Thesis Christ: Asher Behmer on Flannery O’Conner's Grotesque Aesthetic
Asher Behmer on Flannery O’Conner's Grotesque Aesthetic
For the final Thesis Christ of the year, we turn to Asher Behmer, an English major, who turned his eye to the work of renowned Southern author Flannery O’Conner, and who offers a new perspective on the grotesque depictions in her works.
What is your thesis about, generally?
Flannery O’Conner was a 20th-century American author, who was diagnosed with lupus in 1952. She returned home to Milledgeville, Georgia, where she wrote furiously for 12 years before her death in 1964. “Living with chronic pain greatly color[ed] her work” Behmer said, as in her writings from the time there is a great focus on characters spiritually struggling (and physically struggling) with the violence and evils of the world. Her writing is a “fleshly distressing artistry” where drifters, convicts, outcasts, etc., live hard lives in a Southern milieu best described as ‘Grotesque.’
Many interpret this project as Manichaean, with a binary between the ugly, evil world and the opposing divine grace. However Behmer presents an alternative hypothesis, he says “the pairing of distress and positive meaning is what she is trying to do,” depicting a world where you “can’t have one without the other.” There is suffering in this world, yes, but it coexists and is countered by a very present divine grace. Particularly, Behmer focuses on the “potent counter intuitive actions which manifest divine grace” to investigate how the world “bind[’s] distress and positive meaning.”
What got you inspired in this?
Behmer used to work as a server in a retirement home in Longmont, Colorado. He had a friend who was a line cook at the same place who had a strong propensity for poetry. They loved to talk poetry together, and sometimes prose fiction. They had both bonded over a mutual history of departure from the religion of their upbringing, and so his friend mentioned he should read O’Conner’s novel Wise Blood. It features a character who tries to become an atheist, but consistently fails by reverting to Christian patterns of behavior. This book was so transformational for Behmer that he briefly tried to get a religion minor, but unfortunately had to drop it in order to focus on writing his thesis.
What has the process been like for you, logistically and on a large scale?
“I’m the kind of person who’s very completionist,” Behmer described, and so in order to achieve levels of completionism some perfectionists can only dream of, he read O’conner’s entire body of work: two novels, 31 short stories, and all academic reviews on both of the novels. Behmer noted that O’Conner herself said that all future critics needed to read everything she had written in order to properly critique her, so he felt somewhat obliged. Of the process, he said it was “a couple of months of four articles a day, every day” (something he does not recommend).
But once he got past that part, he got to engage quite intimately with her work, theory, and biography. Even though it was a lot of work, Behmer said “becoming more [of an] expert in this subject than my thesis advisor was super gratifying.”
What has been a big motivator for you?
Behmer has high hopes that one of his chapters might be published as an article in a literary journal. Behmer has been careful to “identify ways that I could get it published” throughout the process, particularly taking note of the journals which frequently publish work on O’Conner. He’s also made mental notes of things in his chapters he could change in order to make things journal-ready (for example, where definitions would need to be moved to from the introduction, if that were to be cut).
Despite the fact that it causes great trepidation in most, Behmer is actually looking forward to his orals. He’s worked hard to make it such that it is stocked with people who will make a great conversation, and so he’s hoping the whole process will actually be fun.
What was the wackiest thing you learned about in researching? Any other fun facts?
For American Literature nerds, Behmer has two great fun facts for you. First, O’Conner, when she was a little girl, imagined that she had a guardian angel with feathers (who she would attack, for some reason). A large amount of the divine manifestations in her works come in the form of birds, so that aspect of her work is a reflection of this moment in her childhood.
Secondly, she only discovered the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (a very famous American author whose works were startlingly similar to O'Conner's) much later in life, after she had already written most of her work. The reason she found out about him was because she was once asked to write the preface for A Memoir of Mary Ann, who spent time at a convent which was founded by the daughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Any advice for thesising, or soon to be thesising students?
Behmer admits that the monster task of reading the entire body of work of an author is probably not something you should attempt, unless you really feel up for it, particularly because you should leave yourself plenty of time to write. Doing all the reading at the beginning was hard, but Behmer felt it was worthwhile in the end as it allowed him much more time to write.
When picking a thesis topic, of course it’s important to pick a topic that you feel strongly attached to (Behmer sure did). However, you should also make sure that you’re open to seeing the exact topic and progression of your narrative change over the course of the project. Perhaps you have a very clear idea of the narrative arc you want to tell throughout your chapters, or perhaps not. Either way, you should be open to feedback about how altering the presentation of your ideas might help them be communicated more effectively.
Anything else you’d like to share with the Reed student body?
“Food is really good motivation, and tea rocks.” Behmer calculated that, at a rate of 3-4 cups of green tea every day, he consumed a total of 550 cups of tea over the course of his thesis. Also, he says you should read more Southern writers.