"[Caroline Gordon's] letters to O’Connor, which cover 13 years from 1951 to O’Connor’s death in 1964, are the most detailed literary critiques I have ever read, covering everything from naming characters, to proper viewpoint, particularly as she guided O’Connor through the writing of her first novel, Wise Blood. She was a hard taskmaster and would not… Continue reading “The Electric Give and Take”
Regina O’Connor, The Diplomat
In The Letters of Flannery O’Connor and Caroline Gordon, one my favorite O’Connor letters tells a story about how the displaced persons who lived at Andalusia interacted with the longtime farmhands: “The D. P. [the Displaced Person, Mr. Matysiak] and Shot nearly choked each other in the wagon the other day and now my mother… Continue reading Regina O’Connor, The Diplomat
February, for Flannery O’Connor
In February, 1957, an adaptation of Flannery O’Connor’s story “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” was presented in an episode of CBS’s Schlitz Playhouse of Stars and featured Gene Kelly. Watch it here. In February, 1959, O’Connor received a Ford Foundation grant of $8,000. Fellow recipients included Katherine Anne Porter and Robert Fitzgerald. Read… Continue reading February, for Flannery O’Connor
Creating a World
“The serious fiction writer imitates God when in his book he creates what seems to be a whole world. It must give the illusion of being a whole world, too, for when one writes a novel, one must create a lot more than goes into it. I had an old novelist friend [Ford Madox Ford] who… Continue reading Creating a World
That roar which lies on the other side of silence…
There are small moments within the letters of O’Connor and Gordon that open into larger worlds—moments I’ve been exploring without any goal or endposts. Here is one. On 29 January 1953, Flannery O’Connor wrote to her new friend Caroline Gordon about her reading of George Eliot (the pen name of Mary Anne Evans): I got… Continue reading That roar which lies on the other side of silence…
Credo: Love
Let me sum up my own Credo, in the hope that I can make what I am trying to say clear. A novel, any novel, in the first place, must be about love. There is no other subject. --Caroline Gordon to Walker Percy, Undated letter [January 1952]
The Primitive Ear
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
