C.J. Hribal: The Reasonably Unreasonable: The Work of Rachel Ingalls (January 2020)

Flannery O’Connor’s comment about her work using “a reasonable use of the unreasonable” becomes the lens through which C. J. Hribal explores the work of Rachel Ingalls, particularly the novella Mrs. Caliban (which features a protagonist falling in love with a six-foot-tall, green-skinned amphibian named Larry). This lecture is a look at how the fanciful, the magical, the exaggerated, the outlandish—i.e. the unreasonable—can be used by writers to throw both big subjects and “ordinary” human emotions (love, loss, grief) into greater relief.