Art and Product in Enduring Chill

Yes, I think O'Connor is poking fun at this melodramatic "artist." I don't think she would have had much patience with him as a person. But I found it interesting that Asbury has actually developed a significant body of work. He has apparently destroyed a novel, several plays, poems, etc. He claims to have no talent. But I would venture to propose that in "Art" (I guess I have to resort to that unpleasant, big word), the process is more important than the product. Asbury may be frustrated with the results of his efforts, but I think the fact that he has completed projects is quite signficant. In this respect, he is certainly a step ahead of other "artistic" characters (like the Journalist in KAP's "That Tree," or her painter in "The Martyr") who enjoy the melodrama and the aura of "Art," but never get around to producing much of it themselves. I think the obsession with Product (instead of Process) in our culture is the real tragedy of this story--his family wants him to do "some real work--not writing." They want milk--something tangible for consumption--something Asbury's father might have produced. Even Asbury's anxiety to have "a culminating experience" to cap off his life suggests an obsession with Product--instead of celebrating the process of his life, he wants a single memorable event to come away with--an event that will supposedly bring him some desperately-sought emotion sublimation.
I think the tragedy of this story is that Asbury has the potential to understand and embrace the importance of process, but fails to do so ultimately in a culture that rejects art. He tells the priest that "the artist prays by creating" (566). This suggests a vision of art that is a practice, a ritual, a self-fulfilling process, even if it has, like religion, little apparent utilitarian value. Of course, I think it is interesting that, if one accepts my reading, this story actually defends "art" while seeming to satirize it through Asbury's unappealing self-aggrandizment.