Good Things out of Nazareth
Page 13
I had a nice letter from Fr. Gardiner [Harold], giving me five or six names of reviewers who would be interested in Caroline Gordon’s book [The Malefactors]. He said my ideas for a critical piece were very interesting and he hoped I would come up with one before too long. However, there is a good deal more that I must come up with right now.
My mother went cow-buying a couple of years ago and asked an old man for directions how to get to a certain man’s house. He told her to go thus and so and that she couldn’t miss it because it was the only house in town with an artificial nigger. I was so intrigued with that that I made up my mind to use it. It’s not only a wonderful phrase but it’s a terrible symbol of what the South has done to itself. I think it’s one of the best stories I’ve written and this because there is a good deal more in it than I understand myself…6
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O’Connor seeks spiritual counsel. The letter also revisits a theme of her most famous story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” featuring a theological debate about the identity of Jesus.
MILLEDGEVILLE
4 MARCH 56
The enclosed letter is from one of my correspondents whom I’ve never seen. I helped him to get into the University of Iowa and now he favors me with letters describing his friends. He has been telling me for some time about this Mrs. De Luna whose chief characteristic is that she can’t stand Jesus. Thinks He was a lunatic. She is of the psychoanalytical school. In the letter before this Steele told me that Mrs. De Luna’s thought for the week was that nobody would have paid the least attention to Jesus if he hadn’t been a martyr but had died at the age of 80 of athlete’s foot. I told Steele she was absolutely correct and that her trouble was probably that she was orthodox and didn’t know it. So now I get this further information about her background. It should doubtless be posted on the bulletin board at the Sisters of Mercy’s Mother House.
What I want to know is if I am right in contradicting the Sister who told Mrs. De Luna that anybody who hadn’t heard of Jesus would be damned? So far as I understand it the Church does not teach any such thing, but then I know this is a matter with complications and I don’t want to tell him what I am not absolutely sure about.
I have finished Weeping Cross [Henry Stuart Longan] and I must say it is a fine novel and your note in the front of it well justified. I hadn’t expected it to be so good. I am now on The Devil Rides Outside [J. H. Griffin], but I haven’t got far enough to have much opinion about it. If you want the Weeping Cross before Mr. Ridley appears, let me know and I will mail it, along with another book for your library—this time a good one—The Presence of Grace by J. F. Powers, which I have reviewed for The Bulletin [diocesan newspaper].
I never thanked you for the letter in the newspaper or the pamphlet about the brothers but I appreciated both. I haven’t heard from the brother again and hope not to.
I don’t know anybody in Augusta. I visited there once when I was four—at the convent where my cousin was Mother Superior and celebrating her something-or-other jubilee. They had ice cream for dessert in the shape of Calla lilies. That was the only time I was ever tempted to join an order—I thought they ate that way every day. We hope you will get over on the 19th.
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Father McCown apparently is scheduled to deliver a literary talk. O’Connor politely declines an invitation to attend.
MILLEDGEVILLE, GEORGIA
2 APRIL 56
Thanks very much for the (very elegant) invitation to hear your review. I wish I could. I also wish we had some such movement afoot in Milledgeville but we prefer Bingo. I’m a Baptist about Bingo.
I had a letter from Dale Francis who said that in an editorial in America commenting on the National Book Award it was said that either Robert Penn Warren or I would have been better people to get it. That may mean Fr. Gardiner read my book. I had it sent to him.
The enclosed will interest you. I’d like it back as I often have to refer to it to get my own bearings.
I hope you have heard that Mrs. Daniel is better.
* * *
Father McCown initially tried to enlist O’Connor “to do some polemical writing to defend Holy Church against her enemies” and sent her pious novels.7 She reacts (May 9, 1956) with judicious comments.
However, after taking as much as I could stand of Affair of the Heart [Margaret Long], I decided that since I might get a chance to meet her, it would be better not to have read her books—as I wouldn’t possibly be able to say I like them…
I think a person who didn’t know anything about fiction could read it and enjoy it. It’s all done with dialogue and the dialogue could have been tape-recorded from Macon or Atlanta. She has an awfully good ear but absolutely no discrimination in using it. Affair of the Heart is just propaganda and its being propaganda for the side of the angels only makes it worse. The novel is an art form and when you use it for anything other than art you pervert it. I didn’t make this up. I got it from St. Thomas (via Maritain) who allows that art is wholly concerned with the good of that which is made; it has no utilitarian end. If you do manage to use it successfully for social, religious, or other purposes, it is because you make it art first. She doesn’t.
The Griffin novel [John Howard, The Devil Rides Outside] is not as good as I thought it was going to be but very interesting and more convincing than the last—which may be because it’s about savages and you have to take his word for it…8
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O’Connor recurrently suggests parallels for her Jesuit friend from fiction and in this letter (May 20, 1956) likens him to a character in a novel by a British novelist.
It was good to see you turn up with that crowd from Macon. It reminded me slightly of one of those early books of Waugh’s that has Fr. Rothschild, S. J. in it [Vile Bodies]. He is always appearing in unlikely company, usually in disguise, and if I remember correctly, usually on a motorcycle.9
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O’Connor complains about an editor’s unauthorized changes in an article she wrote. She also plans to lecture at Notre Dame University. Her lecture established a lasting interest in her on campus. For example, in the fall 2003 Literature Series, “A Reason to Write: Two Catholic Novelists: Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy,” scholars and students discussed the works of both. Ecumenical in nature, the conference featured a non-Catholic lecturer on O’Connor who commanded the audience’s attention by beginning, “I thank God for Notre Dame because it always gives me something to protest against.” After the lecture, O’Connor might have enjoyed the lively discussions that extended into the night at the Morris Inn. A few libations were shared.
MILLEDGEVILLE
30 MARCH 57
I am certainly much obliged to you for sending me the copies of America. We enjoyed the priest who brought them but we didn’t manage to catch his name. He and my mother had a lively discussion on the relative merits of retreats. He was in favor of retreats. She was not.
I was disappointed in the piece in America [“The Church and the Fiction Writer”]. He [the editor] changed entirely the paragraph about the responsibility of the artist, so that it sounded to me contradictory. Now I have no objection to being corrected and made orthodox on these matters, but I think I should have been allowed to correct it myself, in my words, inasmuch as my name had to be on it. If in one paragraph you say the writer is free, and in the next say the responsibility for souls will turn him to stone, and in the next say he has it anyway, and in the next say it doesn’t matter, it seems to me you are only muddying an already muddy situation. If the writer has this responsibility then it ought to be defined—is it to fifteen year old-years girls? is it to the ignorant reader? is it to children? is it the same, in kind, as the responsibility of the Church? If you know anybody that answers such questions, please put me onto him.
I have had two letters from your friend Mr. Watts. The last enclosed. I don’t know what idea he has got in his head about the Mercer professors but I wouldn’t want him to think that I didn’t appreciate their visit or admire their intelligence. Anyway I liked his letter to the paper and you were right to make him chop off that last sentence—all the Baptists in Georgia would think that the Pope was about to take over the legislature.
I am going to talk at Notre Dame on the 15th of April so I’ll be able to report first hand on Cathlick eddication pretty soon.
Come to see us when you can and thanks again for the books.
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O’Connor mentions “Billy,” William A. Sessions (1928–2016), an enduring friend of both Father McCown and her. An entertaining scholar and storyteller, he had his own distinguished academic career as recounted by an acquaintance:
I knew Bill only in my guise as a beginning Renaissance-lit scholar who admired his work and was, in turn, encouraged by him in my own studies…Alas, I only saw him at conferences and once when he invited me to his home to meet with him and the circle of Tudor-era historians and literary scholars he knew…I remember listening to him one evening spend a great amount of time with a historian debating some of the more arcane significations of English heraldry. The topic was essential to his account of the poet, the Earl of Surrey’s death in his well-known and well-received biography of Henry Howard [Henry Howard, the Poet Earl of Surrey: A Life]. He had a deep knowledge of Tudor culture, so it always surprised me when I found out how much he knew about 20th-century American literature as well. I envied him his broad knowledge!10
MILLEDGEVILLE, GEORGIA
8 MAY 57
We’re sorry you can’t come to dinner but if you can get over in the afternoon, I know Mary Harty would like to meet one of William’s friends (That sentence don’t parse.)
No, don’t quote me to Fr. Gardiner [Harold, editor of America] because I have forgotten what I said and also because I should write him myself. The thing don’t seem so bad to me now but I still feel that no self-respecting magazine should make changes without asking the writer himself to do it. They printed one letter (April 20?) which I thought entirely beside the point. Some Jesuit wanted to know what you could read to preserve your innocence. Answer: the telephone book. He also seemed to object to Original Sin.
The only one of those books that I need back is Baron [Friedrich] von Hugel’s Letters to His Niece. You can send it by Billy [William Sessions].
I appreciated your brother’s [Robert McCown, S.J.] kind comment on the article. I hope you rake up a good crowd from Mercer for Fr. Tavard.
MILLEDGEVILLE
14 MAY 57
We killed off the bottle you sent in short order and were all very much obliged to you. Fr. Tavard negotiated the opening of it and got it all over himself as my mother had shaken it vigorously before bringing it in—she handles liquor as if it were milk of magnesia, or as if it would be better if it were.
After the 20th we will be home and certainly will be glad to have you and Mrs. Daniell over for lunch. On the 20th we are going to Savannah to spend the day but after the 20th will be here. Let me know when you’ll come.
That was an elaborate dirty trick played on Fr. Tavard, getting him to go to Dublin to take the place of what he thought was a dead priest. They came back by here Sunday and gave us an account of it which was very funny. We certainly liked Fr. Tavard.
We’ll expect to see you and Mrs. D.
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O’Connor likens her Jesuit friend to a priest in a novel by a British author. She also declines to visit Koinonia Farm, founded in 1942 in Sumter County, Georgia. Like the utopian communities of New England established in the nineteenth century, such as Brook Farm formed by Transcendentalists, Koinonia envisioned “transcending” the segregation of Georgia in the establishment of an integrated, ecumenical community. Koinonia’s radical sociology during the civil rights era led to conflicts. Dorothy Day, cofoundress of the Catholic Worker Movement, visited the farm and narrowly escaped violent conflict.
MILLEDGEVILLE
GEORGIA
22 MAY 57
I think you will soon be known as The Whiskey Priest [Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory]; the Christian Brothers should put you on the payroll, not just send you a case of brandy. That is the funniest controversy I have seen in years. Send Brother Matthews a bottle when the case comes.
I’m mighty sorry to have missed the Daniells but I’ll hope maybe they will come again.
Thanks for the invitation to Koinonia with you and the Gossetts but I won’t be able to make it. I will not be found under the pote-coshay [porte-cochère, a covered porch at the entrance of a building]. I wish you and the Gossetts would drive down some afternoon.
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO THOMAS GOSSETT
O’Connor mentions (November 24, 1957) the Irish representative to the United Nations. O’Connor’s skepticism of literary categories continues. She also refers to one of the “Twelve Southerners” of I’ll Take My Stand (1930). O’Connor maintained distance from the Vanderbilt professor perhaps because of his right-wing politics. Other Southern Agrarians—Andrew Lytle, Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, and John Crowe Ransom—were vital, however, in either teaching O’Connor or publishing her stories in journals they edited.
We certainly would like you to come over and bring Mrs. MacEntee [Maire]. She sounds powerful formidable with all them degrees and what not but we’ll look forward to the visit. I have been meaning to write and ask you and Louise to come over some afternoon. I hear you are teaching something called southern Literature. What is that?…
I hope Donald Davidson [professor, Vanderbilt] didn’t cure them of having Southern lecturers. At least they started at the extreme. How far to the right can you get? etc.11
FATHER JAMES McCOWN TO GERALD KELLY, S.J.
Hosting an ecumenical reading group, O’Connor seeks a dispensation in order to read a Nobel Prize winner listed on the “Index” in 1952. Centuries earlier, in 1542, the Catholic Church established the Index Librorum Prohibitorum to prohibit the faithful from reading works of Protestant Reformers and others. The Index grew to a list of works the Church considered dangerous to faith and morals. Father McCown consults his professor from seminary. He (identified as “my old teacher”) appends a possible way to accommodate O’Connor’s request.
TO GERALD KELLY, S.J.
[BEST AMERICAN CATH. MORALIST
MY OLD TEACHER]
JANUARY 13 [1958]
Greetings from the sunny south! I am writing to ask your opinion on something. First, let me quote a paragraph from a letter from Flannery O’Connor, O’Henry Award winner for the best American short story for 1956, a devout Catholic, tremendous knowledge of Catholic thought (all gotten on her own from extensive reading), and dear friend. Quoting:
Two or three things have come up on which I need some expert SOS spiritual advice. Not long ago the local Episcopal minister came out and wanted me to get up a group with him of people who were interested in talking about theology in modern literature. This suited me all right so about six or seven of them are coming out here every Monday night—a couple of Presbyterians, the rest Episcopalians of one stripe or another (scratch an Episcopalian and you’re liable to find most anything) and me as the only representative of the Holy Roman Catholic & Apostolic Church. The strain is telling on me. Anyway this minister is equipped with a list of what he would like us to read and upon the list is naturally, Gide, also listed on the Index. I despise Gide but if they read him I want to be able to put in my two cents worth. I don’t think there is any use to ask the local reverend father for permission. Some women in the parish, college graduates & pillars of the church, asked if they could read some Jehovah Witness pamphlets. They wante
d to see what the Witnesses believed. He told them flatly no. He is a letter of the law man, no ifs, ands or buts, and very hard to approach anyway. You said once you would see if you had the faculties to give me permission to read such as this. Do you and will you? All these Protestants will be shocked if I say I can’t get permission to read Gide…
Now, I have read Aregui, Jone, and Davis. All three seem to have been copied from the same original, no “ands, ifs, or buts” about it. They quote the canon and that’s about all. Now the trouble is that the bishop of Atlanta (in whose diocese Miss O’Connor resides) has a well-known case of scruples, and I am as sure as I am sitting here, that he would never give such a permission, even for this kind of case. The gal in question has read more fathers of the church, and more St. Thomas than His Excellency ever saw. Now, does any moralist or recent ruling allow me, her spiritual father, to allow her to read Gide? Can I allow the Catholic students of the local state College to read assigned books that happen to be on the Index, or do I have to have toties quoties [Latin term meaning “repeatedly” or “as often as necessary”] recourse to the bishop? I might say in passing that I agonize over the whole Index anyway. I am sure it is the obstacle keeping countless intellectuals a million miles away from the Church. They laugh at us because of it. I am now where this letterhead indicates. A lovely place and a most comfortable house. Why not come down here for your annual retreat? I’ll take you fishing. Sure hope your health has improved. I was much saddened to learn of your heart attack.