You Used To Be Alright, What Happened — Kristine Moran

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6 thoughts on “You Used To Be Alright, What Happened — Kristine Moran”

    1. I don’t think hilarious and horrific are mutually exclusive (although I laugh out loud every time I read O’Connor’s “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”).

      The image suggests a moment of horrific, bald recognition—a deep look in multiple mirrors. I’m reminded of Nietzsche’s oft-quoted riff on staring into abysses.
      At the same time, the artist juxtaposes the image against the title: it strikes me as a self-reflexive question . . . I don’t know if I would appreciate this painting at all at 18, but at 33 it seems utterly real to me.

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      1. I just read the Sparknotes for ‘A Good Man…’. My, oh, my, what fertility there was in those hot and humid nights and red mud. If only I had known, I would have driven two counties over in my youth to find out what was more to Milledgeville than mental hospitals, reformatories, penitentiaries, military school for kids, and a state college. As the T-shirt says, ‘Keep Milledgeville Crazy’.

        The story has that surreal too tragic not to be funny quality that comes with a region that has been cut off from the rest of reality since the great land grab in the mid-19th century.

        Since I can’t stand ‘Gone With the Wind’, I think I will enjoy reading Miz O’Connor’s work(s).

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    2. Having been around the vain and self-seeking all my life, it struck a chord about the narcissist’s need for affirmation from others. When the mirror, mirror, on the wall doesn’t speak the language you want to hear. The painting reminds me of Wilde’s ‘Portrait of Dorian Grey’, and the Victorian print that I used to see everywhere, an optical illusion of a lovely lady looking at herself in the vanity mirror, and the illusion being, that viewed with both eyes, it is a death skull. I can see it as a poster for a horror flic spoof.

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