Flannery O'Connor goes Full Frogtown

On Christ-Haunted places with Noah David Elkins

Photo by Rachel Coyne on Unsplash

Well, here we are.

To that handful of visitors and subscribers scrolling for the first time, welcome to Shelf of Crocodiles.

Pull up a chair.

In a few weeks, I’ll be dropping in with my end of month essay—a longform ditty that begins by reviewing a book, a play, a film, an archetype… and then zips off like Yondu’s whistle spear and goes wherever I want.  

*Insert dastardly laugh*

At least that’s what I tell myself.

More, I hope, than blowing off steam, I write this to triangulate—to keep my bearings vis-à-vis the western classics, the Bible, human nature, books and plays, the writer’s journey, and how it all pans a spotlight over the bizarre, murky, and increasingly dysfunctional post-Christian landscape.

Encouraged by friends, and aiming to feed a small, curious, (and mostly, but not exclusively Christian) audience, I kicked off in April of last year.

Recently, with the help of donation site Ko-fi.com, I put out the tip jar:

With my wife’s stamp of approval—and with the feedback some of you generously shared with me in person, over text message and in comments this past year—this Crocodile’s still trucking.

Thank you, by the way.

Thus I set Pen to Paper with delight, and quickly had my thoughts in black and white…

-John Bunyan

Word on the Pond

This isn’t set in stone… but this year, you’ll probably see essays on:

- Children of Men (I have more to say about the 2006 film than I do the P.D. James novel.)

- Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky

-Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Breaking Bad, and its prequel Better Call Saul, (now in its sixth and final season)  

-The Plague by Albert Camus (not too soon, not by a long shot)

- Middle grade books I remember and still enjoy

- Titles I taught over eight years as a High School English Teacher

Amongst other things.

In keeping with my first lap around, I may deviate to review an outlier, roll out an author interview, go in-depth on a Bible character, throw a book versus book cage match, or bake some short samples all riffing on a common theme.

At any rate, and with welcome help from one or two contributing writers, I’ll keep this once-a-month, plot-spoilin’ Crocodile coming… and the occasional Horatian jabs at woke ideology, progressive orthodoxy, and my idyllic, but disastrously managed home region will keep on doing what they do.

Newbies, you’ve been warned.

As catchy as Josiah Nance’s Crocodile logo is, it’s bite isn’t for everyone.

If you’re wondering whether or not this is your cup of tea, see if you can stomach my mission statement, or my take on Watership Down as a fictional antidote to pandemic hysteria, acquiescence to overlords, and the ultimate destination of those two things.  

Breathe out.

With any luck, I’ll see you soon—perhaps sooner if you share, comment, have a question, or hit me up for a sticker.

And now, welcome the words of Noah David Elkins.

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Divine Happenstance in Frogtown, Oklahoma  

by Noah David Elkins

Flannery O’Connor would have loved Frogtown.

Named for its swamp-like humidity and bird-sized mosquitoes, Frogtown became the meth capital of my hometown Chickasha after the older middle-class folks died out a couple generations back.

A stone’s throw from what it sounds like, it’s a run-down white ghetto with too many folks chasing dreams of being the next Walter White. Think cheap meth, bottom-shelf whiskey, week-old pizza, bachelor parties with real shotguns, kidnapping and a car trunk… and surprisingly, not that many frogs.

I grew up less than a mile away.

For obvious reasons, I didn’t spend much time there. I remember telling my friends as a kid, “I live out North of town… and no, I don’t live by those houses.”

That Frogtown has a certain reputation says a whole lot about Chickasha, where you’d probably stop at to use the bathroom on a road trip.

Chickasha’s the kind of place where Joe Exotic arrives in a limousine, (long before the Netflix show took off, he had ‘The Tiger King’ written in big letters on the side)… and promotes his run for governor by giving out free condoms with his face on them.

His slogan?  

‘Joe Exotic for Your Protection.’

To go with that fact, our town recently raised a gigantic, 40-foot-tall inflatable leg lamp—much like the one from A Christmas Story, and just as prone to falling down every time someone lifts it up. Word is, someone in town’s building a larger, more permanent leg lamp to support the claim that we’re the birthplace.  

I honestly doubt it.

Photo by Sean Benesh on Unsplash

Enter the Pharisee

I didn’t know it then, but Frogtown shaped me.

Not in the sense that I’ve got feral dogs out front, or cheap meth to sell you out back.

I mean that my world and my principles were shaped by Frogtown, by the kind of people that lived there, and the conditions they lived in.

Recently, I read a short story called ‘Revelation’ by Flannery O’Connor. Like many of her stories, it’s packed with explosive moments, unexpected twists, prophetic vision…  and an overdue reckoning’s with God’s judgment.

All with a particularly Southern twist.

The gospel hymn playing was, "’When I looked up and He looked down,’ and Mrs. Turpin, who knew it, supplied the last line mentally, ‘And wonna these days I know I'll we-ear a crown.

 - Flannery O’Connor

The story sheds light on smugness, religious prejudice posing as propriety, and the showy formalities that most Southerners will recognize.  

Mrs. Turpin is the protagonist, and her politeness is a curtain for hiding her hatred for people she deems less-than. Southern blacks and those she calls white-trash are the primary recipients.

A college-aged girl named Mary Grace, exercising what might be a kind of sixth sense, sees that Mrs. Turpin’s politeness is all a show, and that self-righteousness lurks underneath. As Mrs. Turpin thanks the Lord that He made her herself instead of anyone else, (much like the Pharisee in Luke 18: 9 - 14), Mary Grace throws a book at her head and begins to strangle her.

Once she’s pulled away, Mary Grace tells Mrs. Turpin "Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog,"

Shaken, Mrs. Turpin goes home to lick her wounds.

At the end of the story, when Mrs. Turpin washes her pigs (unclean animals by old Jewish standards), the character herself stumbles into a deep cleansing.

Praying through her teeth, she asks God repeatedly, “How am I a hog from hell?”

Then in her anger she cries out at Him, “Who do you think you are?”

Her cry carries over the pasture, and echoes back at her like a rebuke.

After this, she looks up, and sees a vision—all the people she deems undesirable being brought up to heaven. They’re first in line; cleansed of their sins, and behind them come the polite, self-righteous folks like herself and her husband.

Looking closer, she sees her kind of people being cleansed of their sins too—sin being all the pretense and moral posturing they considered virtuous.

Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash

Squeezing Love from Tension

Here’s why Flannery O’Connor would have loved Frogtown.

O’Connor was a Southern Gothic writer (no, not gothic in the black-fingernail sense), and for all her symbolism, strange turns, and Christ-haunted lowlifes, she doesn’t get enough credit for her insight into the way Southern culture works.

In the South, hospitality and politeness are the only remaining semblances of Southern culture we have left… that and blowing stuff up as pastime. That said, politeness often becomes a way to mask opinions about people. Even if you don’t like someone, you treat them with your best manners—and this tension animates the gap between what we say and what we believe, especially for churchgoing people.

Turns out, there’s a strong divide between church people and everyone else, especially the people of Frogtown.

This tension leads to an unspoken caste system, one that can’t be spoken of due to politeness and saving face. Before she died right as the Civil Rights Movement was starting up, Flannery O’Connor captured this tension perfectly.

Here and there, I’ve had a Mrs. Turpin moment.

I know what it’s like to bristle in realizing that some of those things my culture taught me were virtues actually need to be washed away.  

There is a deep symbolism in Golgotha, the place of the skull where Jesus was crucified. He was crucified in the place seen as most wretched and filthy, right between convicted felons, and given a cursed death on a tree (Galatians 3:13).

That is, he took our curse upon himself, making holy ground of the place most people thought dismal and wretched.

Maybe for me to truly understand what Christ did, I should imagine Him being crucified, not at Golgotha, but in Frogtown, right in front of a house with rotted siding and an angry dog barking behind a chain link-fence.

I can’t claim some far-flung vision, in the manner of Flannery O’Connor’s characters.

But instead of stirring up disgust, I’d love to see Frogtown start shaping my deep loves.