\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cWhenever I\u2019m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,26],"tags":[18,33],"class_list":["post-816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hum-drum","category-writing-tips","tag-flannery-oconnor","tag-writers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buffyholt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buffyholt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buffyholt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buffyholt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buffyholt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=816"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.buffyholt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3135,"href":"https:\/\/www.buffyholt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816\/revisions\/3135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buffyholt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buffyholt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buffyholt.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}