Violence Always Begets Violence....And It Never Does Any Good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                 I will never forget my Creative Writing teacher in college, Professor Paris.  He was not my Mr. Karp, because I had his number--he hated what he was doing, and thought himself too good to do it.  Which is why, during that semester, he kept extolling, to the annoyance of everyone, as it was so constant, two very worthy writers, whom we became tired of hearing about--Gustave Flaubert and Flannery O'Connor.  To him, "Madame Bovary" was the greatest novel ever written.  Over that summer, and on subsequent readings over the thirty plus years I have been out of school, I have read the novel several times, and while I would actually call it great, I would not say it was one of the greatest.  "Anna Karenina" has it beat.

                                   As for Flannery O'Connor, well, I love Southern American Gothic literature, but by the time I got to her short story collection, "A Good Man Is Hard To Find," I had been exposed to Harper Lee, Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Carson McCullers; even sections of Anne Rice's "The Witching Hour" is Southern literature at its best.  So Flannery O'Connor did not do it for me, and I did not pursue her as avidly as one might think I would, given my affinity for Southern writers. Oops, I forget Faulkner.  Better than Flannery.

                                   I had never heard of "The Violent Bear It Away," but my beloved and I both read it, because this will be our initial entry into the Gay Man's Book Club we had to be approved of to get into!!!!!!!!  I cannot wait to hear who chose this, and why.  It's not so much that it is a bad book; the language is fluid and textured; the sort of thing expected from a literary writer--and it has a distinctive Southern milieu.

                                    There are only two problems.  It is less a novel than a philosophical treatise.  Now, Ayn Rand did the same thing, but her works were fleshed out--sometimes too much--so that the whole narrative came together.  This seems more like a series of short stories strung together, and all of the characters, even Bishop, the only likable one in the bunch, seem compendiums of Southern cliches.  "The Violent Bear It Away" reads like a rough draft of a Faulkner piece, without the poetry of Faulkner.

                                      I wouldn't say not to read it, but, face it, were it not for this book club, I never would have, nor would I have felt the loss.  Meanwhile, I am curious about the so-called members, of this club, and their reaction to us, especially yours truly, who can be pretty candid, darlings?????????

                                       Will we be asked back?  Hmmm..this could turn into "Southern Fried Homicide."

                                        Maybe I should bring Miss Daisy's Peach Cobbler!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!