Friday, November 1, 2013

Grace and Art

Well, the plaudits for Flannery O'Connor's forthcoming prayer journal keep pouring in.  Yesterday, at the library I picked up the November issue of Book Page which contains a very positive review of A Prayer Journal by Kelly Blewett.  In her column Ms. Blewett notes the brevity of the book, but admits that isn't a "drawback" because "the material that is here is well worth reading."  While I've read excerpts from the journal elsewhere, I loved the quip from Flannery in an entry dated September, 1947: "Today I have proved myself a glutton - for Scotch, oatmeal cookies and erotic thought."  Great zinger, especially for those who are tempted to turn O'Connor into an alabaster saint.  By the way, A Prayer Journal will be released in 11 days.  You can be sure that we will have plenty of copies for sale in our gift shop.
- Mark

2 comments:

Cotterpen said...

My most literate e-mail correspondent and I already had discussed this passage before I encountered it on your website. I had offered your interpretation, partly in jest, that minimalist punctuation as I remembered the quote in “The New Yorker” might require editing. Thus, a series of items.

In her letters, Flannery O’Connor wrote from a lecture visit to Notre Dame in the days when the university in South Bend, Indiana, was all-male, that she was enjoying the "liquor and male companionship," neither of which, according to her, she got enough of back home at Andalusia with her mother.

My friend pointed out the existence of Scotch oats, like Quaker Oats, from which certainly Scotch oatmeal cookies could be made. Still, there are the confessions of gluttony and eroticism. A good girl is hard to find.

Andalusia, Home of Flannery O'Connor said...

I think you're right about the Scotch oatmeal cookies. However, the excerpt I read mistakenly inserted a comma.