Without cat in a basket, wrong turn, grandma's bad memory, her lying, her kicking feet that leads to cat landing on driver and, most improbable of all, the nearby presence of cold blooded killers, they would not have been murdered. It's only natural to conclude such a sequence can only occur in fiction, but when your luck runs out in real life, each detail of your suddenly horrible plot may feel as calculated or contrived, as if there's a host of decisions made against you, for others' entertainment. Until that happens, you can sit back to enjoy misfortunes not your own. It's a delicious tale.
“She would of been a good woman,” The Misfit said, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”
I've remembered that one-of-kind line ever since first reading it in my junior college English class back in 1981. I also remembered the next two lines that followed the one above, the lines that ended this short story:
“Some fun!” Bobby Lee said.
“Shut up, Bobby Lee” The Misfit said. “It’s no real pleasure in life.”
Flannery O’Connor is an excellent writer, you are too. It's always a pleasure to read your work.
The German term is "schadenfreude." Taking pleasure in others'misfortune. I don't believe the English language has anything comparable. Maybe "snark" or "snarky" might be weakly equivalent; but there's an undertone of fatuous silliness to the later English term that the German doesn't possess.
Yes, silliness is not part of German culture that's for sure. Schadenfreude has equivalents in other languages (Dutch leedvermaak, and Danish skadefro) but nothing similar in English.
This sequence is exactly how life works in my experience. So many small things added together, in the right order at the right/wrong time and things happen. Even the most improbable things come from the most mundane and easily overlooked of events and decisions. I've had two marriages which began with the most seemingly impossible of events all of which eventually became essential components leading up to our union. Miraculous even I can say.
Yet these things do not guarantee permanence for all their supernatural appearance on occasion. They give meaning at the time and become confusing markers in the end. I'm still working through the most recent and the final score isn't quite in. It's a Schrodingers Box kind of thing actually. Either Allah is wisest or He's a rather capricious master. Either way life is not as random as one might easily be led to believe.
Disasters, about as bad as it gets without anybody actually dying at least, are still subject to a chain of events and it fascinates me to trace them. Sitting in handcuffs in the back of a police van, one often has opportunity to examine these things and I have.
"seeing peasants having such a great time is revolting to global deciders, so they're promising to tear down airports, ban flights, penalize driving, and corral those not massacred by Jewjab Genocide or WWIII" - there is profound truth in this hilarious sentence: the global deciders really do hate seeing happy peasants, and we are being murdered, en masse, right in front of our eyeballs - yet so few people even NOTICE - thanks again Linh, for the laughs
That liberty ship made it a long time. Those were built in a crash program near the beginning of WWII. I've read that they were built so hastily that some of them actually broke in two while operating. Early in my Navy service, I served on two destroyers in 1973. One of them was an old tin can that was commissioned in 1949, and it was definitely showing its age already--everything looked old, lots of problems always needing attention, one time we even mysteriously sprung a leak one night next to the pier. The decrepitude was doubly obvious to me because I had reported there from another destroyer that was less than 2 years old.
That woman in your photo playing badminton looks like she's a fanatic. Two skinned knees!
There was a story that my late mother passed down to me many decades ago. As is generally known the Liberty Ships were being built before any sort of sophisticated computing device or computers were available. The engineers supervising the building of the ships had to account for expansion and contraction of the sheets of metal as the diurnal temperature fluctuated. According to my mother's story there was a man who was sort of a human computer in her family, a distant cousin I think I recall. He could do long and complex mathematical calculations in his head very rapidly and the ship builders used him to calculate changes in the ship building metal as the temperatures fluctuated.
When he was not tasked with this job (I wonder if the army conscripted him to do it, thus sort of enslaving him, or if he did it of his own volition perhaps out of patriotism?) he apparently had personal problems.
Any way, the story was that when not on the job this man was quite a heavy drinker. He would apparently drink himself into a stupor many nights in a local bar and then pass out along the street while walking home. My mother said his bosses (or overseers or whom ever) would know where to find him along the road the next morning and pick him up and bring him to work.
The lesson of the story? The Soviets may have lost several million souls at Stalingrad to turn the tide against the Nazis in the winter of 43; but a solitary drunk in New York helped build the Liberty Ships that saved Britain. Go figure.
Such a poignant essay, Mr. Dinh. Vung Tau appears much changed in your current photographs from the picture you paint in your essay of the place during the "Vietnam War." (I believe the Vietnamese call it the "American War"?)
I guess War is Good for Business (or so it's been said) for the American Military-Industrial complex but not so good for the people suffering under the bombs and invasions.
I have been considering a long visit to Vietnam and perhaps a move there. The beaches of Da Nang are beautiful now decades after the blood has been washed clean. But I keep wondering to myself, "How can the people ever completely forgive us Americans?" Although I was a generation too young to have been a soldier. I believe -- even if only in my morbid imagination -- that eyes would be drilling into my back, "You lousy Americans, why don't you go home and leave us in peace. For once."
Am I wrong to think that?
Now that I think of it, I am reminded of what a Palestinian friend once said to me many years ago, "We do not hate the American people, they are generally good-hearted. We hate your leaders who devise these things [wars]."
I'd say the idea we're just beasts has occurred to more than a few of our own kind, at times and I have little doubt a more highly evolved race would be sure of it.
Hi Linh. That first picture breaks my heart. The only consolation is that he wouldn't have a clue what it means. On the other hand, the last few pictures fill my heart with joy.
I just tried to order the first of your books, which I've had in in for a while, having finally gotten ahead of fines and other costs which keep me poor and found to my initial dismay, then joy actually, that each of the 3 which most interested me at this time, were sold out! Congratulations on that. I sincerely hope this is the breakthrough time for you brother. I'm just starting to put my own lifelong desire to be a struggling writer into action and this fact alone is encouraging. I'm still not sure people, who tend to think I talk to much as a rule, will be interested but my ambitions are small in this regard. I figured if someone like you was struggling to gain the readership you deserve, what chance for me? So I'm pleased for you on several fronts, not least of these my own hope that there are still people who read books. How long before Amazon will have yours back in stock?
My self-published books are print to order, so shouldn't be sold out. When I make a correction on a book, it's temporarily not available, so it may be listed as that, thus giving the impression of being sold out! Please do check again on those titles.
Before I got canceled, I had a NYC publisher, Seven Stories Press, that's owned by Dan Simon. My poetry publisher was Chax Press. I was anthologized and invited to read everywhere.
I should add that it is paperback I want. I've got plenty of shelves in my library for paperbacks but the hardcover shelf is singular and mainly just classics from when I could afford to choose. Besides which, my reading mode is reclined in a hammock preferably and hardcovers just don't do that as well.
Good to read your latest Linh. Have a good journey to PP and back. I was in Can Tho last week for an event with my daughter's school and I'm pleased to remote that the weather is Vung Tau is so much more pleasant. We spent the weekend at the Can Tho campus of the school watching high school students show off their English skills and hanging out together with their devices. We ate well - school cafeteria food went down well and there was an outdoor gala dinner in the school courtyard for the prizes being awarded. The 6 hour bus ride wasn't too bad - mostly expressways. Take care and don't forget to mention where you are writing from lately so I can find you!
Since moving close to Front Beach, I've been at Cóc Cóc Coffee mostly, but also three other cafes. In a week, I'll be out of here, but should be back by April 7th.
I walk around mumbling, "Chết tới nơi, còn vài giây nữa chết." Knowing that, I've been working extra hard to put my writing in order...
"I'm dead, just a few seconds away from death" or "He died over and over, and then he died a few second later."
A shot in the dark at translation last night and this morning, with love from Google.
If you feel like it, take a swim or just lounge in the sand and surf, Linh. It would be good for you. Your readers hope you are good to yourself, that you are eating well and getting sunlight, not forgetting yourself. And thank you for your work.
I purchased your books and wish you could sign them, but maybe if you ever come back to the United States that is a possibility. I'd love to meet you before we all die and are mercifully forgotten. Death smiles at all men of course, but I'd love to smile at you.
Nonsense, you're treating yourself the way you deserve. I have noticed your productivity and love hearing about you and your engine. You're not going gentle into that 'cancelled' night, God love you. Did you decide to kick booze completely? Can you have a few without cutting off bleeding edges completely? I understand why you'd had a period of abstinence, especially with your recent health concerns. Though if I was you, I'd park my bottom in the sand for an afternoon with a Beerlao product or local spirit while soaking up the local spirits. They say God watches out for drunks and small children, right? We hope something always has our backs and constant vigilance is probably overkill. Then again, I suppose that something can also conspire against us, as in the progressive calamity of Flannery's white lying Granny and basket cat. Thank you for the article link as well, Linh.
Hi everyone,
Some more thougths about the O'Connor story:
Without cat in a basket, wrong turn, grandma's bad memory, her lying, her kicking feet that leads to cat landing on driver and, most improbable of all, the nearby presence of cold blooded killers, they would not have been murdered. It's only natural to conclude such a sequence can only occur in fiction, but when your luck runs out in real life, each detail of your suddenly horrible plot may feel as calculated or contrived, as if there's a host of decisions made against you, for others' entertainment. Until that happens, you can sit back to enjoy misfortunes not your own. It's a delicious tale.
Linh
“She would of been a good woman,” The Misfit said, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”
I've remembered that one-of-kind line ever since first reading it in my junior college English class back in 1981. I also remembered the next two lines that followed the one above, the lines that ended this short story:
“Some fun!” Bobby Lee said.
“Shut up, Bobby Lee” The Misfit said. “It’s no real pleasure in life.”
Flannery O’Connor is an excellent writer, you are too. It's always a pleasure to read your work.
Martin (in Portugal)
The German term is "schadenfreude." Taking pleasure in others'misfortune. I don't believe the English language has anything comparable. Maybe "snark" or "snarky" might be weakly equivalent; but there's an undertone of fatuous silliness to the later English term that the German doesn't possess.
Yes, silliness is not part of German culture that's for sure. Schadenfreude has equivalents in other languages (Dutch leedvermaak, and Danish skadefro) but nothing similar in English.
This sequence is exactly how life works in my experience. So many small things added together, in the right order at the right/wrong time and things happen. Even the most improbable things come from the most mundane and easily overlooked of events and decisions. I've had two marriages which began with the most seemingly impossible of events all of which eventually became essential components leading up to our union. Miraculous even I can say.
Yet these things do not guarantee permanence for all their supernatural appearance on occasion. They give meaning at the time and become confusing markers in the end. I'm still working through the most recent and the final score isn't quite in. It's a Schrodingers Box kind of thing actually. Either Allah is wisest or He's a rather capricious master. Either way life is not as random as one might easily be led to believe.
Disasters, about as bad as it gets without anybody actually dying at least, are still subject to a chain of events and it fascinates me to trace them. Sitting in handcuffs in the back of a police van, one often has opportunity to examine these things and I have.
Life can sometimes imitate fiction, just not in 20-30 minutes it takes to read a short story.
"seeing peasants having such a great time is revolting to global deciders, so they're promising to tear down airports, ban flights, penalize driving, and corral those not massacred by Jewjab Genocide or WWIII" - there is profound truth in this hilarious sentence: the global deciders really do hate seeing happy peasants, and we are being murdered, en masse, right in front of our eyeballs - yet so few people even NOTICE - thanks again Linh, for the laughs
Thank you, Linh, for all your accounts. Always interesting. I'm always happy when I see one has been posted in my email page.
That liberty ship made it a long time. Those were built in a crash program near the beginning of WWII. I've read that they were built so hastily that some of them actually broke in two while operating. Early in my Navy service, I served on two destroyers in 1973. One of them was an old tin can that was commissioned in 1949, and it was definitely showing its age already--everything looked old, lots of problems always needing attention, one time we even mysteriously sprung a leak one night next to the pier. The decrepitude was doubly obvious to me because I had reported there from another destroyer that was less than 2 years old.
That woman in your photo playing badminton looks like she's a fanatic. Two skinned knees!
There was a story that my late mother passed down to me many decades ago. As is generally known the Liberty Ships were being built before any sort of sophisticated computing device or computers were available. The engineers supervising the building of the ships had to account for expansion and contraction of the sheets of metal as the diurnal temperature fluctuated. According to my mother's story there was a man who was sort of a human computer in her family, a distant cousin I think I recall. He could do long and complex mathematical calculations in his head very rapidly and the ship builders used him to calculate changes in the ship building metal as the temperatures fluctuated.
When he was not tasked with this job (I wonder if the army conscripted him to do it, thus sort of enslaving him, or if he did it of his own volition perhaps out of patriotism?) he apparently had personal problems.
Any way, the story was that when not on the job this man was quite a heavy drinker. He would apparently drink himself into a stupor many nights in a local bar and then pass out along the street while walking home. My mother said his bosses (or overseers or whom ever) would know where to find him along the road the next morning and pick him up and bring him to work.
The lesson of the story? The Soviets may have lost several million souls at Stalingrad to turn the tide against the Nazis in the winter of 43; but a solitary drunk in New York helped build the Liberty Ships that saved Britain. Go figure.
Such a poignant essay, Mr. Dinh. Vung Tau appears much changed in your current photographs from the picture you paint in your essay of the place during the "Vietnam War." (I believe the Vietnamese call it the "American War"?)
I guess War is Good for Business (or so it's been said) for the American Military-Industrial complex but not so good for the people suffering under the bombs and invasions.
I have been considering a long visit to Vietnam and perhaps a move there. The beaches of Da Nang are beautiful now decades after the blood has been washed clean. But I keep wondering to myself, "How can the people ever completely forgive us Americans?" Although I was a generation too young to have been a soldier. I believe -- even if only in my morbid imagination -- that eyes would be drilling into my back, "You lousy Americans, why don't you go home and leave us in peace. For once."
Am I wrong to think that?
Now that I think of it, I am reminded of what a Palestinian friend once said to me many years ago, "We do not hate the American people, they are generally good-hearted. We hate your leaders who devise these things [wars]."
' but its reverent and loving cargo also shows we’re not just beasts.'
Who said we were?
Is this the opposite of religion, a cult of downgrading!
g.
Sometimes bitter truths are hard to swallow. Like World War I, World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Ukraine, ad infinitum...
I guess one can always go watch a Disney movie instead. Not that I'd recommend wasting money on such silliness....
I'd say the idea we're just beasts has occurred to more than a few of our own kind, at times and I have little doubt a more highly evolved race would be sure of it.
Hi Linh. That first picture breaks my heart. The only consolation is that he wouldn't have a clue what it means. On the other hand, the last few pictures fill my heart with joy.
I just tried to order the first of your books, which I've had in in for a while, having finally gotten ahead of fines and other costs which keep me poor and found to my initial dismay, then joy actually, that each of the 3 which most interested me at this time, were sold out! Congratulations on that. I sincerely hope this is the breakthrough time for you brother. I'm just starting to put my own lifelong desire to be a struggling writer into action and this fact alone is encouraging. I'm still not sure people, who tend to think I talk to much as a rule, will be interested but my ambitions are small in this regard. I figured if someone like you was struggling to gain the readership you deserve, what chance for me? So I'm pleased for you on several fronts, not least of these my own hope that there are still people who read books. How long before Amazon will have yours back in stock?
Hi Rabbitnexus,
My self-published books are print to order, so shouldn't be sold out. When I make a correction on a book, it's temporarily not available, so it may be listed as that, thus giving the impression of being sold out! Please do check again on those titles.
Before I got canceled, I had a NYC publisher, Seven Stories Press, that's owned by Dan Simon. My poetry publisher was Chax Press. I was anthologized and invited to read everywhere.
Linh
Thanks Linh. I found the former publisher through links on another article. I'll get onto Amazon again and find out what's up.
I should add that it is paperback I want. I've got plenty of shelves in my library for paperbacks but the hardcover shelf is singular and mainly just classics from when I could afford to choose. Besides which, my reading mode is reclined in a hammock preferably and hardcovers just don't do that as well.
Good to read your latest Linh. Have a good journey to PP and back. I was in Can Tho last week for an event with my daughter's school and I'm pleased to remote that the weather is Vung Tau is so much more pleasant. We spent the weekend at the Can Tho campus of the school watching high school students show off their English skills and hanging out together with their devices. We ate well - school cafeteria food went down well and there was an outdoor gala dinner in the school courtyard for the prizes being awarded. The 6 hour bus ride wasn't too bad - mostly expressways. Take care and don't forget to mention where you are writing from lately so I can find you!
Hi Matthew,
Since moving close to Front Beach, I've been at Cóc Cóc Coffee mostly, but also three other cafes. In a week, I'll be out of here, but should be back by April 7th.
I walk around mumbling, "Chết tới nơi, còn vài giây nữa chết." Knowing that, I've been working extra hard to put my writing in order...
Linh
"I'm dead, just a few seconds away from death" or "He died over and over, and then he died a few second later."
A shot in the dark at translation last night and this morning, with love from Google.
If you feel like it, take a swim or just lounge in the sand and surf, Linh. It would be good for you. Your readers hope you are good to yourself, that you are eating well and getting sunlight, not forgetting yourself. And thank you for your work.
I purchased your books and wish you could sign them, but maybe if you ever come back to the United States that is a possibility. I'd love to meet you before we all die and are mercifully forgotten. Death smiles at all men of course, but I'd love to smile at you.
Hi Please take it from me,
Not drinking and eating carefully, I'm treating myself too well! It's a strain, though, to be alert at all time. Booze used to take the edge off.
Exhaustion is merciful. One has to let go. That Dylan Thomas poem isn't just silly, but cruel!
Despite my mumbling, I'm more productive than ever, since I can't turn myself off, but enough about me and my engine.
Death in Vietnamese exclamations is rather humorous:
https://linhdinh.substack.com/p/dead-father-dead-mother-death-has
Linh
Nonsense, you're treating yourself the way you deserve. I have noticed your productivity and love hearing about you and your engine. You're not going gentle into that 'cancelled' night, God love you. Did you decide to kick booze completely? Can you have a few without cutting off bleeding edges completely? I understand why you'd had a period of abstinence, especially with your recent health concerns. Though if I was you, I'd park my bottom in the sand for an afternoon with a Beerlao product or local spirit while soaking up the local spirits. They say God watches out for drunks and small children, right? We hope something always has our backs and constant vigilance is probably overkill. Then again, I suppose that something can also conspire against us, as in the progressive calamity of Flannery's white lying Granny and basket cat. Thank you for the article link as well, Linh.