Flannery O'Connor is Metal

It seems like a strange statement, but Flannery O'Connor is a metal writer, if you think about it. I just finished reading Wise Blood, and it was one of the most metal novels I've ever read. (I'll articulate later on)

Now, you may be thinking, "But she's a lady writer! Who lived before heavy metal was even a glimmer in Ozzy Osbourne's eye!" But that's no excuse. Being "metal" only comparatively relates to the musical genre.



So why is Flannery O' Connor metal?

1. Grotesque, Dark, Arguably Anti-Religious Subject Matter

Serial Killers. Mad, anti-Jesus preachers. Racist Grandmas. Kids drowning in a river during a religious rite. These are the people that O'Connor writes about. All of her stories are rife with religious, racial, cultural, and/or class tension, mostly of the first one. Though she was a devout Catholic, the sentimentality and hope of Christian literature doesn't show up in most stories...these people aren't saved, even if they think so, but they aren't damned, either. It's as if she's writing about religious (or in the case of Wise Blood, anti-religious) people living in a godless or at least god-could-care-less world. There's no shortage of violence, death, and gore: favorite subjects of classically metal lyrics.

2. She's From the South

The South isn't the only region that's metal in the US--New England, Alaska, and even California each exhibit certain metal traits. But the South has a history unique to other regions--it experienced most of the devastation of the Civil War, and ever since has been a troubled region, from race relations to high obesity rates. Religious tension is also remarkable in the South, where due to its traditionally rural makeup has harbored stronger affiliations to religious (specifically Protestant) beliefs. The South is also the birthplace of bluegrass and country, which in this part of the country is not all horseback riding and wide-open skies. Some musicians wrote about downright dark and depressing things. Some even wrote about squaring off with the devil. One can be reminded of these songs when reading Wise Blood.

3. She's Catholic

While any Christian religion has been musically criticized (and eviscerated) by classic metal bands such as Black Sabbath and Slayer, Catholic imagery is the most ubiquitous of all genres, metal and otherwise. That's likely because Catholicism has such distinguishing iconography, from the rosary to the nun's habit to the holy grail. Plus Catholicism has this rich history of violence and conflict...ripe material for any writer or musician to write about.

4. She doesn't take her stories (or herself) too seriously

Flannery O'Connor once said that her shining moment was when she was five years old and a TV crew came to her home to see how she had trained a chicken to walk backwards. Most people would disagree with that--the chicken bit is just an odd factoid that literature students of the future can brag about knowing. Of course, she also has said the typical joke-y quip about how hard it is to write a novel and the like--easy for you to kid about, published author--but from what I've read, she carried her fame well.

As for her literature, there's always this oddly comical (or at least absurd) undertone, notably so in Wise Blood. "Serious" literature can often dress itself up and revel in drama and despair, playing with cliche, but Wise Blood doesn't fit in with "serious" literature. It's not all, "oh, poor people, how their lives suck"...a schtick I'm really sick of regarding fiction exploring middle-class angst. Of course, O'Connor doesn't write about middle-class anxiety--she writes about murderers and religious nuts. How "serious" can you get with that subject matter without depressing the shit out of everyone?

5. She doesn't really give a fuck...

...about what anyone else thinks. Though the literary world revered her as an exceptional writer rather early on (as in, before she died)--a remarkable achievement for a woman writer, she didn't exactly gush with gratitude for the establishment, which hadn't taken her work so well at first. Wise Blood was "indescribable" to reviewers, who, like me, had probably never read anything like it before...but unlike me, didn't really like its uniqueness. Of A Good Man is Hard to Find, O'Connor wrote, "I am tired of reading reviews that call A Good Man brutal and sarcastic. [...] when I see these stories described as horror stories I am always amused because the reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror."

Sometimes, folks just don't get it. Same goes for the genre of metal.

So, if you're into metal, or just good fiction for that matter, pick up a book of Flannery O'Connor's: you might just enjoy it.