Have you been on the edge of your seat? The fourth and last of my planned posts on Flannery O’Connor has been delayed (the first, second, and third were published weeks ago) while library transfers were pending. Meanwhile, a new documentary has also been released, although currently only available to American viewers in virtual cinemas.
In her essay collection In Rough Country (2010), Joyce Carol Oates considers Flannery O’Connor in the context of her southern contemporaries, observing how both Carson McCullers and Truman Capote were “showier, more-renowned and best-selling” authors during their turbulent and highly publicized lifetimes, but it’s the reputation of Flannery O’Connor which has endured and increased.
Oates writes about O’Connor’s infatuation with the “young, attractive, charismatic” poet Robert Lowell at the Yaddo writers’ colony in 1948, her relationship with the Harcourt-Brace textbook salesman Erik Langkjaer (check out “Good Country People” and the hayloft shenanigans), and her close friendships with Betty Hester (who was dishonourably discharged by the military for “sexual indiscretion”) and Maryat Lee.
Oates believes that while O’Connor “seems to have been a “cultural racist”, in her art, she transcended the limitations of her time, her place, and her being”. She specifically refers to a fragment “Why Do the Heathen Rage?” to illustrate that, although she was Catholic and conservative and anti-liberal and anti-progressive, she afforded her Black characters a capacity for empathy and intelligence which many white writers of that day did not.
In Writers and Their Pets by Kathleen Krull, with art by Violet Lemay (2019), we learn that O’Connor kept chickens and ducks and all sorts of birds, but most particularly peafowl. She writes about how Flannery had an assignment to design a Sunday school dress, which inspired her to sew a full set of clothing for her pet duck, including underwear. The duck attended school to model the creations. (This anecdote is relayed differently in Brad Gooch’s biography, and both versions are charming.)
This was the perfect lead-in to The King of the Birds, by Acree Graham Macam, with art by Natalie Nelson (2016). It’s a wholly delightful picture book about two of O’Connor’s peafowl. Irony and humour are in abundance. And the illustrations are colourful and striking, many painted elements with the occasional surprise of an historic element (like a photograph of a landscape, or human figures). Short and simple, this tale manages to be strangely joyful, and it ends on the advice to young readers to find some Flannery O’Connor stories to read when they are older.
New York Times’ Footsteps: Literary Pilgrimages around the World contains a 2007 essay by Lawrence Downes, “In Search of Flannery O’Connor”, which recounts his experiences following her footsteps in Georgia. Of primary interest is his time in Milledgeville. It was once the capital of the state and is 30 miles from Macon, has about 19000 people living in it on the banks of the Oconee River in Baldwin County. He describes O’Connor’s fiction as “doctrinally strict” and “mordantly funny”, “soaked in violence and humor, in sin and in God”.
I peeked into Carlene Bauer’s epistolary novel, Frances and Bernard (2013), inspired by the relationship between O’Connor and Lowell (also discussed above in Oates’ essay). Having recently read O’Connor’s letters, I was struck by how discordant Bauer’s tone seemed to be; her Frances didn’t sound like my idea of Flannery. And the lengthy and detailed discussions of Christian doctrine which had remained (mostly) interesting to me when written in Flannery’s hand seemed to revolve more around the question of faith than good-and-evil in Bauer’s work, which didn’t resonate with me.
And I’m now, at last, reading Brad Gooch’s 2009 biography, which I’ve saved to the end. So enjoyable is this volume, that I’m now interested in both Rumi and Frank O’Hara, simply for his biographies of these poets. There are about 75 pages of supplementary materials in the back of Flannery (acknowledgments, notes, citations and index) but the text reads easily and there are so many quotations (in the voices of the author and her contemporaries) that it feels like I’m crawling into the shape of her life.
Who’ll be next up in The Writing Life? If you had to choose an author, in this very moment, to spend some more time with on the page, who would you choose? Whose writing life interests you today?
I hope you get the chance to see the Flannery documentary. We just streamed it through virtual cinema last weekend and really enjoyed it.
Oooohh, thank you for the encouragement. There are so many screenings JUST across the border, but nothing I can stream yet.
If I wasn’t interested before, you sure found a way to hook me – I love all the stuff about her love of peafowl and other birds. I personally favour ducks and chickens. The ducks in the link Rebecca sent look so adorable in their little hats! I wonder how well cats and ducks get along…
I want to answer your last question, but there are just too many. Like, all of them. Who will you be reading about next? Or is it a secret?
I really wasn’t intending to explore her so exhaustively, but there is so much interesting material about her, and reading about literature from the Southern U.S.A. is fascinating, in terms of how authors negotiate and spearhead social and political change (or, don’t).
But if you had to choose today, in this moment? I hate answering those questions without a qualifier, because I am so curious that I will likely to interested in another author in another moment! LOL Since you asked, it’s Langston Hughes–his collection The Ways of White Folks was on my list of favourites in 2016 and I’ve been gathering up a list of TBRs in the library since then. There are so many!
Although I don’t read a lot of biographies (hardly any, in fact) I LOVE when you get direct quotes from the subject, it’s a fascinating glimpse into their thinking, and it’s so simple. So unburdened by the biases of the biographer and academics who paint the picture of that person. It makes me wonder, will biographers in future take our social media feeds as quotes? Back then, they only had the words they were recorded (or remembered) saying, so it seems more genuine coming from the past…
It’s true: I’m always pleased to see a passage coming up that’s in her own words. Now that you’ve had that thought, have you been deleting and rewriting your tweets incessantly? Trying to get them “just so” before they’re published, so that any future researchers (biographers or otherwise) will get the best of you and not just some bit of whining or angst?
haha no, it never occurred to me, although maybe I should be!!!
Such an interesting post. I particularly love the look of the picture book about the peafowl! What a fantastic idea, especially given the suggestions for further reading when the children are older.
Picture books with literary connections are such fun: I think I’d like to make a mini-project of them. But it would be a lot of work to gather them from the library under current borrowing conditions. Maybe another time!
I adore Frances and Bernard! But then again, when I read it I hadn’t read any O’Connor and knew basically nothing about her or Lowell, so the historical inspiration was neither here nor there for me and I just took it as an epistolary novel with intellectual themes.
I would really enjoy those two picture books. Have you seen the photos doing the rounds of the duck fashion parade?? https://twitter.com/rachellord22/status/1288460936693653510
I don’t recall O’Connor featuring in Sharp; did you find any insight there? I glanced back at the chapter on M. McCarthy when I reviewed Lara Feigel’s The Group recently.
The last author bio I read was Margot Peters’s of May Sarton, which was particularly interesting to compare to Sarton’s own account of her life via her memoir and journals — all the unflattering stuff that she left out; ultimately Peters didn’t seem to think Sarton was either a nice person or a good writer!
Love the view of your porch, too! Do all those trees keep things nicely shaded?
I was hoping that I’d’ve loved it more because I do love epistolary novels, but it just didn’t click for me.
Wow! That’s amazing. Thanks so much for sharing that!
Maybe my expectations of Sharp were too high. Or maybe I’ve just done more reading than I realize about most of the women she considered (it’s not a very diverse crowd, is it?).
Oh, noooo, Peters’ bio does challenge the idea you have of Sarton based on reading her diaries, doesn’t she? It won’t surprise you to know that I’ve been thinking about rereading Sarton. I wonder if anyone else has had a look at her, post-Peters?
There are about half the trees that there once were, and we (and the critters) feel their absence keenly, but the prevailing view in this neighbourhood is that falling leaves in autumn are an eyesore and an annoyance. It’s still nice for sitting in the earlier part of the day, though, probably a little more sheltered than your summer house. I’m super grateful to have had this space during shelter-in-place.
Sharp seemed to lack focus (and diversity, for sure), but I’ve kept my proof copy just in case I read further in any of the writers concerned.
I did have a look around to see if anyone else had attempted a biography of Sarton, but there was nothing that I could see. Though I don’t have institutional access to a lot of periodicals, I poked about online to see if there’s much scholarship about her nowadays, and again came up with little. I think it was 2-3 summers ago that I toyed with writing about her at length myself, but I don’t think the interest/market is there. Of course, if you ever fancy (re)reading her stuff, let me know. I have read pretty much all her nonfiction and poetry but still have a lot of fiction to explore. My Bookmarks profile of her should be in the Nov/Dec issue or soon thereafter.
We have had so many trees cut down or severely pruned in our neighbourhood recently, and I find it very distressing. People don’t seem to put 2 + 2 together and realize all the reasons we desperately need trees, not least for shade in a warming climate. For all people’s vague talk of loving nature, they don’t seem to understand what nature is, or that they’re driving it out in a futile search for tidiness. Our immediate neighbour cut so many branches that it greatly reduced shade on our summer house, so we had to put up blackout curtains on that side.
Do you know Lorna Sage and Marina Warner? For my taste, their essays on 20thC women writers are more considered and led me to want to know/read more about the women.
Well, I would read that article if you decide to write it! She’s definitely on my list of possible topics, but it’s been a long time since I dabbled in Peters’ book. Maybe if I revisit that, I might find my enthusiasm dampened. LOL Nah, I’d probably still find the same value in her work nonetheless. Please feel free to remind me when your profile is up, in case I miss that issue (the library which stocks Bookmarks is not my home branch and I can’t access their periodicals from afar).
Or maybe they put 2 + 2 together and come up with some other sum, like 0, translating into 0 leaves they must rake, 0 yardwaste bags to buy, 0 dollars/pounds spent on landscapers’ fees? sigh I don’t get it. I’ve always loved big old trees and I’ve chalked it up to a love of Anne of Green Gables and L.M. Montgomery’s love of trees, but I’d like to think that, even if I’d not grown up with that view, that I’d’ve been able to understand the science at work here. Do the blackout curtains help with the temperature controls too, or just with the light/intensity of it all?
I had never heard of O’Connor (nor Willa Cather) until this year. Now they’re everywhere. I must say I prefer Cather. I enjoy understanding authors better through reading their lives. My bookcases are full of Australian women writers, Miles Franklin principally, but also Eve Langley, Ruth Park, Ernestine Hill, and if you want a really interesting writer, Elizabeth Jolley.
I’ve been surprised to find O’Connor of considerable interest, her being such a fervent Catholic and all. I suppose I find the lives of both authors, and their experiences of writing and publishing equally interesting, but, when it comes to reading their work, like you, I would be much more inclined to pick up a Cather volume, any Cather volume really. Jolley is hard to find here, but I’ve enjoyed a couple of her books (here, here, and here) and most recently finished her collection of stories. The library has The Sugar Mother and The Well too.
I love these in-depth looks at the life of an author. I’ve been reading some stories by Willa Cather lately, and I think her life sounds interesting from the little I know of it. And William Maxwell for being both a writer and an editor who worked with some of the best writers of the day.
Her Obscure Destinies is a volume that I really enjoyed earlier this year (two novellas and a story). Ohhh, William Maxwell — there’s a writer I’ve long meant to explore. Where would you suggest as a starting point? I’ve got So Long (but am almost afraid to read it — everybody raves so) and isn’t there a contagion-type novella as well?
I think the writers whose lives have often interested me have been the women – Woolf, Colette, Plath. Endlessly fascinating!
And then each biographer’s take is something new to think about too. (Thinking about how different Carol Shields’ slim volume about Jane Austen is from Claire Tomalin.)