One of the most famous (and beautiful) lines of O'Connor's Wise Blood is her description of Taulkinham: The black sky was underpinned with long silver streaks that looked like scaffolding and depth on depth behind it were thousands of stars that all seemed to be moving very slowly as if they were about some vast… Continue reading The Scaffolding of Friendship
A Monumental Life
Flannery O'Connor died on August 3, 1964. Even her final years at Andalusia—bed to desk to window and beyond—marked a life larger than most of us can dream. “I was roped and tied and resigned the way it is necessary to be resigned to death,” O’Connor wrote, trying to explain to Maryat Lee the experience… Continue reading A Monumental Life
Gratitude
"O’Connor jokes about the unpleasant treatment she endured to mitigate her autoimmune disorder [lupus]: 'I owe my existence and cheerful countenance to the pituitary glands of thousands of pigs butchered daily in Chicago, Illinois at the Armour packing plant. If pigs wore garments I wouldn't be worthy to kiss the hems of them.'" from… Continue reading Gratitude
“The Best Single Source” on O’Connor Stories
Part of what I'd like to do with this website is to find a home for the items that didn't make the book, THE LETTERS OF FLANNERY O'CONNOR AND CAROLINE GORDON. After four years of background research, I have a lot of small stories and tangents that, while not essential to the book's final content,… Continue reading “The Best Single Source” on O’Connor Stories
Love and Understanding (O’Connor)
“Love and understanding are one and the same only in God. Who do you think you understand? If anybody, you delude yourself. I love a lot of people, understand none of them.” Flannery O’Connor to Betty Hester, 26 October 1963 (from Habit of Being)
“Ladies Don’t Beat the Daylight Out of People”
“Under the watchful glare of Caroline Gordon, Flannery subdued her impulse to speak with such robust language in her fiction, in which, as Miss Gordon strictly enjoined her, the author’s voice may use only Johnsonian English. But Flannery didn’t disdain the colloquial in person, or in letters, and certainly not in the dialogue of her… Continue reading “Ladies Don’t Beat the Daylight Out of People”
On Discontent
“If only she had been content to remain what she was when he found her: a bird fluttering on a terrace that a man might pick up and warm in his bosom, a bird that would nestle tamely, grateful for any warmth it might come by, and not be always turning its fierce golden eye… Continue reading On Discontent
