"The River" - Movie Night & Discussion

This event is now in person and via Zoom.  

"The River" is a haunting short story by the American author Flannery O'Connor. It is one of the ten stories included her short story collection A Good Man Is Hard to Find, published in 1955. Much of O'Connor's work focuses on concepts of pride, sin, and redemption.  Surprisingly, O'Connor's work carries a cult following.  You can find odd adaptations of her stories on YouTube.  She said, "To the deaf you have to shout and to the blind you have to draw large startling figures."  

Flannery does indeed draw large startling figures.  In this short story a young boy grows up in a home with parents preoccupied.  HIs "sitter" takes him to her home where they go to the river to witness a baptism.  Later the young boy returns to the river, seeking something more.  Baptism plays large in one of O'Connor's novels, "The Violent Bear It Away".   In the film discussion, Bevins will play with these themes, comparing and contrasting O'Connor's works. 

"The River" was adapted to film by Barbara Noble in 1977. It runs 29 minutes and will be followed by a movie / book / author discussion with Nancy Bevins.  Bevins lived in the South for over six years and explored the literary genius of Flannery O'Connor. 

Mary Flannery O'Connor (March 25, 1925 – August 3, 1964) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. She wrote two novels and thirty-two short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries.

She was a Southern writer who often wrote in a sardonic Southern Gothic style and relied heavily on regional settings and grotesque characters, often in violent situations. The unsentimental acceptance or rejection of the limitations or imperfection or difference of these characters (whether attributed to disability, race, crime, religion or sanity) typically underpins the drama. O'Connor's novel, Wise Blood was adapted to film and directed by John Huston. 

Please register on our calendar to get the Zoom link.  If you come in person please wear a mask in the community room.