Think globally, act locally

"When in Rome...do as you done in Milledgeville"

-Flannery O'Connor

Andalusia's pull extends across the globe. Flannery O'Connor's books have been translated into many languages, and  pilgrims come from far and wide to visit the place that inspired her art. Our visitor log includes entries from Rome and Paris, the U.K. and Canada, Iraq and Japan.  These folks are joined by visitors from all over the United States. Each visitor that comes to Andalusia invariably contributes in varying degrees to the local economy. We of course appreciate the income from purchases in the Andalusia Store; these funds help to support our preservation and conservation efforts. Visitors also spend money on food and drink, gas and lodging in Milledgeville and Baldwin County. All this activity has synergy with Milledgeville's own august history and the destination tourism marketed by the Milledgeville-Baldwin County Convention & Visitors Bureau (CVB). The local CVB is funded by hotel/motel tax dollars and those funds came home to roost last week when area attractions were surprised by the CVB with a cash award and Andalusia received $5000. Wow! That is big money for an organization whose charge is to care for and to provide access to over half a dozen historic structures and close to 544 acres of open space. Well, I can tell you the money is already being well spent, and spent locally.  These surprise funds from the CVB are being used to hire local contractors to clear and restore the Cow Barn's dirt floor to allow for a safe environment for visitors as we work towards opening the barn to the public by May. We are also using some of the surprise gift to overhaul our website. While it is rich in content and a very useful source of information, the graphics and navigation are dated, and we are using a new platform that will be easier to update. Again, local talent is being tapped, and we hope to roll out our new site April Fool's Day, in a nod to Flannery's famous sense of humor. Since our website extends Andalusia's access to our global audience we are excited by the potential for the new site, along with our growing social media presence,  to reach and engage even more Flannery fans world-wide. Local funds for global reach? I like it! 

 - Elizabeth Wylie, Executive Director, The Flannery O'Connor-Andalusia Foundation

 

The Possible

"Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible." - Saint Francis of Assisi

As I reflect on why I was seduced to pick up my whole life in Boston and move to Milledgeville to take the helm at Andalusia I was reminded of these wise words by the patron saint of animals, birds, and the environment. Indeed it was Andalusia as a place that brought me here. A place of inspiration and a haven for a supremely original and influential writer certainly, but Andalusia is also 544 acres of contiguous habitat for all kinds of flora and fauna as well as a place for humans to enjoy and connect with nature. So my aim is to start by doing what is necessary. Building on what has been accomplished to date here, I am finishing the work started on the Hill House and the Cow Barn with the goal of opening them to the public with programming and interpretation. Both structures are rich and redolent with narratives to be tapped about life on the farm for people as well as creatures. The Barn will also serve as swing space for rescuing the Equipment Shed, a threatened structure that is filled with what must be 100 years of farm tools and implements (including an eerily intact tack room). These projects, and others, are only possible through collaboration with volunteers (good citizens, friends, neighbors, artists, and students) and the financial support of individuals, foundations, agencies, and the business sector. It is the possible that excites me and drew me to the challenge of creating a relevant and sustainable organization for the long haul; an organization that will ensure this place is here 10, 50, 100 years from now. With your help that is not so impossible!

- Elizabeth Wylie, Executive Director

The Flannery O'Connor-Andalusia Foundation

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