Re: JCO: Upon the Sweeping Flood & uplifting fiction

Hi, Steve.
Well said. I think that the earlier-discussed JCO stories
"Swamps" and "The Census Taker" -- both collected in the late-1960s book BY THE
NORTH GATE
-- and the title story in the collection UPON THE SWEEPING FLOOD look at
people's impulses to help each other in a very fresh and interesting way.
I'm in another literary discussion group in which this
interesting topic recently came up: What are good examples of "uplifting fiction?"
We have been reading a number of novels in which conflict, social pathology
and ambivalent endings predominate. Group members are eager to find something
more "positive" and "uplifting" for our next selection. I was trying to think
which JCO works would best fill the bill. "We Were the Mulvaneys" came to
mind first because -- although a lot of bad things happen in it, and at least one
of the main characters is destroyed by the novel's end -- the other
characters somehow manage to salvage their lives from the precipitating disaster, and
the book concludes with a low-key happy ending at a family picnic. RAPE, A
LOVE STORY and I'LL TAKE YOU THERE also concern protagonists who suffer much
adversity but remake their lives in a good way by the novels' conclusions. Oddly
enough, JCO's 9/11 story "The Mutants," collected in the book I AM NO ONE YOU
KNOW, show its young woman protagonist surviving disaster and thereby
"mutating" into a stronger, more aware person.
The word "uplifting" is tricky. What seems uplifting and inspiring to
one person may seem naive or sentimental to someone else. I remember some book
reviews of "We Were the Mulvaneys" called the ending sentimental. Personally,
I thought WWTM had an unusually happy ending for a JCO book -- not counting
the happy endings for Mysteries of Winterthurn and Bloodsmoor Romance.
But then does "uplifting" necessarily mean happy ending? What do you
think?

In a message dated 9/9/2005 2:37:36 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
jandsmerritt@earthlink.net writes:

<< There's a danger that, in our involvement with whatever we've done, under
circumstances where our emotions are so roiled up by everything that's
happened, we may feel impatient with those who follow different strategies
from ours (something that sounds very much like a JCO theme). I have the
greatest respect for your generosity, and you and those your are sheltering
have my strongest hopes that everything will work out as well as possible
for you all, given the tragic situation. I believe, though, that Cyrano's
advice was not only well meant, but that it does contain something valuable
to think about. I'm sure you're aware of people whose response to the
hurricane is precisely the opposite of yours. The scammers (including, as
you no doubt have heard, a group of anti-Semitic white supremacists) are
already trying to take advantage of those who want to help, as well as of
the victims themselves. Given the prevalence of fraud and other crimes on
the internet, we can't automatically assume that the people advertising
rooms for the victims necessarily have good motives. No doubt most of them
do, and perhaps all of them do, but it's perfectly possible that some of
them are looking for helpless people to take advantage of. Life, and the
internet, repeatedly confirm that JCO doesn't make up her stories about
monstrous predators purely out of her head. While person to person
generosity is a particularly wonderful thing when it works, there's
definitely something to be said for working through organizations such as
the Red Cross that, whatever their shortcomings, can be expected not to do
any deliberate harm, even when we have no personal knowledge of the people
who work there. >>
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