Only God is an Atheist

Wish I could take credit for that great title, but I got it from a blog I read this week.  The author of that particular post, A.G. Harmon, borrowed it from Flannery O'Connor who, in an entry in her soon-to-be-released prayer journal writes, "No one can be an atheist who does not know all things.  Only God is an atheist.  The devil is the greatest believer & he has his reasons."  Pretty insightful for a 22 year-old.  So as not to paraphrase Mr. Harmon, I will simply encourage you to read his interesting blog post of Oct. 22-23.  There sure is a lot of buzz being generated by this journal that O'Connor kept when she was a graduate student at the University of Iowa, and it's not just on the web either.  On Wednesday, I received the November issue of The Atlantic.  Leafing through it, I came across a feature article by James Parker titled "The Passion of Flannery O'Connor."  It's generous of the good folks at The Atlantic to make this article available on-line.  Unlike some journals, The Atlantic has historically given O'Connor the credit she is due.  For more stories by and about her in The Atlantic, go to theatlantic.com/flannery.
- Mark

Stump the Chump

Last week a visitor asked me if I knew how the Clines (Regina O'Connor's family) made their fortune.  Hmmm.  Now that one stumped me.  I told this person that I thought her grandfather had established a business of some sort in Milledgeville, but beyond that I wasn't sure.  Not to worry; I told him I would look up the answer and get back to him as soon as I could.  In the mean time, more visitors came, I got tied up in the gift shop and, before I had a chance to turn to the ever-reliable Brad Gooch to answer our visitor's question, he had left.  So if you happen to be reading this blog, sir, here is the answer you were looking for.  After emigrating from County Tipperary (Ireland) in 1824, Flannery's great-grandfather Hugh Donnelly Treanor built a prosperous grist mill on the Oconee River in Milledgeville.  The family's good luck continued when one of his daughters, Kate, married Peter J. Cline, a successful dry-goods store owner in town.  When she died, he married Kate's sister, Margaret.  According to Brad Gooch, "Peter's wealth sufficiently trumped his oddity as a small-town Irish Catholic to allow him to buy an antebellum mansion in Milledgeville soon after the Civil War, to be unanimously elected its mayor in 1889, and to have his every movement covered in the local paper." (Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor, p. 22).
- Mark

Ready Reference

In our office Craig and I have a set of books close at hand that we can turn to quickly to answer visitors' questions or to provide us with ideas for blog and Facebook posts.  Among the titles on our "ready reference" shelf are Jean Cash's and Brad Gooch's biographies; At Home with Flannery O'Connor (Craig Amason and Bruce Gentry, eds.); and, of course, The Habit of Being (filled with post-it notes to mark interesting passages in the letters).  There is one other book we have that is required reading for the serious O'Connor scholar: Flannery O'Connor: The Contemporary Reviews.  This valuable resource edited by R. Neil Scott and Irwin H. Streight contains all the reviews of O'Connor's fiction that appeared in newspapers, magazines, and literary journals during her lifetime.  It is interesting to see how some of these very early reviewers either totally misunderstood Flannery or - more rarely - "got it."  Even when her work was panned, sometimes the reviewers were quite insightful.  A case in point comes from my hometown newspaper, The Cincinnati Enquirer, in this 1960 review of The Violent Bear it Away:  "For this reviewer [William H. Blocklage], this book evokes the same emotional response that certain modern music does.  Author and composer alike offer little else than dissonance, though most artfully contrived.  The brilliance engages the mind, but the heart does not get its due." (Flannery O'Connor: The Contemporary Reviews, R. Neil Scott and Irwin H. Streight, eds., p. 106)  Whether one agrees with the review is really beside the point.  Rather, it recalls a day when every city newspaper worth its salt had a book section and serious fiction was covered because enough people were reading it to justify publishing reviews.  Sadly, that day appears to have passed us by.
- Mark

To Bless, Not to Condemn

St. Francis of Assisi

This past week a visitor asked me what Flannery O'Connor would have thought of the new pope.  Good question.  My initial response was that I think overall she would approve since Francis seems to be cut out of the same cloth as John XXIII, a pope O'Connor regarded highly.  Since today is the feast day of Francis of Assisi, the saint whose name Jorge Mario Bergoglio took when he was elected pope, I thought I might explore the question further.  Before continuing, it is important to remember that we live in a very different day and time than when John XXIII was elected pope in October, 1958.   Therefore, what Flannery would have thought of any pope today is pure conjecture.  Nevertheless, there are some parallels that suggest she would have given Francis the thumbs up.  Like John, Francis is reaching out to those who, in the past, have been marginalized and disenfranchised by the church.  In Francis's vision none are excluded - not even unbelievers.  All are loved and accepted by God.  All have a place at the table.  When John XXIII assumed the the chair of St. Peter, the windows of the church were literally thrown open to the world.  One could cite many examples, but one that touched O'Connor personally was the pope's acceptance of Teilhard de Chardin, an author whose works were previously banned by the Vatican.  When asked about Teilhard, Pope John remarked, "I am here to bless, not to condemn."  As refreshing as this was, O'Connor was not happy with all the changes that were occurring in the church as a result of the Second Vatican Council that John convened in 1959.  She was not enthused about the move from Latin to the vernacular in the mass.  In fact, she thought some of the trial liturgies were hideous.  Nevertheless, as a loyal daughter of the church, Flannery accepted the change.  She died before the Council adjourned so it is hard to say without reservation how she would have sized up the papacy of John XXIII.  It's even harder to guess what her opinion would be of Francis, whose papacy is just in its infancy.
- Mark

Papal Pundit

Fr. Antonio Spadaro, S.J. interviewing Pope Francis

If you've been following the news the last couple weeks you are aware that there are big changes afoot in the Catholic Church thanks to Pope Francis and his desire to restore the primacy of Jesus' teachings on social justice.  As earth shaking as this is, it would not merit mention on this blog were it not for the fact that  this came out in an interview conducted by Fr. Antonio Spadaro, S.J. who just happens to be a huge Flannery O'Connor fan.  He has been to Andalusia on a couple different occasions and is a delightful man.  The interview with the pope was published by America magazine (a journal to which Flannery herself subscribed) with the title A Big Heart Open to God.  The title, of course, refers to the new pope, but it could just as easily be applied to Fr. Antonio.  Since the publication of this article, Fr. Antonio has been enjoying some well deserved public recognition.  This past week he was interviewed on the Stephen Colbert show.  I did not see the interview, but I am told that it was both entertaining and revealing to those who have ears to hear.  Way to go, Antonio!
- Mark

Love from New York

It is indeed ironic that nearly fifty years after her death, Flannery O'Connor is finally getting her due from The New Yorker.  Even more ironic is the fact that the magazine is devoting so much space to a work of a religious nature.  I think Flannery would find it pretty unbelievable that the esteemed journal that once rejected her cartoons and dismissed her prose would deign to publish a review of her forthcoming prayer journal in the Sept. 16th issue (unfortunately, the article is unavailable online without a subscription).  Though O'Connor continued to read The New Yorker throughout her life, she had serious issues with its editorial philosophy - see for example her letter to Betty Hester where she refers to it as "moronic." (The Habit of Being, p. 90).  Perhaps O'Connor was predisposed to dislike the magazine since it rejected the Thurberesque cartoons she had the temerity to submit when she was just a teenager (see her letter to Janet McKane - The Habit of Being, p. 536).  Perhaps she felt, with some justification, that they dismissed her too easily.  For her part, O'Connor could be equally dismissive of The New Yorker, whose critic panned The Violent Bear It Away in a "nasty," one paragraph review.  When Elizabeth Fenwick Way sent Flannery a clipping of it, O'Connor replied sardonically: "Thanks for the love letter from the New Yorker." (The Habit of Being, p. 388).
- Mark

Sainte Simone?

Simone Weil

Well, not in the opinion of Flannery O'Connor.  And yet, the author was drawn to the writings of the French philosopher/social activist/mystic Simone Weil (1909-43)  like a moth to candle light.  So influential was Weil (pronounced "vay"), that it is possible that one of O'Connor's better known characters was modeled on her.  Jewish by upbringing, in her later years Simone Weil turned more and more towards Catholicism, but could not bring herself to be baptized and so chose to remain outside the institutional church.  Today, she is recognized as one of the most brilliant and original minds of the twentieth century.  As sublime as her thought can be, her writings can also be confusing, contradictory, and impenetrable as granite.   It was the person of Simone Weil rather than her work that simultaneously attracted and repelled Flannery.  In a letter to Betty Hester, O'Connor says "The life of this remarkable woman still intrigues me while much of what she writes, naturally, is ridiculous to me.  Her life is almost a perfect blending of the Comic and the Terrible.  Simone Weil's life is the most comical life I have ever read about and the most truly tragic and terrible.  If I were to live long enough and develop as an artist to the proper extent, I would like to write a comic novel about a woman - and what is more comic and terrible than the angular intellectual proud woman approaching God inch by inch with ground teeth." (The Habit of Being, pp. 105-106)  Sound like a character in an O'Connor story?  In a follow-up letter, Flannery admits that such a fictional character would not be a "hypothetical Miss Weil.  My heroine already is, and [her name] is Hulga." (The Habit of Being, p. 106)
- Mark

More Merton

Thomas Merton

Over the Labor Day holiday I finished reading Thomas Merton: Selected Essays.  It is striking how many times Flannery O'Connor's name appears in these writings.  Even in one of Merton's later essays on Faulkner, she pops up.  That the monk recognized O'Connor's genius is not surprising.  Others before him had (e.g. Robert Lowell, Robert Penn Warren etc.).  What is noteworthy is Merton's astute reading of O'Connor in the days before there was much literary criticism devoted to her.  Here, for example, is Merton's take on "A Good Man Is Hard to Find":  "[In O'Connor's story] evil is not so much in the gangsters, so fatally and so easily 'found,' as in the garrulous, empty-headed, folksy, sentimental old fool of a grandmother.  Not that she is deliberately wicked, but the fact is, she does get everybody killed.  It is her absurd and arbitrary fantasy that leads them directly to the 'good man' and five deaths.  She is a kind of blank, a void through which there speaks and acts the peculiar nemesis that inhabits (or haunts) the world of Flannery O'Connor - and doubtless ours too, if we could but see it as she did."  He goes on to add "The first thing that anyone notices in reading Flannery O'Connor is that her moral evaluations seem to be strangely scrambled.  The good people are bad and the bad people tend to be less bad than they seem.  This is not in itself unusual.  But her crazy people, while remaining crazy as they can possibly be, turn out to be governed by a strange kind of sanity.  In the end, it is the sane ones who are incurable lunatics.  The 'good,' the 'right,' the 'kind' do all the harm.  'Love' is a force for destruction, and 'truth' is the best way to tell a lie."  (Thomas Merton: Selected Essays, Patrick F. O'Connell ed., pp.261-62).  I wonder how many other people reading O'Connor's story in 1965 recognized the Misfit as the "good man"?
- Mark

Iraqi Visitors

On the eve of this Labor Day week-end where we unofficially bid summer adieu, I thought I'd use today's blog to look back at what was for me the highlight of the summer at Andalusia.  That event occurred July 20 when we welcomed to the farm seven Iraqi scholars and their host, Professor Gina Caison, from Georgia State University's English faculty. Their visit to Andalusia was coordinated through the U.S. State Department and the American embassy in Iraq as part of a three-year grant to help improve higher education in the areas of English language and literature (including American).  The grant was made possible through the efforts of Dr. Gayle Nelson and Dr. Ericson Friginal.  Under terms of the grant, the International Research and Exchanges Board paired GSU's Department of Applied Linguistics and English as a Second Language with professors at the University of Baghdad as a part of its University Linkage Program (ULP). Professors from Iraq spent two weeks this summer in Atlanta taking intensive workshops on one of three areas: literature, linguistics, and translation. The group came from the Universities of Baghdad and Erbil. They represented graduate students and professors from the Colleges of Arts, Education, and Languages. Pictured at the right are Esraa Jalal Al-Gawhari, Ammar Shamil Al-Khafaji, Ameer Chasib Furraih, Dr. Asmaa Makram Al-Sadoon, Dr. Saad Najim Al-Khafaji, Dr. Fareed Bahjat Qazzazee, Dr. Saad Kassim Sagher, and Professor Caison.  All of these participants have an extensive background in American and British literature, and it is certainly an understatement to say they were excited to visit Andalusia.  One exclaimed it was "like touching history."  While it is always a pleasure to show Andalusia to visitors who are enthusiastic to be here, it is even more so when those visitors have traveled half way round the world to see the place where Flannery wrote her novels and short stories.  Their enthusiasm underscores a point I've been making for a long time, and that is how Flannery in her quirky off-beat way is somehow able to span, indeed transcend, linguistic, cultural, and religious barriers that oftentimes separate people.  Finally, I want to thank Prof. Bruce Gentry of Georgia College for coming out here on a muggy Saturday morning for assisting me in a group tour I won't soon forget.
- Mark 

No Pain No Gain

C.E. Morgan

In other words, grace hurts.  So says novelist C.E. Morgan in an incisive article by the same title in this week's Christian Century.  For those who are befuddled by the element of violence in Flannery O'Connor's fiction, I encourage you to check out this article.  Many times perplexed visitors will ask me about why O'Connor is so preoccupied, almost obsessed, with violence.  In order to justify the literary merit of her work, I'm afraid I sometimes become defensive, almost apologetic.  "Well, it's not the kind of gratuitous violence that we've come to expect in the movies and popular culture.  It's not all that graphic."  True enough, but more needs to be said.  And Ms. Morgan certainly does in this very fine piece that explores the sacramental function of violence in three of O'Connor's short stories: "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," "Good Country People," and "A Circle in the Fire."  Unfortunately, only part of the article can be viewed following the link.   You'll  have to subscribe to the magazine or read it at your local library.  Either way, it's worth the effort.
- Mark

Voices in the Woods

Merton outside his hermitage

A couple months ago, Orbis Books released a splendid collection of essays by Thomas Merton.  In his essay, "Day of a Stranger," Merton mentions a number of the poets and prophets, Eastern and Western sages, men and women artists and visionaries whose disparate voices sustain him spiritually as he embarks on his new life as a hermit  in the Kentucky woods.  At the hermitage there is room for many voices: "Of Vallejo, for instance.  Or Rilke, or Rene Char, Montale, Zukofsky, Ungaretti, Edwin Muir, Quasimodo, or some Greeks.  Or the dry, disconcerting voice of Nicano Parra, the poet of the sneeze.  Here also is Chuang Tzu whose climate is perhaps most the climate of this silent corner of woods.  A climate where there is no need for explanation.  Here is the reassuring companionship of many silent Tzu's and Fu's; Kung Tzu, Lao Tzu, Meng Tzu, Tu Fu.  And Hui Neng.  And Chao-Chu.  And the drawings of Sengai.  And a big graceful scroll from Suzuki.  Here also is a Syrian hermit called Philoxenus. An Algerian cenobite called Camus.  Here is heard the clanging prose of Tertullian, with the dry catarrh of Sartre.  Here the voluble dissonances of Auden, with the golden sounds of John of Salisbury.  Here is the deep vegetation of that more ancient forest in which the angry birds, Isaias and Jeremias, sing.  Here should be, and are, feminine voices from Angela of Foligno to Flannery O'Connor, Theresa of Avila, Juliana of Norwich, and more personally and warmly still, Raissa Maritain." (Thomas Merton: Selected Essays, p. 234).  I'd say that's pretty distinguished company for Flannery to be in!  It certainly underscores the esteem that Merton had for her, but what about you?  Whose voices would uphold you if you were living as a hermit in the wilderness?  Whose books would you want to have with you - besides, of course, Flannery's? 
- Mark

In Her Own Voice

What is it about actually hearing an author read something he or she has written that so intrigues us?  Why are we so fascinated when we listen to an audio recording of James Joyce reading from Dubliners or T.S. Eliot reciting his poetry?  Undeniably we are drawn to these recordings because of the stature of the reader.  These guys are rock stars in the literary world!  However, I think that hearing an author read a work of fiction can shed new light on the work of art itself.  By emphasizing certain words, pausing in key places, or modulating  the voice, an author is able to bring out nuances of meaning.  In other words,  authors' intentions can be made clearer when we hear them read from their own works.  A couple months ago, I listened to an audio book of Barbara Kingsolver reading her novel Prodigal Summer.  I know for a fact that I got so much more out of hearing her read this book than if I had tackled it on my own.  Another example: When I was a freshman at Denison University in 1976, Eudora Welty came and read one of her stories at a convocation (I don't remember which story anymore).  With her charm and mellifluous southern accent, this demure little lady drew me into her writing.  To top it off, the next day, to our surprise, she showed up in my English class and happily fielded questions from us guileless 18-year-olds.  I'm not sure if Flannery O'Connor sat in on any English classes when she visited Vanderbilt in 1959.  However, she did read her short story "A Good Man is Hard to Find" before a university gathering.  It was recorded and now is widely available on the web.  If you wonder what the characters in Flannery's stories might have sounded like, the dialect that she heard spoken daily on the farm at Andalusia, listen to this. 
- Mark

Viva Artistas, Viva Espana!

What do you get when you cross Marc Chagall and Grandma Moses?  The paintings of Flannery O'Connor, of course!  While I don't know if O'Connor was influenced by Grandma Moses, she certainly had a high opinion of Marc Chagall and I think you can see traces of his influence in her art work.  In any case, he was one of Flannery's favorite artists.  In the letter to Janet McKane that I referenced last week (The Habit of Being,  p. 531) she thanks her friend for sharing a recently published article on the artist.  "I was delighted to read the piece on Chagall.  I never see the Atlantic so I would have missed it altogether and Chagall is one of my favorites. Last year I saw a television interview between Chagall and a young man from the museum in Boston.  I think it was - educational TV.  The young man was very arty. He started exhibiting his own learning along the way, giving everybody including Chagall a lecture on the nature of influences on the artist.  When he finally gave Chagall a chance to answer, Chagall said in the simplest way possible that his greatest influence was his mother. It took the poor young man an instant or two to get his bearings after that."  Further on in this letter Flannery makes an oblique reference to Picasso.  While O'Connor was certainly a capable artist, we would not be talking about her paintings today were it not for the fact that she was one of the most important short story writers of the twentieth century.  We do have to talk about the Spaniards, however, because the history of world art is incomprehensible without Velasquez, El Greco, Picasso, et. al.  For my Georgia readers who might be interested in learning more about the country that produced so many great artists, tune into GPB television tonight at 7:00 p.m. for a program hosted by noted  travel writer Rick Steves called Viva Espana!.  The region of Spain Steves is focusing on is - what else - Andalusia!
- Mark

More Irish than the Irish

In last week's post I mentioned the O'Connor conference in Ireland next year.  While the conference is taking place in the author's ancestral homeland, it may surprise readers of this blog to learn that Flannery's opinions of  Ireland and its people were rather mixed.  Her friend Ashley Brown said Flannery "had a  rather low opinion of Ireland.  She called Blarney Castle 'Baloney Castle.'" (At Home With Flannery O'Connor: An Oral History, p.113).  In a letter to Janet McKane, Flannery confessed, "I have never been greatly tied emotionally or sentimentally to my own Irish background.  The Irish in America are sometimes more Irish than the Irish and I suppose some of my indifference is a reaction against that." (The Habit of Being, p. 531).  No doubt Flannery was thinking of all the cliched St. Patrick's Day celebrations she had witnessed in Savannah growing up. "I was brought up in Savannah where there was a colony of the Over-Irish.  They have the biggest St. Patrick's Day parade anywhere and generally go nutty on the subject."   In this same letter, however, she goes on to add that she finds the people of Ireland lovely.  "On the other hand, all the Irish from Ireland that I have ever seen have been charming."  That is how I found them to be when I visited the country 33 years ago, and I bet foreign visitors to next year's conference will too. 
- Mark

The Mystery of Place

Here's something that's sure to stir interest amongst the readers of this blog: the details for the next international Flannery O'Connor conference have been announced. Flannery O'Connor and the Mystery of Place will take place next July 24-26, 2014 at All Hallows College in Dublin, Ireland.  Presenters already lined up  include Gina Ochsner, John F. Deane, and Brenda Bynum.  Among the highlights of the conference are an opening night reception, optional dinner at Johnnie Fox's Irish Pub on Friday, a dramatic and entertaining reading by Brenda Bynum on the final night of the conference, and much, much more.  Ireland is certainly one of the most beautiful countries in the world and what a wonderful opportunity this would be for Flannery's fans to participate in what promises to be a most stimulating conference in the author's ancestral homeland.  For more information click here.
- Mark

Fly Peacock, Fly

On my way into work on Tuesday I was listening to NPR's morning show, Performance Today.  One of the pieces that day was a work I had never heard before, "The Peacock," by the twentieth century Hungarian composer, Zoltan Kodaly.  It is a  theme and variations for orchestra based on an old Hungarian folksong called "Fly Peacock, Fly."  If I remember correctly, the song tells the story of a peacock who visits a prisoner who is longing to be released so that he can be reunited with his love.  Each day the peacock flies to the prisoner's cell and serenades him.  The peacock's song sustains the prisoner in  his ordeal and gives him hope.  When I heard the Kodaly piece I immediately thought of Flannery and how her peafowl must have sustained her during her 13-year bout with lupus.  While the birds themselves might have afforded her some solace, I doubt their shrill cacophony did  - keep in mind that at one time she had as many as 50 of these critters out here.  Still, I think Flannery would have been delighted to know that a composer had written a piece based on the peacock's song (a piece that at the time was as controversial as some of Flannery's own stories). For those interested in hearing how Kodaly set this to music click on the Performance Today website for July 9th.  Fred Child's introduction of the piece is entertaining and worthwhile, too. 
- Mark

Coming this Fall

When I got hooked on Flannery O'Connor four years ago, I tried to read everything about her that I could get my hands on.  One of the more helpful books, was Flannery O'Connor's Georgia by Barbara McKenzie.  What drew me to this book was the way it seemed to capture in word and photograph the fictional world of Flannery O'Connor - which wasn't so fictional after all!  The photographs of preachers seized by the Holy Spirit, full immersion baptisms in muddy creeks, and fire and brimstone highway signs, evoke so well the cultural milieu of Hazel Motes, Francis Marion Tarwater, and Mrs. Greenleaf.  Psychiatrist Robert Coles wrote a splendid introduction that provides the context for this collection of vintage photographs that has sadly been out of print for years.  Recently, however,  the University of Georgia Press announced that they will be bringing it back in the fall.  We look forward to carrying the new edition in our gift shop as soon as it rolls off the press. 
- Mark

Mystical Mentor

A quick overview of the books in Flannery O'Connor's library reveals that she did not have much of a taste for mysticism or contemplative writing.  Sure, she owned and read some of the basic texts, but it just wasn't her cup of tea (see, for example, her letter to Ted Spivey - The Habit of Being, p. 297).  She was drawn more to the theological giants of the church and read everyone from Thomas Aquinas to Romano Guardini.  Not surprisingly, a more structured prayer life also was more suited to her spiritual temperament.  She prayed the rosary, the daily office, and, of course, attended mass almost every day.  Beyond these practices, she recited formal prayers such as the Prayer to St. Raphael (see the post for May 31). When it came to silent contemplation, she felt it was better to leave that to the monks at Conyers.  There was one writer on Christian mysticism, however, she endorsed enthusiastically and whose magnum opus, The Mystical Element of Religion as Studied in Saint Catherine of Genoa and Her Friends, she encouraged others to read: Friedrich von Hugel (1852-1925).   As important and indispensable as von Hugel's book may be, it is also very, very difficult.  Take it from me, I gave this two volume doorstop a try, and finally had to throw in the towel.  More my speed is Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Man's Spiritual Consciousness.  First published in 1911, this volume by Evelyn Underhill remains the most read introduction to mysticism in the English language.  Even Flannery, who had a general distrust of Anglicans, praised this "mine of information." (The Habit of Being, p. 116).
- Mark

Better Late than Never

Did you know that Flannery O'Connor's novel, The Violent Bear It Away, has been named by America magazine's Catholic Book Club as their selection for the month of June?  This is the first time that a work by O'Connor has ever been chosen. Acknowledging this grave omission in the book club's 85-year history, editor Kevin Spinale writes "the Catholic Book Club seeks to right a wrong with this month’s selection.   Since its inception in 1928, CBC has never chosen a work by Flannery O’Connor.  This month, we will read and discuss O'Connor’s novel, The Violent Bear It Away."  My question is why this book and why now?  Wouldn't her collected short stories be more apropos to start with for readers who may have no knowledge of Flannery?  To introduce the novel, Spinale has written an engaging piece for America.  Especially interesting are some of the questions he raises based on his reading of the novel.  Take a look, too, at the full list of Catholic Book Club selections through the years.  Flannery shouldn't feel too bad not making the cut 'til 2013.  It took poor St. Augustine until 1960 to get on their list. 
- Mark

A Place Called Sickness

Most readers of this blog know that Flannery O'Connor suffered from the chronic autoimmune disease, lupus erythematosus, that eventually took her life in 1964 at the young age of 39.  O'Connor rarely talked about her illness.  One of these infrequent occasions was in a  letter she wrote to her friend Betty Hester in 1956.  Speaking of her suffering Flannery writes: "I have never been anywhere but sick.  In a sense, sickness is a place, more instructive than a long trip to Europe, and it's always a place where there's no company, where nobody can follow.  Sickness before death is a very appropriate thing and I think those who don't have it miss one of God's mercies." (The Habit of Being, p. 163).  Unless one has lived with a chronic, life-threatening disease, the reader is unlikely to empathize with the feelings Flannery discloses in this letter.  He or she has probably never experienced that kind of loneliness nor could possibly imagine how an illness can be one of God's mercies.  One man who does understand is the former editor of Poetry Magazine, Christian Wiman, who for the last few years has suffered with a nasty, aggressive form of cancer.  He writes bravely of his struggles in his new book, My Bright Abyss.  In a review of it in the New York Times Kathleen Norris characterizes the book as "urgent and daring."  Indeed! What's especially daring is Wiman's level of honesty.  Writing in a style reminiscent of Pascal, Wiman struggles to find faith as he stares into an abyss of impending loss and annihilation.  I agree with everything Kathleen Norris says in her review of this important book and strongly implore you to read My Bright Abyss.
- Mark