Southern Grotesque1
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South Atlantic Modern Language Association
The Moral Function of Distortion in Southern GrotesqueAuthor(s): Delma Eugene PresleySource: South Atlantic Bulletin, Vol. 37, No. 2 (May, 1972), pp. 37-46Published by: South Atlantic Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3197720
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THE MORAL
FUNCTION
OF
DISTORTION
IN
SOUTHERN GROTESQUE
DELMA
EUGENE
PRESLEY
Georgia
Southern
College
Interpretations
of the
grotesque
in recent Southern
literature
often
seem
as diverse
as
the offhand
comments
of the blind
men
about the
proverbial
elephant.
Most
agree
that
this massive
body
of
works
has
a
shape
unlike
other
objects
they
have
encountered.
But from this point on, there is a multiplicity of explanations. A
common
description
has to
do with
causation: Southern
grotesque
is
often
said
to
be
the
literary
aftermath
of
historical
misfoitune.
William
Van
O'Connor,
in
a
volume
called
The
Grotesque,
main-
tains
that the "old
agricultural
system"
of
the South
depleted
the
land
and left
an
economically
unstable
and
emotionally
under-
developed
society.
He
reasons:
"Poverty
breeds
abnormiality;
in
many
cases,
people
were
living
with
a
code
that
was
no
longer
applicable,
and
this meant a
detachment
from
reality
and
a
loss
of
vitality."'
Another
critic,
Lewis
A.
Lawson,
adds
to
this
theory
the
explanation
that the Southern experience is characterized
by
"cultural
confusion"
having
to
do
with
its
agrarian
heritage.
The
South,
Mr.
Lawson
points
out,
has "retained
a
provincial,
insular,
conservative
culture. It
is
even
totlay
more
agrarian-minded
than
the
remainder
of the
country.
The
setting
of
its
novels
is still
in
the
country
or
the
small
town,
whereas most
'American'
novels
have
an urban
setting
..
."'
Given
such a
culturally-oriented
analysis,
it
should
come
as
no real
surprise
to
learn
that we
are
said to
be
at
the
end of
the
period of the grotesque since "the South in the last fifteen years
has
rejoined
the
cultural
union."3
Furthermore,
the
grotesque
mode
is
said
to
contain
a
vision
characteristic
of a
philosophical
movement,
the
absurd.
Mr. Lawson's
essay
ends
with
this
state-
ment:
"If
the world
is
absurd,
then
one
must
embrace
a
philosophy
of the
absurd;
consequently
several
recent
novels
.
.
reveal
existen-
tial
professions
of
faith."4
Not
all
treatments
of the
grotesque
attempt
to
explain
it
in
terms
of
its
cultural
and
philosophical
tendencies.
Irving
Malin,
for
example, says
his
examination
of
grotesque
works
(he prefersthe
term
"gothic")
is
fundamentally
a
description
of their
surface
characteristics.
Mr.
Mlalin
finds
himself
in
agreement
with
John
Aldridge,
who
speaks
of
a
"poetry
of
disorder."
The
disorders
are
threefold:
narcissism,
familial
conflict,
and
dream-like
confusion.
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Grotesque
The
evidence
of distorted love
suggests
to Mr.
Malin that the
grotesque reflects radical narcissism: "Although it is easy to dismiss
the
cripples
and
homosexuals in
new
American
gothic
as
sensa-
tional
cardboard
figures, they
are
frequently
symbols
of
disfiguring,
narcissistic
love.
They
'work'
as does Frankenstein."5
Since
self-love
usually
begins
at
home,
Mr. Malin's
second
definition
of
"new
American
gothic"
includes
the belief
that
"the
family
dramatizes
the
conflict
between
private
and social
worlds,
ego
and
super-ego."
The third
characteristic
accounts
for
chronological
confusion
and
personal
disengagement
in
"gothic":
"This
total
effect
is that
of
a
dream."6
One would be both
presumptuous
and
wrong
to dismiss com-
pletely
the
insights
into the
literature
of the
grotesque
which
issue
from
the critical
approaches
of
William
Van
O'Connor,
Lewis
A.
Lawson,
and
Irving
Malin.
However,
there is
good
reason to
question
each,
for
not
one of them
pays enough
attention
to the
function of
distortion-a
function
Flannery
O'Connor
considered
the sine
qua
non for the
grotesque
mode. The
fact
that the
grotesque
is
seldom
understood
properly,
according
to
Miss
O'connor,
is
re-
lated to the critic's
lack
of
familiarity
with
the
Southern
experience.
She once told students at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia: "I
have found
that
anything
that comes
out
of
the South
is
going
to
be
called
grotesque
by
the Northern
readers,
unless
it
is
grotesque,
in
which
case
it
is
going
to
be
called
realistic."
Miss
O'Connor
then
pointed
out
that
grotesque
works
present
a
"mystery
and
the un-
expected"
which
refer
to
unusual
experiences
not included
in
the
"manners and
customs"
of
everyday
existence.7
Literature
of
the
grotesque,
according
to the
authoress,
is
distinguished
by
a
moral
or
theological
vision
not
usually
associated
with realistic
works.
Freaks
appear
in
her
fiction,
she
said,
to reflect
quite
simply
what
man is like without God:
Whenever
I'm
asked
why
Southern
writers
particularly
have a
penchant
for
writing
about
freaks,
I
say
it
is
because
we are
still
able
to
recognize
one.
To
be able
to
recognize
a
freak,
you
have
to
have
conception
of the whole
man,
and
in
the South
the
general
conception
of man is
still,
in
the
main,
theological.8
We
might
think of
Miss
O'Connor's
remarks
in the
following
way:
Imagine
that
the
surface
of
grotesque
literature
is like
that
of a three-way mirror found in most tailor's shops. The only prob-
lem
is that
each
section
is broken
and
often
pieces
of mirror
are
completely
missing.
What
you
get
is an
image
of
depth,
but it
is
also
an
unpleasant
collection
of unrelated
and distorted
parts
of
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witness about
human
possibilities
in the
light
of
God's
grace
as well
as the inhuman possibilities of lives lived without that light. Thus
the
function of
distortion
in
Southern
grotesque
is
essentially
moral
in
nature;
this
mode
presents
simultaneously
an
image
of
man's
incompleteness
and
an
understanding
of what he
ought
to
be.
The
theological
nature
of
grotesque
is
appropriated
usually
by
critics
to the works
of
Flannery
O'Connor
who,
incidentally,
makes
it
no
hard task.
However,
there
are
good
reasons
to
bear
in mind
her
point
of view when we examine
other
grotesque
works.
While
the
focus
may
not be
the
same,
the
vision
is
there for sure.
For
example,
contrary
to
the
general
opinion
of
critics,
both
Carson
McCullers and Tennessee Williams draw upon a view of man in-
formed
by
the
redemptive
potential
of
love. Their
grotesque
crea-
tions
proceed
on
the
assumption
that
there
exists
a
norm
against
which
the
aberrations
of
their characters
should be
judged.
The
chief
difference
between
these two writers
is
that,
whereas
Mrs. McCullers
emphasizes
the
darkness
of
life
without the
light
of
love,
Williams,
particularly
in the works
written
since the
mid-fifties,
speaks
of
the
benign
possibilities
of
living
in that
light.
Carson
McCullers'
fictional
creations
appear
as stiff
puppets
performing in front of a hazy yet
constant
backdrop.
Her
concern
with
twisted
lives,
as
early
as
"Reflections
in
a
Golden
Eye,"
first
published
in
Harper's
in
1941,
seems
to
be related
to a
larger
truth
about
life's
meaning.
Tennessee
Williams,
a
loyal
friend
and in-
terpretor
of
McCullers'
work,
wrote
an
introduction
to the
1950
edition
of
Reflections
in a
Golden
Eye.
He
suggests
that
there
is a
mysterious
"Sense
of
the
Awful"
in
Mrs.
McCullers'
writing.
On
the
surface
are
"crazy
people
doing
terrible
things."
But these
are
external
symbols
of "a kind
of
spiritual
intuition
of
something
almost
too incredible
and
shocking
to talk about....
It is the
in-
communicable something that we shall have to call mystery. .
.10
The
closest
we
get
to
that
"incommunicable
something"
in
Reflec-
tions
is that
"ghastly
green"
peacock
with
a
golden
eye-drawn
in
watercolor
by
Anacleto,
the
Filipino
houseboy
and
constant
com
panion
of
Alison
Langdon.
Mrs.
Langdon
and
her friend
speak
of
"grotesque"
reflections
in
the "immense
golden
eye." (This
concept
of
reflection
is not
far
removed
from
our
interpretation
of
Flannery
O'Connor's
position.)
One
assumes that
the mirror
device
in
this
novella
reflects
the distorted
images
of
those
surrounding
them:
the
sadistic
Captain
Penderton
and
his
masochistic-voyeur
Private
Elgee
Williams;
the
Captain's
sensual
yet
dumb wife, Lenora, and
her lover
Major
Morris
Langdon-the
handsome
but
insensitive
husband
of
the
semi-invalid
Alison.
We
see
three
couples
in
this
work:
the
Captain
and
the
Private,
Lenora
and the
Major,
Alison
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and Anacleto. The first two
couples,
probably
seen
through
the
eye
of the watercolor peacock, engage in actions which reflect that,
despite
their
need
for
love,
they
are committed
to
nothing
less
than
distorted
images
of
their own
selfishness;
this
is not
merely
narcis-
sism,
as
Malin
suggests.11
Alison
and
Anacleto,
on
the other
hand,
want
to
leave
this
grotesque
menagerie
and
begin
a new
life
together
untainted
by
sexual
contact.
Alison's
fatal
heart
attack
prevents
this,
yet
an
ideal
exists
in
Reflections
although
doomed
from
the
start.
The
publication
of
"The
Ballad
of
the
Sad Cafe"
by
Harper's
Bazaar
in
1943
demonstrated
that
Mrs.
McCullers'
earlier
story
was
not
as
insignificant
as
both
she
and
her
most
sympathetic
critics
contended. Instead of
expurgating
her earlier fascination with the
grotesque,
this effort
clarifies
and refines that
fascination
into
a
piece
of short
fiction
which
many
consider to be the
best
from
her
pen.
Carson
McCullers'
Ballad
is
an
attempt
to
go
beyond
her
earlier
tale and
fashion her
materials
into
an
allegory
embodying
a
moral
point
of
view.
Her
experimentation
with
allegorical
technique
is
precisely
what
Mark Schorer
says
all
technical
experimentations
are-a
discovery
of
"intellectual
and
moral
implications."12
After
telling
the
story
of Miss
Amelia
Evans'
unsuccessful
search
for love
with
two kinds of men-the stud Marvin Macey and the queer Ly-
mon
Willis-Mrs.
McCullers ends
her
story
with
a
parable
which
clarifies
the issue
presented
so
subtly
in
the
preceding
narrative.
The
parable
concerns
"twelve mortal
men,"
all
prisoners
and
mem,
bers
of
the chain
gang.
They
cannot
avoid
their
task of
breaking
the
"clay
earth"
on
sweltering
August days.
They
are
condemned
to
an
earthly
hell-separated
by
the chains
that
bind
them
together.
Yet
condemnation does not
preclude
human
hopefulness:
And
every day
there is
music. One
dark voice will start
a
phrase, half-sung,
and
like a
question.
And
after
a
mo-
ment another voice will
join
in,
soon the
whole
gang
will
be
singing.
The
voices
are
dark
in the
golden
glare,
and
the
music
intricately
blended,
both
somber
and
joyful.
The
music
will swell
until
at
last
it
seems that
the
sound
does
not
come
from
the
twelve
men on
the
gang,
but
from the
earth
itself,
or
the
wide
sky.
It
is
music that
causes
the
heart
to
broaden and
the
listener
to
grow
cold
with
ecstasy
and
fright.13
The
hopefulness
of
this
music,
as
Oliver
Evans
notes,
is
love:
"They
escape temporarily through their singing (love), which it is signifi-
cant
that
they
do
together
in
an
attempt
to
resolve,
or
rather
dis-
solve,
their
individual
identities."14
Even
though
one
seldom
finds
examples
of
durable
love
among
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members
of a
group
or
between
two
people
in McCullers'
fiction,
one is nevertheless struck by the fact that she considers it both
good
and
necessary
that
her
characters
seek
love. Love
brings
out
the
best
in either
partner,
as evidenced
by
the
noticeable
ameliora-
tion
of Miss Amelia's
manner after the
hunchback
Lymon
takes
up
with
her:
Miss
Amelia
was the
same
in
appearance. During
the week
she
still
wore
swamp
boots
and
overalls,
but
on
Sunday
she
put
on
a
dark
red
dress
that
hung
on
her
in
a
most
peculiar
fashion. Her
manners,
however,
and
her
way
of
life
were
greatly changed.
She
still
loved a
fierce
lawsuit,
but she
was
not
so
quick
to
cheat her
fellow man
and to
exact
cruel
payments.
Because the
hunchback
was
so ex-
tremely
sociable,
she
even
went
out
a
little-to
revivals,
to
funerals,
and
so forth.15
The
relationship
between
Miss
Amelia
and
Cousin
Lymon
is
similar in kind to that
of
Alison
and
Anacleto;
it
exists
on an
ideal
level
transcending
mere
carnal
knowledge.
Occasionally
the
partners
seem to
possess
the rare
gift
of
clairvoyance.
Each
knows
instinctively
how
to
please
the
other.
Alison
and
Anacleto
eagerly
engage
in delicate rituals of tea and conversation about art and
travel.
The
knowing
glances
exchanged
between
Amelia
and
Lymon
indicate a
similar
depth
of
knowledge
which
even
the
townspeople
acknowledge.
Despite
these moments
of
personal
transcendence,
however,
each
couple ultimately
fails
to
stretch
the moment
into
a
lengthy
relationship,
a
way
of
life.
Their
failure to achieve
last-
ing
love,
let it
be
noted,
is
a
comment
as
much
upon
their inimical
environment
as
it
is
upon
their own
incompleteness.
The failure
certainly
does not
suggest
that it
was
wrong
for
them
to
seek
love.
And the benefits of living in the light of love, as evidenced in the
relationships
of
Alison-Anacleto
and
Amelia-Lymon,
far
outweigh
the
shallow
selfishness
of those
surrounding
them.
Because
Malin
overlooks
McCullers'
understanding
of
the
salutary
nature
of human
love,
his
thesis about
narcissism
in
her
works
must be set aside
as
a
limited criticism.16 He
has failed to notice the
way
distortion
is
used
to
call attention
to what
is
sadly lacking
in
the lives
of
most
of
Mrs.
Cullers'
stiff
characters-love.
Carson
McCullers and
Tennessee
Williams have a
great
deal
in common.
Their characters are vexed
by
frustrations
of
the
mind
and the
body,
and their styles have
strong poetic
touches. Williams'
introduction
to
Reflections,
aside
from
his
critical
comment
about
the role
of
"mystery"
in her
vision,
is
an
open
affirmation
of
his
warm
personal
regard
for her. But
the
view
of
man
that
ultimately
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emerges
from
the
body
of Williams'
works makes
him
more
akin
to Flannery O'Connor. His works published since the mid-fifties
often
tend
to
surpass
Miss
O'Connor's
in terms
of their
obvious
theological
meaning.
Williams' short
story,
"Desire
and the
Black
Masseur,"
is
per-
haps
the earliest
and
clearest
example
of his
grotesque
vision.
A
small
man,
aged thirty,
named
"Burns,"
had "no idea
of
what
his
real desires were."
He
had
an
"instinct
for
being
included
in
things
that
swallowed
him
up."
He
was
engulfed
by
his
relatives
and
em-
ployer.
One
day,
while
visiting
a turkish
bath,
he discovers
that
his
masseur
is
a
huge
Negro
man.
The masseur
goes
about his work
with
a
strange
violence which
produces
in Burns masochistic
pleasure;
for
this
he returns
regularly
until the
manager
discovers one
day
the
bruised
body
of Burns.
He shouts
to the
masseur:
"Get the hell
out
of
my place
.
.
.
Take this
perverted
little
monster
with
you,
and
neither of
you
had
better show
up
here
again "17
The
masseur
takes
Burns
to
his
place
in the town's
colored section.
While Burns'
body
is
being
dissected
and
eaten
by
the
giant
black
man,
across the
street
a
preacher
admonishes
his
worshipers:
Suffer,
suffer,
suffer
Our Lord
was nailed
on
a
cross
for
the sins of the world They led him above the town to
the
place
of
the
skull,
they
moistened
his
lips
with
vinegar
on
a
sponge, they
drove five
nails
through
his
body,
and
He
was
the
Rose of the
World
as
He bled
on
the
crossl18
Note that
this
tale
of
grotesque
horror
takes
place
during
the
celebration
of
the
death
of
Jesus.
The
only
connection
one
can
make
between
these two
events is that
the
pain
and
pleasure
of
human
violence
has a
theological
counterpart.
This
early
story
simply
states,
without
clarification,
that
a
relationship
exists
be-
tween human actions and theological meaning.
Other
works
by
Williams
are
similar
in
one
way
or
another
to
"Desire
and
the
Black
Masseur."
Yet
the
author
has not
often
left
unexplained
the
connection
between
human
actions
and
theo-
logical
meaning.
In
a
play
of
1958,
Suddenly
Last
Summer,
one
finds
among
references to
homosexuality
and
cannibalism
an overt
moral
point
of
view.
We
learn that
last
summer
Sebastian
Venable
was
devoured
by
street
urchins-many
of
whom
he
had
formerly
entertained
and
selfishly
indulged.
Sebastian
never
appears
in
the
play.
The
story
of
his
bizarre
death
is
the
awful
burden
of
his
cousin, Catharine Holly. Sebastian's mother refuses to believe Cath-
arine's
story
and
tries to
keep
her
in an
asylum
to
protect
her
son's
"good
name."
But
we
know,
as
does
the
psychiatrist
Cuckrowicz,
that
the
girl's
story
is
true.
And we also
know that her
concept
of
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the incident's
moral
meaning
is central to
this
play:
Sebastian's
utterly selfish life and his shocking form of death are a parable of
"our times."
His
destiny perfectly
symbolizes
what
happens
to
one
who
possesses
a
daemonic vision
of
God and
lives
completely
unto
himself.19 Catharine cannot
accept
either
Sebastian's view
of God
or
his
distorted
concept
of
mankind.
She
proposes
that,
while
the
human situation
may
well
be
compared
to
the fate of
passengers
aboard a
ship
wrecked
at
sea,
"that's
no
reason for
everyone
drown-
ing
for
hating
everyone drowning "20
The modern
problem
is
ethical
in
nature:
"We all
use each
other and
that's what we
think
of
as
love,
and not
being
able to
use
each
other
is
what's-hate.
.
.
"21
Catharine explains that Sebastian's fundamental problem, like man-
kind's,
concerns
misconceptions
about
the
true
God:
"We're
all of
us
children
in
a
vast
kindergarten
trying
to
spell
God's
name with
the
wrong alphabet
blocks."22
Even in the
early
plays,
Williams'
concern with
moral
issues
is
fairly
obvious.
In
A
Streetcar
Named
Desire
the
conflict
is
clearly
the flesh
versus
the
spirit;
not
only
is the
clash
evident
in
the mutual
antagonism
of
the "brute"
Stanley
and
the
"moth"
Blanche,
it is
the
major
tension
within
the lives
of
each. Blanche's
aestheticism
is overbalanced
by
her
alcoholism, nymphomania,
and
debauchery;
Stanley's
tender
love for
his
wife,
Stella,
is undermined
by
his
coarse
brutality.
The
inability
of the flesh
to
coexist
harmoniously
with the
spirit-a
classical
theological
problem-is
once
again
seen in
the
allegorical
Summer
and
Smoke,
produced
shortly
after
Streetcar.
It is
important
to
remember
that the
bulk
of Williams'
so-called
grotesque
works
have
a
moral
focus.
Indeed
this focus
has
become
so
adjusted,
so
refined,
in
his
recent
works
that
we
no
longer
see
distortion,
only
clear
pictures
of
reconciliation
in
progress.
In
The
Night
of
the
Iguana (1961)
the
neurotic
minister
finally
finds
peace with God and man. In The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here
Anymore
(1964)
a
dying
affirmer of
the
flesh
learns
a
spiritual
les-
son
from a
mystic
who has
more than
surface
resemblances
to
Jesus
Christ
and
other bearers of God
from
the
Orient.
Despite
the
ex-
istence
of
theological
content
in
Williams'
works,
the
critical,
or
rather
uncritical,
myth
continues
that
he
is
a
playwright
obsessed
with sex and
violence.
The
truth
is that
he
has
interpreted
the
moral
function of his
grotesque
vision
to
unheeding
critics
and
interpreters
to
the
point
of
oversimplification,
and
in
so
doing
has
lost
what he
once
described
as
the
grotesque's
sense of
"mystery."
The function of distortion in recent Southern grotesque litera-
ture
is
to set
forth
an
interpretation
either of
the whole
man
or
of
what
might
make
him whole.
Flannery
O'Connor's
conception
of
man
is rooted in
Christian
thought,
as is
Tennessee
Williams'
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conception
with
some modifications.
Carson
McCullers'
distortions
reflect her characters' need of the salutary quality of a human love
which
transcends the limitations
of the flesh.
Although
the
views
of
the
whole man
are not
always
shared
by
the three
writers,
the
function
of
the distorted
images
in each
is moral
in nature.
Louis
D.
Rubin,
Jr.,
would
probably
have us
add to this
list the
name
of
William Faulkner-once
described
by
Tennessee
Williams
as
a
"most
notorious and
unregenerate
member"
of
the
"Gothic
School."
Professor Rubin
explains
that
the
aberrations,
frustrations,
and
failures
in
Faulkner's
world
are there
to reveal
a
larger
view
of
the
potential
of human
love:
He wanted
the world
to be
a
place
where
love
is
stronger
than
fear,
compassion
is
stronger
than
hate.
It
was
not
such
a
world,
and so he
composed
tragedies,
show-
ing
what
happened
to
people
when
love was
absent.
He
showed the
destructiveness
of
hate,
the
futility
of
selfish-
ness,
the
viciousness
of fear.
He
created human
beings
dominated
by
these
passions,
showed the
ruin
they
wreaked.23
The
grotesque
mode
in
recent
Southern literature
cannot
be under-
stood when one fails to
grasp
the moral function of distortion.
That
most
critical
responses
to the
grotesque
have
not
taken
this into
account is
evident
in the
repetition
of irrelevancies
about
decadence
which
are
often based
on
untenable theories
of
cultural
causation
and
which
usually
result
in
unimaginative
interpretations.
The
image
of
man
is
broken
in
this
vision,
but
it
has not
always
been
nor
should it
necessarily
reniain.
But
since
the
present image
is
broken,
the
grotesque
mode
continually
reminds
us of
what
once
was
and,
better
still,
what
yet
might
be.
NOTES
1.
William
Van
O'Connor,
The
Grotesque:
An
American Genre
and
Other
Essays
(Carbondale,
Illinois,
1962),
p.
6.
2.
Lewis A.
Lawson,
'The
Grotesque
in
Recent
Southern
Fiction"
in
Patterns
of
Commlitnment
in
American
Literature,
el.
by
Marston
LaFrance
(Toronto,
1967),
p.
175.
3.
Lawson,
p.
178.
4.
Lawson,
p.
179.
He
thinks
of
the
following
as
"existential
affirmations
of
faith":
Styron's
Set
7'his
House on
Fire,
McCullers'
Clock
Without
Hands,
and
Percy's
The
Moviegoer.
5.
Irving
Malin, New American
Gothic
(Carbondale,
Illinois,
1962),
pp.
5-6.
6.
Malin,
p.
9.
7.
Flannery
O'Connor,
"Sonie
.-spects
of
the
Grotesque
in
Southern
Fiction,"
in
Mystery
(aid
Man,lers,
ed.
by
Sally
and
Robert
Fitzgerald
(New
York,
1969),
p.
40.
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8.
O'Connor,
Mystery
and Manners.
p.
44.
9.
Ibid., pp.
117-18.
10.
Tennessee
Williams,
"Introduction,"
Reflections
in
a
Golden
Eye
by
Carson
McCullers
(New
York,
1950), p.
xiii.
11.
Malin overlooks
the
relationship
between Alison and Anacleto and
treats
only
the
violent
aspects
of the
Captain's
and the Private's various encounters.
See
pp.
23-25.
12.
Mark
Schorer,
"Technique
as
Discovery"
in
Critical
Approaches
to
Fiction,
ed.
by
Keith McKean and
Shiv
K.
Kumar
(New
York,
1968),
p.
273.
13.
Carson
McCullers,
The
Ballad
of
the
Sad
Cafe
and
Other Stories
(New
York,
1958),
p.
71.
14.
Oliver
Evans,
The
Ballad
of
Carson McCullers
(New
York,
1965),
pp.
133-34.
15.
McCullers, Ballad,
p.
24.
16. Mr. Malin's
point
about narcissism
is limited with reference to
Mc-
Cullers.
However,
he
seems
pretty
much
on
target
when
he
turns
to
Capote
and
Salinger.
See
pp.
14-19.
17. Tennessee
Williams,
One
Arm
and
Other
Stories
(New
York,
1948),
p.
92.
18. Ibid.
19.
For
a
clever
treatment
of
this
play
as
a
well
wrought
didactic
drama,
see
Paul
J.
Hurley,
"Suddenly
Last Summer
as
a
Morality
Play,"
Modern
Drama,
IX
(February,
1966),
392-402.
20.
Tennessee
Williams,
Suddenly
Last Summer
(New
York,
1958),
p.
64.
21.
Ibid.,
p.
63.
22.
Ibid.,
p.
42.
23.
Louis D.
Rubin,
Jr.,
The
Curious Death
of
the
Novel:
Essays
in
American
Literature
(Baton
Rouge,
Louisiana,
1967),
p.
150.
Southern
Books
Exhibits of
the
Southern
Books
of 1971 chosen
by
a
jury
of bookmen in
Detroit are
available
to
libraries
which
have locked
display
cases.
Some
thirty
books, selected on the basis of typography and design, are available for an
exhibit
of
one month.
Apply
to Lawrence
S.
Thompson, Department
of
Classics,
1169
Patterson,
University
of
Kentucky,
Lexington,
Kentucky
40506. A
printed
handlist
will be
available
in the
latter
part
of the
spring,
and
typed
lists are
available
at
present.
Mr.
Thompson
also
arranges
for
exhibits of
a
comparable
group
of
Mid-
western
Books,
Russian
Books,
and
Swedish
Books.
Of
the
first
the
1971 books
are
now
available,
and
of
the
Russian
and
Swedish
the
1970
books
are
now avail-
able.
There is
no
charge
for
any
of
these
exhibits,
but
libraries
which show
them must
handle
carriage
charges,
including
insurance en route
to
the next
exhibitor.
46