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October 09, 2007
Help from Flannery
Although a few doctors have become famous novelists, and many novels are about doctors, few novelists speak to the problems of modern medicine as clearly and concisely as Flannery O'Connor. She did not write about medicine at all, though there are a few doctors as minor characters, and a office setting for a story. But she wrote against the perversions of modernity, of which medicine is one of the chief.
Ralph Wood's book has been very helpful as I have re-read her stories. The first few times through, I thought they were great stories, about people I know, and well-written, though frequently disturbing. Her letters reveal some of what she was trying to accomplish in her stories, and reveal much of her delightful and delighting personality. Credenda has a good issue on her work.
Several lectures by Duane Garner and Steve Wilkins this past weekend made some of the brilliance of her stories even clearer. Flannery wrote Southern literature, a genre so far superior to its predecessors and contemporaries that it is frequently derided and ignored. She concurred with Walker Percy that the peculiar advantage of Southron writers was that the South had lost the War. That, together with her personal suffering from SLE, her loss of her father to the same, and her other peculiar circumstances all combined to allow her a clear insight to the ills of modern society.
Good Country People and Greenleaf are both short stories with a hard message for modern medicine. I suspect that each of the stories have a significant message for us, even and particularly for Christians in the medical field. Many of the "villains" of the stories are good Christian people, who, like Mrs. May in Greenleaf, believe that "Jesus" should be kept private, like other words used only in the bedroom. Mrs. Greenleaf, on the other hand, is a careless, gross, even grotesque Christian, who does shocking and impolite things. But in the end, Mrs. May, gored in the heart by that bull standing in for Jesus, she sees clearly, and can't stand the sight.
That reminds me of a patient that CutOnTheDottedLine wrote about. It is so easy for us to hypocritically judge the apparently misplaced and confused faith of others. (I am not suggesting that Alice does, but rather myself). God will be their judge. They frequently have an insight that we need to learn, and God has let them be fools for our sake, even as Paul was willing to be for us.
Most of Flannery's short stories can be read in a blink. They are so tightly and carefully crafted that every word is important, and I know that I missed much the first few times I read in a hurry. So I intend to read back through a few and perhaps jot the medical lessons.
O'Connor | By Robert Maddox | 05:38 PM
Comments
Posted by: Rob at October 11, 2007 08:43 AM
You said: “They frequently have an insight that we need to learn, and God has let them be fools for our sake, even as Paul was willing to be for us.”
I appreciate that remark coming from a doctor. On more than one occasion I’ve seen evidence of the doctors’ “god complex” people joke about (Setting: two doctors wearing scrubs in the operating room. A robed fellow with a long beard flowing from under his mask is working on the sedated patient. Says one doctor to another: “Who’s that?” Second doctor replies: “God. He thinks he’s a surgeon.”)
Fortunately, the Christian isn’t forced to choose between faith in God and medical intervention. But it never hurts for patients and doctors to remember that the success of the medical intervention is in God’s hands alone!
Posted by: Angie at October 11, 2007 01:39 PM