Did I tell you I loved this show as a kid? The places you could go in books! We would read a story together, LaVar Burton and I, and he would teach me about race relations and growing up poor in Brooklyn, and I would bask in the glory of reading, reading, reading...I adored that show, and between it and Sesame Street, I feel like I kind of grew up with Brooklyn. When I went to NYC for the first time two years ago, it was so strange because it felt so familiar. Los Angeles is so detached from what I feel must be the American Experience. When I went on my road trip last summer I really felt like for the first time I was connecting with a lot of literature that I had been reading my whole life (and a lot of TV I had been raised by...um, I mean exposed to) -- and it's funny, but living in Long Beach, a quite historic city for Los Angeles, I realize that I don't think I will be able to live in an unhistorical neighborhood again, by choice. I love, of course, Downtown LA, but it's not quite ideal...yet. I love Old Town Orange, and Uptown Whittier (where I was raised), and obviously I love Fullerton, and the Hollywood Hills are super, and I like Silver Lake and Los Feliz and Pasadena... I mean, it's funny, but you couldn't really pay me to live in one of those fabricated Orange County neighborhoods ever again. And I hope this doesn't sound weird -- but I don't know if I'm going to ever feel that comfortable not living in an ethnically diverse neighborhood again. My in-laws live in a fabricated community in Orange County called Rancho Santa Maragrita, and when we get together with friends who live there they all ask us with this infuriating knowingish concern, "So HOW is it living in Long Beach?" Like we've moved next door to VIP Records and have Snoop Dogg over for BBQ every night. Several people, SEVERAL, have commented that it was probably a good idea that I grew my natural hair color out and got rid of that white blonde, you know, living in Long Beach. Several. It's strange what Long Beach does to you. It puts some reality into your life, some grit under your nails (acutally that's probably true, what with the port and all), and although there are gangs and thugs and overcrowded tenements, and dozens of homeless and loonies, dirty streets and trash clogged drains and bar after bar after bar after bar, and historical buildings that become gentrified and disrespected (goodbye Acres of Books; I understand why you had to sell out, but it still broke my heart; goodbye cool building at 7th and Pine; you had those awesome windows and unzoned lofts that you let people live in anyway; be careful Hotel America, with your secret society basement and 1900s building date; watch out Jergins Tunnel, I imagine the Long Beach Historical Preservation Society will not be able to salvage your art deco loveliness and treat you with even shred of respect given to the Flight of Angels; and farewell all that's left of Long Beach -- you live precariously on the razor's edge), well, I love this town. It gets into you. I like going home. I'm home now, here in Long Beach. Of course I'm an Angeleno - I'll move if I need/have/want to, but I love this city. You know, people here talk to each other. All the time. We pet eachother's dogs, I even hi-fived a guy the other day, a guy I didn't even know. They opened another teller to alleviate the line at the Washington Mutual, and we expressed our approval by slapping hands in the air. We do our share of muttering, too, but we aren't afraid to say hi or acknowledge that we exist. That's why I'm always so surprised to learn how violent Long Beach is -- I mean, we communicate! But then I remember how over crowded it is here, and I understand. I may love it here, high above the ground, with one of the best views (I think) in the whole city, and I have the privilege of observation and whatnot...I'm not so spoiled that I fail to see how spoiled I am.
All this just to talk about Flannery O'Connor's "Good Country People." The first time I read this was in Blythe's American Lit II class, and Blythe was so excited about it this story, while I wondered what all the fuss was about -- wait! Don't get me wrong, I thought it was a clever story, and immensely humorous, but I didn't feel I "learned anything" from this story, and I kind of glossed over it. Well, boys and girls, I read the story again for, well, American Lit II II, and had a whole different experience. What a brilliant story. I had this emotional experience reading the play, and I think I had this experience because I recently read and analyzed Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie, and focused on how repressed and tortured artists feel, especially when their art is subversive or goes against the ideals of the culture that feeds it. There's a sort of prophet archetype that the artist, especially in what I'm hoping I'm accurate in describing as Southern Renaissance Literature, fulfills. We are so proud in America, so invested in our ability to absolve ourselves of our sins, that when artists come along and show us our immorality, we expel. I'm really into this issue of Discipline and Punish that Foucault brought up, this leper thing vs the plague thing and the Panopticon -- seriously, I'm seeing it everywhere (even if I can't explain exactly what I see) -- but back to O'Connor, she ties all these things together AND MAKES IT FUNNY, I MEAN AS FUNNY AS IT REALLY IS!! I actually felt the horror this time as Hulga loses her grasp on reality, as she literally loses the one thing that makes her feel whole -- the line where she she imagines a life with the con man, a life in which he takes her leg on and off everyday, I mean, I felt so much empathy for this character who had everything figured out -- but only figured out with her leg on, when she was whole. Once you lose control over the part of yourself that you feel defines you -- or you realize exactly what it is that makes you vulnerable -- or you become aware that someone can disarm you without your consent -- it's really painful, and hit me much harder this time. Of course it's so funny. When he tells her that he was born not believing in anything and that he wasn't born yesterday...oh it's priceless.
I bought a the complete short stories of Flannery O'Connor at the bookstore in the square at Oxford, Mississippi, and I'm hoping to get more acquainted with this writer...and that maybe I'm meant to be a Southern Renaissance scholar. I'm certainly drawn to these writers. I've got the 19th century New England guys (Hawthorne and Melville) and these southern misfits. Somehow I feel right at home -- take a look, it's in book, a reading rainbow.
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