Former leading New Zealand publisher and bookseller, and widely experienced judge of both the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Montana New Zealand Book Awards, talks about what he is currently reading, what impresses him and what doesn't, along with chat about the international English language book scene, and links to sites of interest to booklovers.
Thursday, October 24, 2013
'The Barber': A Story Flannery O'Connor Never Published
Even at 22, the author was smart, acerbic, and fascinated by human limitations.
Flannery O'Connor at the Amana Colonies in Iowa on October 9, 1947. (C. Cameron McCauley)In October 1970, six years after Flannery O'Connor died, The Atlantic surfaced one of her unpublished stories and ran it beneath an almost apologetic preface from her literary executor: "I have consented to this publication with a note making clear ... the earliness of the story and its apparent standing in the estimation of the author." Its standing was, apparently, not very high: O'Connor had written "The Barber" in her very early 20s, as a student at the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. She'd never published it or included it in any of her short-story collections. It's a tribute to O'Connor that even her b-sides were this good. In "The Barber," a college professor tries to talk a bunch of bigots into voting for a progressive candidate. It's a futile exercise—not because racists won't listen to reason, but because the professor just isn't very persuasive. After days of obsessing over the right words, he gives a lackluster rant against segregation that doesn't even impress the black boy sweeping the floors More
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