Your chief weakness as a writer seems to be a failure to admit the august nature of your inspiration. You speak almost always like FO'C. That is fine. You have the best ear of anybody in the trade for the rhythms of colloquial speech. [. . .] [Y]ou have this enormous advantage: what Yeats called… Continue reading The Primitive Ear
Crowded Effects, Strange Light
I think you have crowded your effects too much here. If I were writing this passage I would emphasize its importance by breaking it up into several--perhaps three--sentences instead of crowding a lot of ideas into one sentence [. . .] “Single block of one story brick and wooden shacks” sounds ugly. (Of course they… Continue reading Crowded Effects, Strange Light
The Violent Bear It Away: 70 years old in 2020
O'Connor's The Violent Bear It Away was published sixty-nine years ago in January, 1960. "The back jacket is devoted to a quote from Caroline's piece in Critique [on Wise Blood]," O'Connor told Betty Hester, "which will be like waving the red flag in front of several bulls." From an outsider's perspective, it was a nice blurb… Continue reading The Violent Bear It Away: 70 years old in 2020
A Peripety
I think you need in this story [“The Enduring Chill”] what Aristotle called "a peripety," the unforeseen incident which brings about a solution and yet springs out of what has gone before. Suppose that, as very well might be, one of the students in this class is a sort of Fr. Wiegel, a young priest… Continue reading A Peripety
8 January 1964: Gordon to O’Connor
"When I reached my uncle's house," Gordon wrote to O'Connor, "my cousin, Manny, warned me not to mention Kennedy's name. My aunt doesn't like him much better than she liked Roosevelt. Those members of my family have all turned Republican. I always feel like saying, 'But you haven't got enough money to turn Republican'." from… Continue reading 8 January 1964: Gordon to O’Connor
Meeting the Mark
When Flannery O'Connor prepared her first short story collection, A Good Man is Hard to Find, she acknowledged to friend Robert Lowell how much she relied upon Caroline Gordon's feedback on her stories: "I send them all to Caroline and she writes me wherein they do not meet the mark." --Flannery O’Connor to Elizabeth and… Continue reading Meeting the Mark
[Review] Two Ladies of the Southern Pantheon: Flannery O’Connor and Caroline Gordon
"The Southern Catholic literary pantheon may have a new elder stateswoman enshrined soon, if Christine Flanagan has anything to say about it. Associate professor of English at Philadelphia’s University of the Sciences, Flanagan is the editor of the recently released Letters of Flannery O’Connor and Caroline Gordon, published by the University of Georgia Press. While O’Connor’s… Continue reading [Review] Two Ladies of the Southern Pantheon: Flannery O’Connor and Caroline Gordon
