O'Connor

Flannery O'Connor was a visionary.

Her protagonists were all narcissists, pseudo-intellectuals, self-proclaimed prophets and do-gooders, immature progressives "rebelling" against their conservative upbringing.

Her irony and slight humor pointed out all the flaws in her characters, because it was essentially their own self-important actions that brought about all the chaos.

In this one story, "Everything That Rises Must Converge," this guy Julian wants to teach his old-South-values mother a "lesson" by going out of his way to strike up intellectual conversations with black people on the bus (despite the fact that they usually get annoyed by this--honestly, the kid has no sense of privacy). His mother gets punched in the face by this one black woman who she accidentally insults, and instead of consoling his mother, Julian drives the stake even further into her chest by calling her a "child" and telling her, basically, that she needs to get with it.

But O'Connor isn't saying that the old-South values were any better than the progressive ones. She wasn't being racist. She was just pointing out the arrogance of the youth, the holier-than-thou bull shit attitude Julian had.

The elitism, the pseudo-intellectual I-know-better-than-you thing, it's all so antiquated. That's the same sort of thing we see in Congress today. At the Ivy League schools. The kids that think that they're so edgy and cool, with their liberalism, their progressive values. They're no different than Julian. They think they know better, but who're they to say.

At the end of the story, his mother dies. Not because she was punched, but because her son wouldn't give it a rest. By "teaching his mother a lesson," he killed her. I guess in order to accept his new friends, he had to sacrifice his family.

God, I love this intellectual procrastination.