Monday, December 11, 2017

Standard American Garrulous

My guilty confession, my stammering admission of jackassery: I can't read Carson McCullers.

She writes a simplified Standard American Garrulous without kick or wit, in pages that spell out everything in detail while eschewing the sensory input that would make such a flat prose excusable.

I can read the brittle sermons of Flannery O'Connor, the crazed ravings of Eudora Welty, and even the garden-gone-to-seed Gothic of Truman Capote (who can write surprisingly well when he veers away from passages of Lyricke Poesie), but I recall nothing about Reflections In A Golden Eye beyond my own boredom, and I've just now tossed aside "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe" with a sense of shameful relief.

I'm sorry, but I just can't find a doorway into her style.

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