A Labor of Love

Tomorrow is my last day at Andalusia and, therefore, it seems appropriate that my final blog post should come on Valentine’s Day.  Let me say at the outset how much I’ve enjoyed writing this blog and how grateful I am to our former director, Craig Amason, for giving me the opportunity to do so.  The blog has been a wonderful creative outlet and I’ve had a lot of fun with it.  Thanks to all of you who have been gracious enough to read it and share your thoughtful and insightful comments.  Thanks, most of all, to Craig for hiring me as Visitor Services Manager.  The 4 ½ years I’ve been at Andalusia have been some of the most memorable of my life.  Little did I imagine when I visited the farm for the first time in June, 2009 that I would soon be working here.  Talk about a dream job!  How many former English majors get to work at the home of their favorite writer?  During my time at Andalusia I have been privileged to meet many distinguished artists, writers, and scholars. However, it is the regular folks who love Flannery and visit Andalusia daily that I will miss the most.  They are the ones whose passion for O’Connor’s work has energized me and made this job so rewarding.  It has been a good run and I take with me memories that will last a lifetime.  Be assured of my best hopes for Andalusia’s future.   I will miss it more than I’m probably aware of at the moment.  What more can I say?  Working at Andalusia has been nothing less than a labor of love.
- Mark

Relentlessly Perfect

It’s no secret Thomas Merton was a big fan of Flannery O’Connor.  If the truth be told, he was a bigger admirer of her than she was of him.  In any case, when she died in 1964 Merton wrote a touching “prose elegy” that was published in Jubilee in November of that year, and later in his book of essays, Raids on the Unspeakable.  In concluding his tribute, Merton says “When I read Flannery I don’t think of Hemingway, or Katherine Anne Porter, or Sartre, but rather of someone like Sophocles.  What more can be said of a writer?  I write her name with honor, for all the truth and all the craft with which she shows man’s fall and his dishonor.”  The next year, after receiving the posthumously published Everything that Rises Must Converge, Merton made the following entry in his journal on April 23, 1965: “Yesterday Flannery O’Connor’s new book arrived and I am already well into it, grueling and powerful!  A relentlessly perfect writer, full of tragedy and irony.  But what a writer!  (Dancing in the Water of Life: The Journals of Thomas Merton – vol. 5, p. 233).  You get the impression that when O’Connor’s book arrived in the mail, the monk dropped what he was doing to read it.  He felt deeply connected to Flannery.  Note, for example, how he consistently refers to her by her first name.  According to Paul Elie, Merton thought of Flannery as the little sister he never got to know (The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage, p. 366).  And he praised her more highly than just about anyone else.  However, according to Elie, the praise is almost beside the point.  It is “in the familiarity, the intimacy, with which he spoke about her.  They  had never met, never corresponded, but Merton felt, and then put into words, the power that her work has over others – its ability to make us feel, as we read her, that we know her, that she is one of us.” (Ibid. p. 366)
- Mark

Flannery's Super Bowl Pick

Yes, folks, it’s that time of year again.  Time for Flannery O’Connor’s Super Bowl pick.  As in the past, the factors she considers in determining this year's winner have little to do with what actually happens on the field.  In Sunday's contest the Seattle Seahawks battle the Denver Broncos.   Just looking at the teams’ mascots, Flannery is tempted to go with the Seahawks.  A seahawk is, after all, a bird and we know how Flannery adores her feathered friends.  But she is also drawn to the Broncos.  The horse mascot no doubt recalls summers on Uncle Bernard’s farm (then known as Sorrel Farm) riding horseback with her cousins.  And while she is best known for the peafowl that roamed the property, all the time Flannery and her mother were living at Andalusia they also had horses.  Another factor in Denver's favor is their star quarterback, Peyton Manning.  True, he didn’t play at Georgia, but as a Tennessee Volunteer, Manning was a standout in the SEC and Flannery is nothing if not an SEC girl (see the above photo).  While Manning may not have played at Georgia, corner back Champ Bailey and running back Knowshon Moreno did.  Surely, this an important consideration.  Add to that the Broncos’offensive prowess Flannery can identify with since she is a writer whose fiction offends many.  Remember the disturbance Wise Blood caused when it was released?  Even today, she is banned in some public and parochial schools.  Lest you think this is all going Denver’s way, Flannery is quick to note that Seattle is known for more than its grunge culture.  Take their world famous coffee.  Flannery loves coffee, especially mixed with Coca-Cola - her favorite beverage.  Seattle also has a fairly large Scandinavian population and we know how she feels about Danish men (if you don’t know what I’m referring to check out Brad Gooch’s Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor p. 229ff).  Not sure, though, what she would think about this blogger whose ancestry is also Danish.   So as not to leave any stone unturned, Flannery checked out Andalusia’s data base and discovered that she has twice as many friends in Seattle as Denver.  When you add to that the many friends she has in the rest of the Pacific Northwest, Flannery’s choice would seem to be a no-brainer.  Nevertheless, she is taking Denver by a field goal 24-21.

- Mark

An Astonishing Claim

I was recently noodling around the internet searching for material for this blog when I came across this video that aired on PBS's Religion and Ethics Newsweekly Nov. 20, 2009.  In it, Ralph Wood makes the rather astonishing claim that Flannery O'Connor is "the only great Christian writer this country has produced."  He goes on to list some of the writers one might plausibly consider to be Christian - Emerson,Thoreau, Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, Emily Dickinson, Frost, Stevens - and then asserts that not one of them is Christian, at least not "orthodoxly Christian."  My immediate reaction was, this can't be.  Surely there are others.  However, the more I thought about it I had to concede that Wood was right.  Who else beside Flannery O'Connor can be considered a great Christian writer?  Walker Percy?  John Updike?  Perhaps, but as good as they are they're not in the same league as Flannery.  What about T.S. Eliot?  Now there's a contender, though I would maintain that even though he was born in this country he lived most of his life in England and is more British than some of their own writers.  As provocative as Wood's interview is, it begs the question, what is it that makes an author a "Christian writer"?  For that matter what is is that makes an author a Catholic writer?  Katherine Anne Porter, Andrew Greeley, and Margaret Mitchell were Catholics.  But can their writing be considered Catholic?  In response to a comment on last week's blog asking me to define my terms, I said that a Catholic writer was one who viewed reality sacramentally and that this outlook is reflected in his or her writing regardless of whether that person is formally connected to the institutional church.  My friend Fr. James Behrens at the monastery said that this definition needed more specificity.  So what is it makes a writer a Catholic writer?  I'd love to hear your thoughts.
- Mark

Postmodern Whispers

A month ago I wrote about an article that appeared in First Things by Dana Gioia titled "The Catholic Writer Today," in which the author bemoans the scarcity of good, contemporary Catholic writers.  Gioia contrasts this to the scene a half century ago when writers such as Flannery O'Connor, Graham Greene, and Evelyn Waugh were all the rage.  Gioia's article continues to create quite a stir.  In the latest issue of Image, editor Gregory Wolfe weighs in with a far more sanguine appraisal of Catholic writing in the 21st century.  In his essay, "The Catholic Writer, Then and Now," Wolfe asserts that "the loss of a Catholic presence in mainstream literary culture is not because we are suffering from a dearth of gifted Catholic writers, but because ideological blinders have prevented religious and secular people alike from perceiving and engaging the work that's out there."  And there is a lot of engaging work being done.  The list of current writers Wolfe cites - Alice McDermott, Cormac McCarthy, Tobias Wolff, and Louise Erdrich - stacks up well with the list of mid-century authors Gioia names.  Why then aren't these artists getting the same recognition as their forbears?  Well, for one, the cultural context has changed.  Influenced as they were by "the grand gestures of modernism and sensitive to the aggressive early twentieth century attacks on religion," Catholic writers of the 1950s were inclined to "shout." As Flannery O'Connor put it in her essay "The Fiction Writer and his Country," "“The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may well be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal ways of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock -- to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures."  And so O'Connor did, but as modernism has given way to postmodernism, the Catholic writer of today is more apt to whisper than shout.  The "master narratives" of the midcentury have given way to the more "intimate, domestic tales"of writers like Alice McDermott.  There is another reason Wolfe believes these writers are not being heard.  To see what it is, check out his essay.  And while you're at the website, consider subscribing to Image.  For my money, there's not a better journal out there on religion and the arts.
- Mark

Top Ten Title

The honors keep pouring in for Flannery O'Connor's A Prayer Journal.  Religious News Service recently named it one of the ten most "intriguing books about religion" for 2013.  Its right up there  with such notable titles as My Bright Abyss by Christan Wiman, N.T. Wright's Paul and the Faithfulness of God, and Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth by Raza Aslan.  That's pretty distinguished company.  While academia remains somewhat reserved about these youthful writings, the secular press has greeted the slender volume enthusiastically.  Ordinary readers are drawn to O'Connor's intimacy, open-heartedness, and vulnerability (a side of her personality one rarely sees in her later writings) as she pours out her soul to God.  Some have dismissed the writing as naive, but considering the fact that Flannery was in her early 20s when she was keeping the journal, I find it to be as sophisticated as it is compelling.  And I'm not the only one.  Though the book came out last November, we've already gone through two cases in our gift shop and are awaiting delivery of a third.  The publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, is having a hard time keeping up with demand, too.  The book is already in its third printing.

- Mark

Looking Ahead

As the new year gets off to an icy start here at Andalusia, it doesn't take a fortune teller to see that there are many exciting changes and events in store for 2014.  This year marks the 50th anniversary of Flannery O'Connor's death and in commemoration of that event the next international conference on Flannery O'Connor will be held at All Hallows College in Dublin, Ireland July 24-26.  For more information on the conference click  here.  Closer to home, Georgia College will be hosting a National Endowment for the Humanities sponsored seminar, Reconsidering Flannery O'Connor, July 2-29.  Presenters include Robert Brinkmeyer, Gary Ciuba, Doreen Fowler, Brad Gooch, Christina Bieber Lake, and Virginia Wray.  For more information please contact Marshall Bruce Gentry (478-445-6928) or nehoconnor@gmail.com.  You can also go to their website for more details. We are all looking forward to the January 26 gala at the Piedmont Driving Club in Atlanta to celebrate the publication of Flannery O'Connor's A Prayer Journal.  Special thanks to Andalusia Board member, Helen Collins, for all her hard work in organizing this event.  It should be quite an evening.  The following Sunday our much anticipated February Lecture series gets underway with a reading from poet David Huddle.  As with all events at Andalusia, this lecture is free and open to the public.  Perhaps the biggest event happening this year occurs next Monday when our new Executive Director, Elizabeth Wylie, assumes her post. I am pleased to report that Elizabeth got out of Boston before yesterday's blizzard and is now in Milledgeville getting settled into her new home.  I know you will all join me in welcoming her to Andalusia and wishing her all the best.

- Mark

Looking Back

As 2013 recedes in the rear view mirror, I am acutely aware of the many changes that have occurred at Andalusia during this past year.  In April we celebrated the restoration of the Hill House with a reception to mark the completion of this two-year project.  To top it all off, we received The Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation award for excellence in restoration at a ceremony held on April 26 in the Old Capitol Building.  In addition to bestowing this award, the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation gave us a $2,500 grant to continue our work on the cow barn.  With their help and a generous $10,000 grant from the Watson-Brown Foundation Junior Board, we were finally able to put a much-needed new roof on the structure.  Now that we have a new roof and the barn is stabilized, we hope to be able to open it to visitors at some point in the future.  In 2013, we finally were connected to city water service.  It is such a relief knowing that we now have a dependable source of water and don't have to worry about the well running dry in the midst of a summer drought (though, as luck would have it, 2013 was the rainiest year in Georgia's history).  Much credit for this and the aforementioned preservation/restoration work goes to our former Executive Director, Craig Amason.  Yes, I did say former.  The biggest change of the year, as far as I'm concerned, was the departure of Craig last month.  Having been at Andalusia just about as long as Flannery (13 years), Craig left us to take a position with Piedmont College in Demorest, where his wife, Amy, is also employed.  In November, after having interviewed many qualified candidates, the Flannery O'Connor-Andalusia Foundation chose Elizabeth Wylie as our next Executive Director.  She comes to us from Boston and brings with her a broad background in museums and management of non-profits.  She has a proven track record in fund raising and is brimming with innovative ideas.  I look forward to working for her and have every confidence that we are going to be well-served by her leadership. Next week, we will take a look at what's ahead in 2014.
- Mark

Faith as a Romance

Last week, a friend sent me a review from The Christian Century of Carlene Bauer's first novel, Frances and Bernard, that came out earlier this year.  Written in epistolary form, it is loosely based on the friendship between Flannery O'Connor and Robert Lowell.  In writing the book, Bauer drew heavily on the letters of O'Connor and Lowell. Since I have not read the novel, I am not in a position to review it.  However, based on the review by Amy Frykholm in The Christian Century, Bauer's novel does not exactly follow the trajectory of either writer's life.  The author, instead, "illuminates interior dilemmas, asks theological questions, and explores the dimensions of a life of faith and of romantic love."  Like Flannery, Frances's faith is more robust and deeply rooted than Bernard's/Lowell's.  Unlike O'Connor, however, both Frances and Bernard wrestle with the doubts, challenges, and agonies of faith.  For these fictional characters, faith ends up being more of an "obstacle" than a "way forward."  In the end, their romantic love and artistic ambition "provide a greater sense of redemption than faith, which seems only to stir things up, create unanswerable dilemmas and cause the characters to live too much in their imaginations and not enough on the ground." While basing fictional works on historical characters can be problematic, Frances and Bernard sounds like a compelling read.  In closing, I want to wish you all a very merry Christmas.  Due to the way the holidays fall this year, Andalusia will be open during our regular hours the weeks of Christmas and and New Years.
- Mark

The Catholic Writer Today

Writer of the "Golden Age"

In the December issue of First Things, there is an interesting piece by poet and former NEA chairman, Dana Gioia.  His article, The Catholic Writer Today, has sparked quite a lot of buzz on the blogosphere.  Gioia's premise is that Catholics today do not have the same kind of visible presence in the arts, especially literature, that they once enjoyed in the middle of the last century.  Gioia goes on to explore why this has occurred.  Rather than recapitulate every point he makes, I offer a few reflections.  First of all, Gioia rightly says that the golden age of American Catholic writing was not a renaissance.  It was, and so far remains, America's only Catholic moment in the arts.  For readers of this blog, it is worth noting that Gioia dates this era to the time Flannery O'Connor was writing.  It begins around 1950 and ends with her death in 1964. One could argue there was a lot of good Catholic writing that came both before and after that.  Ernest Hemingway (who Gioia claims was Catholic - hmmm), was already a major player before O'Connor was out of diapers.  At the other end of her life, by 1964 Walker Percy was just beginning to hit full stride and many of Thomas Merton's poems had yet to be published.  I do agree with blogger Eve Tushnet that Gioia fails to take into account how much the world of writing and book publishing has changed in the last 60 years: "There’s no acknowledgment of how completely the structure of artistic production and audience has changed since 1950. The change has been seismic. Publishing is an especially extreme example, and it happens to be Gioia’s example, so let’s roll with it. Both making books and finding the books you want to read are totally different now. Telling a young Catholic writer to go have a career like Flannery O’Connor’s is like telling a young Catholic father to get a good stable union job at the Chrysler plant. Thanks, yeah, I’ll get right on that."  To read more of Tushnet's review go to her blog.  For another interesting take on Gioia's article check out the Dec. 8th post on Heather King's blog.  And by all means, do read The Catholic Writer Today.
- Mark

A Rare Sighting

On Monday a Georgia College student finishing up an environmental studies project at the cow pond informed me that he had spotted a peregrine falcon.  He went on to say that this bird of prey is on the endangered species list and that seeing one anywhere is a rare treat.  He also noted the very fact that a peregrine falcon would find Andalusia such a congenial and protected habitat speaks volumes for this farm.  And indeed it does, since this is not the first time that such birds have been seen here.  Next time you're visiting Andalusia be sure to check out the brochure we've printed up that lists all the birds that have been spotted at the farm.  On it you'll find every kind of bird from cedar waxwings, to bobwhite quail, and the elusive Kentucky warbler.  The list of 167 species is by no means exhaustive.  I wouldn't be surprised that if some day the passenger pigeon miraculously reappears it will show up at Andalusia.  Back in 1934, the Milledgeville city fathers decided that the motto for our community would be: "Milledgeville: A Bird Sanctuary."  Old signs proclaiming such can still be seen downtown.  In recent years to draw more tourists to town, the slogan was changed to "Capitals, Columns, and Culture." I prefer the old motto.  If Milledgeville no longer considers itself a bird sanctuary, we here at Andalusia consider the farm to be so.  It was when Flannery O'Connor lived here, it still is today and we hope will remain so in the future.
- Mark

#flannery?

In the Nov. 20th edition of The Telegraph (Macon, Georgia) columnist Paige Henson wrote an interesting piece about how (or even if) Flannery O'Connor would have made use of social media were it available in her day.  Henson, who for years ran an ad agency in Macon, is an expert in the implementation of social media for businesses seeking to maximize their outreach.  She is also a big O'Connor fan.  In this article (which unfortunately you can't link to from the paper's website) Henson goes through the different media out there - everything from Facebook and Twitter to LinkedIn and Instagram) and speculates on how Flannery would have utilized it.  With the exception of LinkedIn, Henson believes O'Connor would have taken to social media like a duck to water.  I'm not so sure.  For one thing, it is important to remember that Flannery O'Connor was an intensely private person.  I cannot, therefore, see her Tweeting or posting to Facebook.  Nor can I see her posting selfies on Instagram.  On the other hand she did have a good many friends who I think she would have stayed connected to via emails and text messages.  The other thing to remember about Flannery is that when it came to publishing anything that had her name on it she was a perfectionist.  Modern social media by its very nature precludes the kind of thoughtful precision that Flannery felt was so necessary to her writing.  Blogging, on the other hand, allows for a greater degree of editorial control and so I think she might have been a good blogger.  Its' fun to speculate, but I think it's possible that O'Connor may have shunned the whole business.  She was, after all, something of a Luddite who even found it impossible to make the change from a manual to an electronic typewriter (she didn't care for the sound it made or the pesky way it would repeat letters if a key was struck too hard).  She may have been suspicious of social media and may have thought it was just too confoundedly newfangled to bother with.  Personally, I'm glad it wasn't around during O'Connor's lifetime.  Otherwise, we wouldn't have all those wonderful letters (even though I'm fairly certain Flannery would not have wanted them published).  Thank you to Paige Henson for providing a lively topic for discussion. 
- Mark

Farewell Craig

Craig Amason

Flannery O'Connor did say it best:  A good man is hard to find.  He's even harder to say good-bye to.  Sadly alas, next Wednesday we say so long to our executive director, Craig Amason.  Believe it or not, he has been at Andalusia just about as long as Flannery - 13 years.  It has been my honor and pleasure to work under him for four of those years.  What Craig has accomplished during his tenure is pretty amazing.  When the Foundation was established in 2001 and he was named its first director, Andalusia was in pretty dilapidated shape.  So much restoration work had to be done just to open the place to the public.  Craig undertook this enormous task with extraordinary competence and good cheer.  Through his Herculean efforts, O'Connor's home received its first visitors in 2003.  Yet much more work needed to be done.  When I visited the farm for the first time in June, 2009, the Hill House was covered with vines, the dairy processing shed needed work, the cow barn was on the verge of falling down, and there were none of the attractions that we take for granted today such as the aviary and peacocks.  While Andalusia has benefited from the generosity of its donors, it would not be what it is today without Craig's hard work and dedication.  His love for Flannery and her art is reflected in his labors to make Andalusia one of the premier literary landmarks in this country.  His enthusiasm for O'Connor is contagious.  I have watched him hold school groups spell-bound with the passion of a street preacher.  Flannery could not have found a more committed evangelist.  Yet he is no ideologue.  He just loves O'Connor's fiction and that love is reflected in his work at Andalusia.  In the summer 2013 Friends newsletter, Paula Lawton Bevington observed aptly that Craig is going to be succeeded not replaced.  He's also going to be missed by so many of us.  It seems appropriate in a way that he leaves us the day before Thanksgiving, for we owe him a debt of gratitude for all he has done to preserve and promote Andalusia.  Please join me in wishing him and his lovely wife, Amy, all the best in their new life in Demorest, Georgia.
- Mark

Promoting Literacy

Attention Flannery O'Connor Scholars!  As you know many of the seminal books in O'Connor criticism are no longer in print (e.g. Carter Martin's The True Country).  Fortunately, they are still readily available through on-line used booksellers.  Recently, I had the good fortune to stumble upon one that not only provides excellent service, but also promotes literacy.  Better World Books is an on-line retailer that sends a portion of the proceeds from sales to programs around the country that promote literacy.  This is certainly a venture Flannery O'Connor would have endorsed.  A few weeks ago I purchased Simone Petrement's authoritative biography of Simone Weil from Better World Books for just $3.47.  Not bad for a hardcover, first edition (with dust jacket) of a 576 page book that arrived in pristine condition.  In addition to the millions of dollars BWB has raised for literacy, they have also saved tons of books from landfills, created jobs for hundreds of people, and provided scads of great books to readers around the world. For more information on this most worthy endeavor, check out their website.
- Mark

White Girls

Hilton Als's first book in fourteen years, White Girls, will be released next Tuesday.  This tome has been getting a lot of critical praise, most recently in the New Yorker.  Why do I bring this to your attention?  Well, for one thing, Hilton Als has written insightful articles on Flannery O'Connor in the past and, while White Girls is not just about her, there is an essay on Flannery in this cultural study which touches on a cornucopia of hot-button issues.  "White girls," as Als dubs them, are not just female. Included under this label are writers such as Truman Capote and Malcolm X.  From what I've read, it's pretty hard to characterize this work.  According to the blurb on Amazon, Als essays "hairpin between critique and meditation, fiction and nonfiction, high culture and low, the theoretical and the deeply personal."  The reviewer goes on to say that, "Als presents a stunning portrait of a writer by way of his subjects, and [is] an invaluable guide to the culture of our time."  These accolades are echoed in reviews in Publishers Weekly and Booklist.  Coinciding with the release of White Girls, Nov. 12th is also the launch of Flannery O'Connor's much-anticipated prayer journal.  There is soon going to be a piece on it in the New York Times Book Review by Marilynne Robinson (Housekeeping, Gilead).  Seems only fitting that an author of O'Connor's stature merits such a heavy-hitter to review her little book of letters to God.
- Mark

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

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