Put simply by one of our Olio members: "Read-Ins are like the book club that I actually want to be a part of. It's so much more fun to engage with these texts as a group and with a teacher than as a solo activity."

"A Good Man is Hard to Find"
Flannery O’Connor’s classic short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find” seems dedicated to dramatizing what its title declares, offering a world filled with horrible people: a grandmother so annoying that readers will find themselves rooting for her to meet a grisly end, a son devoid of personality, empathy, and imagination, a pair of bratty, sadistic grandchildren, and a serial killer who blames his murderous impulses on Jesus.

Why anyone would want to read such a story is a question O’Connor devotes all of her creative power to answering. Somehow she succeeds. The story she tells is perversely mesmerizing. The desolate landscape of the postwar south becomes a source of fascination. The sordid cast of characters elicits an emotional investment that is hard to describe, making us laugh, cringe, recoil, but also care.

How does O’Connor achieve this? Why does she want us to care? What use is our compassion? Does she invite us to imagine a better world, one in which good people are not so hard to find, or is she suggesting we pin our hopes on the hereafter? How might her story help us cope with what may seem like our equally dangerous present moment?

In this read-in, we will analyze each section of this story carefully in order to understand how it works, how its stark, remorseless sentences engage our feelings, and what it might be seeking to teach us.

Olio Read-ins were started by historian Jamie Warren:

"Rooted in the social revolution of the 1960s, Read-ins have always been essential to the political project of building communities, and bolstering progressive change. Read-ins announce: We will not remain alone, afraid, and cut off from one another. No. We will sit side by side and with the support of each other, we will read. We will learn. We will enrich our inner world so that we can find the courage to exist outside of it."

Teacher: Timothy Aubry is an English Professor at Baruch College, CUNY, where he teaches courses in modern and contemporary U.S. literature and literary criticism. He is author of Guilty Aesthetic Pleasures (Harvard University Press, 2018) and Reading as Therapy: What Contemporary Fiction Does for Middle-Class Americans (University of Iowa Press, 2011), and the co-editor of Rethinking Therapeutic Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2015).

Think Olio is an ongoing experiment in lifelong learning. We are a community of open-minded people who gather to exchange ideas with new friends and connect over art, literature, and philosophy. Check out our full calendar Our $30 membership gives you two events for the price of one!

An Olio is what we call the social learning events we've been organizing since 2015. A blend between a lecture and a house party, Olios are led by a teacher who loves sharing their passions and the room is filled with curious, open-minded New Yorkers.

Our goal is to spark new perspectives, ignite curiosity, and enjoy ourselves socially—an alternative to typical nightlife options.

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Olio Read-in: Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find"

Olio Read-in: Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find"