I hadn’t read Frank O’Connor’s stories in a very long time– he fell into the gutter of authors I’d studied to a point of boredom as a student, and while I’ve spent a good deal of my adult life sweeping those gutters and asking absolution from what I’d swept up, it took a while to get back to O’Connor. I’d associated him so closely, in the vast netherlands of the Juvenilia of my headspace, with hackneyed Catholic guilt tropes in Comic Sans all the way through.
But I couldn’t have been more wrong– it’s delightful, right? I very nearly entered the realm of squealing schoolgirl as I got deeper into this one.
HILARIOUS. Reminds me of my own sister. I”m glad to know all sisters are malicious!
WIll you please write a book already? You keep teasing on Twitter about writing, and I love what you write here. Your introductory paragraphs make my head swim.
Ditto to Mikael – I sometimes (I´m going to say maybe 40 – 60 percent because this is some good stuff you´re digging up) find your comments more compelling than the story. The compression suggests a sensibility so acute that it lapses into poetry like a hobbled man might lapse into a run – when pushed down hill. Id like to see what that sensibility would shine a light on when let loose of discretion – when the runner cuts the shackles and runs for the thrill of running.