Georgia Cento
Advisory: Flannery’s use of an unacceptable racial slur is
not excluded from this cento of her short stories’ ’titles.
Wildcat,
wise blood—
a good man is hard to find.
A late encounter with the enemy:
a stroke of good fortune—
Enoch and the gorilla,
the heart of the park.
The enduring chill,
the crop.
The barber,
Judgment Day,
a view of the woods—
the river,
a circle in the fire.
Parker’s back:
the geranium,
the peeler,
the turkey,
all the comforts of home—
the violent bear it away.
Revelation,
the displaced person—
you can’t be any poorer than dead.
The artificial nigger,
good country people,
the train,
a temple of the Holy Ghost,
The Partridge Festival,
Greenleaf:
the life you save may be your own.
The lame shall enter first.
Why do the heathen rage?
Everything that rises must converge.
© 2016 Katherine Williams
Centos are composed of titles taken from another book or collection. This one is made of all the titles of Flannery O’Connor’s published short stories, verbatim. Although the casual, unrepentant racism exposed in Flannery’s letters contradicts her sublime fiction, it should be open for discussion the same as her Catholicism, Southernness, and Otherness.
The author gratefully acknowledges publication of "Georgia Cento" in The Longleaf Pine’s issue celebrating the ninetieth birthday of Flannery O’Connor.
