
Flannery O’Connor Didn't Care If You Liked Her Work - pan_cogito
https://churchlifejournal.nd.edu/articles/flannery-oconnor-didnt-care-if-you-liked-her-work/#.Xvn5txvapco.hackernews
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UncleOxidant
I was introduced to Flannery O'Connor 40 years ago by a black literature
professor teaching a class of mostly male (I think we had one female in the
class of ~50), mostly white engineering students who were mostly indifferent
to the subject at hand. I have to admit, going in I was one of those
engineering students who wasn't super excited to have to take a literature
class. But then he had us read some of O'Connor's stories and discuss them. I
was hooked. And I could also see what he was doing. He was trying to wake us
up to our white privilege indirectly by letting Flannery do the talking. I
could see that it made some of my fellow white male classmates a bit
uncomfortable. Even a bit angry in some cases. He'd always say in this
sonorous, deep voice "Gentlemen, in this class we're trying to see beyond the
mundane issues of life." (with emphasis on "mundannnne") I ended up really
enjoying that class. It couldn't have been easy to be a black adjunct
professor of literature in an engineering school at that time. In a lot of
ways I got the impression that he seemed to think we were shallow - and at
that time and at our age (18, 19) we definitely were - and he was trying to
expose us to stories that would shake us up some.

I felt not a little conflicted when I learned recently that the writer of
these stories which seemed to be critiquing racism in very strong terms
herself held racist views. Now we need to wrestle with that and this essay
seems helpful.

------
nate
Reminded me of someone recently asking on Reddit for advice on making videos
for YouTube. They had been at it for a few weeks and only had a handful of
YouTube subscribers to show for it. They wanted to give up.

The thing I always remind folks of in that situation is that to succeed at
many things, particularly creative things like YouTube and writing, you have
to do it for intrinsic reasons. You want the writing or videos out there
because somehow the act of putting them together and publishing satisfies you
even if not another single person was there to see it.

I think it applies really well in entrepreneurship. It's not a strict rule
obviously. There's people making stuff for other people all the time. But one
of the best ways to stick through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship is to
be working on something that has that intrinsic satisfaction. You're the best
user. Even if no one buys the thing, at least you have a piece of kit that
fixes some need you have.

~~~
redis_mlc
> They had been at it for a few weeks and only had a handful of YouTube
> subscribers to show for it. ... you have to do it for intrinsic reasons

You're at odds with the passive income crowd. lol.

FYI: an escort created a channel, put up some informative videos, then gave
up. A year later she happens across her old channel, which grew to about
20,000 subscribers on autopilot, then rapidly to 100,000 after some more
videos. (100,000 is the threshold of a lifestyle business if you're monetized,
with 1 million being a career.)

