quote:

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The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida. She wanted to visit some of her connections in east Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance to change Bailey’s mind. Bailey was the son she lived with, her only boy. He was sitting on the edge of his chair at the table, bent over the orange sports section of the Journal. “Now look here, Bailey,” she said, “see here, read this,” and she stood with one hand on her thin hip and the other rattling the newspaper at his bald head. “Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit is aloose from the Federal Pen and headed toward Florida and you read what it says he did to these people. Just you read it. I wouldn’t take my children in any direction with a criminal like that aloose in it. I couldn’t answer to my conscience if I did.”

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1. I love the language. There’s no strange dialect, but you know by the vocabulary (e.g., the word “connections”) that these are southerners.

2. I love the potential for extreme violence: the family is going to where The Misfit is said to be wandering about.

3. And I love O’Connor’s depiction of the grandmother. A perfect example of how her thoughts and words conflict. Her thoughts tell us she wants to go to east Tennessee. But her words are (supposedly) warning her son about The Misfit. It’s obvious, I think, that she isn’t the least bit concerned about the Misfit and the potential for violence as she is about getting her only son to take her to visit her connections in east Tennessee.

Probably the only thing I don't like about it is that it's one giant paragraph. It'd be a lot easier to read if it were broken up. Nevertheless, it's one hell of an opening.

A hook all the way.

I think you pegged this one, good find! This resembles somthing I wrote about a year ago, or flip that.

Being British, I don't really get the language thing... but then I know practically nothing of how language use varies through America other than in terms of the gross sounds of the dialects.

I find the writing style a little distant, and agree that having all of that in one paragraph is confusing.

I agrew with Balthasar about the language. In fact, when I see people throwing contractions all over the place and I explain that word choice will provide a much better effect, this is EXACTLY what I mean.

I also like the grandmother, her motives are unclear but I would read further to get into her. And I do want to know what this Misfit chracter did.

I'm a big Flannery O'Connor fan as well, and I echo Balthasar -- this is one of her best.

The one big, rambling paragraph was the part the turned me off. There is a nice use of language, and I did hear the South, in the dialog particulary. That is the way to do dialict, with word choice and cadence, which is effective, but not painful.

As for the long paragraph, I liked it; it pulled me and bumped me along. I like the mix of dialogue right up against body gestures right up against foreshadowing right up against character building.

A writer writing - just boom, boom, boom.