Good Things out of Nazareth

by Flannery O'Connor

  [APRIL 10, 1960]

  Thank you for sending the reviews which I read with great interest. You could write another book about the reviewers of your latest, and there’s no doubt the reviewers of that other book would find it utterly grotesque in this tragicomic affair the comic sometimes prevails, as in the review by the smiling Mr. Hogan of the San Francisco Chronicle, who finds your “comedy” so “gay” and “lighter than you think”; and sometimes the tragic, as in the review by Dawn Powell of the N.Y. Post, in which your story disappears in a “swamp of confusion” that is by no means picturesque. (The lady outrants your prophet, without, however, manifesting the least trace of any prophetic gift, not even enough to be aware that the story is not set in Georgia!) Yet there are consolations. If there is an Orville Prescott, there is also a Louis Dollarhide. It is doubtless no mere accident that the Mississippi man understood your novel far better than most of his Northern and Western confreres. For one thing—and it is not a little thing—the Southerner knows his bible, knows what prophets are.

  At least no one is so foolish as not to admit that you write well. As a matter of fact, the reviews are, for the most part, highly laudatory, which leads one to ask: What would they have said—what would they not have said—if they had really understood your work? Please God, some day they will understand.

  But perhaps the misunderstanding is not so complete in all quarters as one might be tempted to believe. Since you were here I discovered the following remarks in the National Review (April 19, 1960). They occur in an article on “Spring Fiction” by Joan Didion. She speaks of five novels, one of which is yours (the others by Sagan, Colin Wilson, John Braine and Terry Southern respectively). After a paragraph on Mr. Southern’s book (The Magic Christian, the only other one Didion liked), she comes, in the last paragraph, to yours: “Miss O’Connor, whose merciless style and orthodox vision were established by Wise Blood and the collection of short stories called A Good Man Is Hard to Find, again focuses upon the problem of redemption. A difficult, perilously stylized book, The Violent is at every point controlled by Miss O’Connor’s hard intelligence, by her coherent metaphysical view of experience, and by the fact that she is above all a writer, which is something different from a person who writes a book—and somebody ought to explain the difference to Mrs. Sagan, to Mr. Wilson, and to Mr. Braine.” I took the liberty of showing the reviews you sent me to Father Murray and to Father Benedetto; their reactions were similar to my own. Father Murray, in turn, showed me your comment on the “God-intoxicating hillbillies,” which we both found very witty.

  It was so good seeing you again. Next time you must stay longer. My respects to your mother.

  FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO THOMAS AND LOUISE GOSSETT

  O’Connor cheerfully observes confusion about titles at a breakfast honoring Georgia writers.

  MILLEDGEVILLE

  23 MAY 60

  I have just recently come back from my annual pilgrimage to the Macon Writer’s Club breakfast, where I was introduced as the author of The Valiant Bear It Away. You go to all them pains to name a book something and then…Next Thursday we are expecting Norman Charles who took your place to bring his something or other class over. All Wesleyan is basking in great peace.

  We’ll certainly be here when you come through and will look forward to seeing you. If you are cat and dogless, stop the night with us. We have the new addition in running order. Miss White and Mary Jo came out and christened it for us by spending a Tuesday night and Wednesday.

  About the questions: I did a lot of writing on Wise Blood in New York and Connecticut—in fact all of it except the beginning which was done at Iowa and a little of the end and a little rewriting which was done here. Three or four of the stories in the collection were written in those parts too. I’m born and brought-up Catholic, not a convert.

  Fr. McCown is in Lake Dallas, Texas—Monserrat Jesuit Retreat House. I went to lecture in Mobile recently (at Spring Hill) and I had dinner with his mother and a passel of his brothers and sisters. They are all very much alive; you’d know them all for McCowns.

  My mother is coping and sends you her best. We’ll be hoping to see you in September.

  FATHER SCOTT WATSON TO FLANNERY O’CONNOR

  Better appreciation and understanding of O’Connor’s novel occurs in praise from a prominent Jesuit journal.

  JUNE 1, 1960

  Thank you for the copy of Critique and the accompanying note. I can easily understand that you were pleased with Ferris’s article as a whole. It is decidedly the best treatment of your novel that I’ve seen. May it mark the beginning of a better general appreciation!

  Perhaps my long letter to Father Gardiner was not wholly without results. Did you notice that in “America Balances the Books” (America, May 14, 1960), he comes back to The Violent Bear It Away (which he lists first among the five best works of fiction of the season) and gives a much briefer, but much more understanding review? Yet, though he now sees that Tarwater at the end is led “to take up again [why again?] the prophetic mission,” he thinks that he is driven to do so “by some dark compulsion.” Personally, as I said in my long letter to you, I see no reason to conclude that Tarwater does not retain his essential freedom in the great decisions of his life, above all in this last, though the forces of good and evil exert on the one side and the other a fearful and most powerful pressure. This, I think, is well expressed in the last paragraph of Ferris’s essay. In the paragraph just before, however, there is something with which I would disagree and which seems indeed to contradict what is said in the last paragraph. No doubt, “the passion of fanaticism and despair” have a part in Tarwater’s answering the call, but certainly I would not say that there was no “passion of religion,” or that the boy’s answer was “a capitulation to circumstances rather than to God.” I daresay this is one of the things with which, as you say in your note, you “don’t go along.”

  But then I’m sure you wouldn’t go along with much that I’m saying or have said, so let me not criticize any further our friend, Mr. Ferris. Moreover, if reviews of his or her book must often appear to the novelist as droll, if nothing worse, amateurish comments directed to the author personally could easily become ridiculous, if not indeed outrageous. If I have all along been bold in the expression of my views, it is because I have relied on your Christian charity and patience!

  FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO FATHER SCOTT WATSON

  CHRISTMAS 1960

  It was good to hear from you and I was pleased with the item from the Nat. Review.

  There have been other summings-up this season that were less pleasing.

  I have just got out of the hospital and we are embarking on a new course of treatment which seems risky but is necessary, so I would be obliged for your prayers.

  I am going to have something in the February or March issue of Jubilee that I want you particularly to see. If you ever get this way, we would certainly love to see you. The best kind of Christmas to you.

  FATHER SCOTT WATSON TO FLANNERY O’CONNOR

  Father Watson invokes Aristotle’s emotional theory in discussing a story. Caroline Gordon’s earlier recommendation of The Poetics to O’Connor remains influential. William Sessions, on the faculty of Spring Hill College, has shared with Father Watson recollections of visiting O’Connor and has distinguished himself as a fine teacher. Sessions continued over the years to present his colorful, vivid recollections of O’Connor in lectures and panel discussions at colleges and universities.36

  FEBRUARY 14, 1961

  I just read your entertaining—though much more than entertaining story in The Critic. It’s an interesting story well told. It’s also fine satire. But beyond this is your fresh, constant vision into the strange mixing of good and evil, the grotesque blending of greatness and littleness, in Man and in the “Causes” to whic
h he devotes himself. Perhaps it is, at least in part, the same vision which Our Lord Himself expressed in the Parable of the Wheat and the Cockle so intertwining that it’s hard to separate one from the other. Be this as it may, “The Partridge Festival” is a piece of powerful irony, providing a catharsis of a kind that would have surprised, but delighted old Aristotle. Sincerest congratulations!

  We were all very sorry indeed to hear of the sufferings you have had to undergo, and we surely hope the new treatment is proving successful. You can be sure of a remembrance in our prayers. Lately I’ve been remembering you by name daily in the Memento of the Mass.

  Your good friend Bill Sessions has told me a lot about his visits with you. He is doing well here. He’s an excellent teacher and is much appreciated as such.

  I know your energy these days is limited, so don’t waste any of it trying to answer this. Just offer up one of your more difficult hours for a special intention of mine, and I shall hold myself deep in your debt.

  FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO FATHER SCOTT WATSON

  The letter notes a remarkable occurrence. An O’Connor story appears for the first time in a Catholic publication. O’Connor is also thankful for prayer. Publication, intercessions of the faithful, and her own suffering are all connected.

  20 FEBRUARY 61

  Thank you so much for writing me about the story [“The Partridge Festival”]. That is the first story I have ever had in a Catholic magazine [The Critic], but I presume that is the first Catholic magazine that would have printed one of them.

  The piece I told you I was going to have in Jubilee has been postponed until the April issue [“Introduction,” A Memoir of Mary Ann]. I particularly want you to see it.

  I am feeling better and I think that with all the prayers of my friends, I’ll make it. I’ll remember your intention.

  FATHER SCOTT WATSON TO FLANNERY O’CONNOR

  Father Watson observes that O’Connor’s introduction to a memoir provides a hopeful perspective to a vital philosophic movement. Thomas Merton also would note a similar hopeful reorientation in Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer, also published in 1961. Both O’Connor and Percy provide a theistic dimension and an American context to a European philosophic movement widely understood to be atheistic.

  JUNE 2, 1961

  Your article is unusual. It was not what I had expected it to be—the life of Mary Ann [“Introduction,” A Memoir of Mary Ann]. Actually, it was something better: a quite moving, quite profound study in a vividly concrete setting of some of the great questions that men ask themselves, or should ask themselves. There’s a professor at the Jesuit theologate at Louvain [University, Belgium] who likes to begin each new thesis with a few paragraphs from Mauriac, Graham Greene, or some other contemporary man of letters that will somehow present the theological problem in however rudimentary and disguised a fashion. It seems to me your article would furnish this professor with an admirable point of departure, and, more than this, with not a little of the solution. As a philosopher teacher, however, I was particularly interested in the Christian Existentialism of your approach. Only your writing has more of the tang of reality than that of most of them, try for this as they may. The best comparison would be with Dostoevski, who, as you know, is considered a forerunner of the existentialists of the 20th century. Only, you are fully Catholic, and he is not.

  Father Rimes, head of the College Chemistry Dept., happened to read your article and said to me, quite spontaneously, what I like about Flannery O’Connor is her realism, or I guess a better word for it would be sincerity, or love of truth. I don’t remember his exact words, but this was their tenor! I thought you might be interested in the analysis of a cold-blooded scientist!

  Bill [Sessions] lent me the issue of The Kenyon Review [Ohio] with your delightful (strong!) satire on the sentimentally compassionate mother et al. (“The Comforts of Home”). A finely wrought piece.

  I’m happy to see you’re getting a better press in America [Jesuit journal] these days. I’m referring, of course, to the May 13th issue.

  It’s time for prayers, so I must stop. Tomorrow I leave for Tampa, where I shall give a retreat to some Sisters. Please remember this in your prayers.

  MILLEDGEVILLE,

  4 OCTOBER 61

  FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO LA TRELLE

  O’Connor responds to a young teacher who is writing a thesis on O’Connor’s fiction. She provides commentary on her relationship to her native region and clarifies a label often applied to her.

  Dear La Trelle,

  The questions you ask are sort of hard to answer, mainly I think because the writer’s thought doesn’t run in the same categories as that of the person viewing his work from outside. I don’t think of myself as having a “purpose as a Southern writer.” My purpose as a writer is to write well and see as truly as possible and in as much as Southerners are the people I see, they fall under my general intention of seeing things as they are, There is nothing about this “purpose” that develops; it simply is. It was the same when I first started writing as it is now.

  People write books on the subject of what is Southern literature and you can make a big thing of it, but I think probably an unsubtle definition like: Southern literature is literature in which Southerners are accurately reflected: is as good as any other. Using a definition like this, I wouldn’t consider a book like Clock Without Hands or Breakfast at Tiffany’s Southern literature, even though they are written by Southerners. I have an ingrained suspicion of “southern” writers who sit in judgment on the South from up-state New York and such like places. The real Southern writer when he sits in judgment on the South is sitting in judgment on himself.

  Books have been written also on the mind of the South [W.J. Cash, The Mind of the South]. The fiction writer attempts to show what it is, but he seldom cares to write essays on the subject. However I have written one which you will find in Granville Hick’s symposium, the LIVING NOVEL, which should be in your library. If it isn’t I’ll be glad to lend you my copy.

  When you come home for thanksgiving, come out and see me and we can talk about these things. They are probably easier talked about than written about. I’d love to meet Miss Strong and her mother if you’d care to bring them over.

  All the best,

  FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO ROBERT M. McCOWN

  O’Connor thanks the brother of Father James McCown, Robert, for his essay. A native of Mobile, Alabama, he earned a B.A. and an M.A. (Honors) in 1954 at Oxford University, where one of his examiners was C. S. Lewis. He also later became a novitiate in the Society of Jesus. He was ordained in 1963 at St. Joseph Chapel, Spring Hill College. He died in 2012.

  MILLEDGEVILLE

  GEORGIA

  1 DECEMBER 61

  I am very grateful to you for writing this essay about my novel [“The Education of a Prophet: Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away”]. If you have seen some of the other things written about it, you will know just how grateful. What you say about the book exactly reflects my intentions when I wrote it and I intend to write The Kansas Magazine and get myself a few copies to have on hand as a defensive weapon.37

  Most of the theories proposed about the book make my hair stand on end. Any analysis seems to be acceptable so long as it is not obvious, and when you stop to think that students are trained to read this way, the prospect of submitting your writing to continual misunderstanding becomes right cheerless. I am glad there is still someone at large who can read.

  When I was in Mobile year before last, I enjoyed some of your mother’s hospitality. I admire all the McCowns.

  Sincerely,

  Flannery O’Connor

  FATHER SCOTT WATSON TO FLANNERY O’CONNOR

  Thanking O’Connor for her reissued novel Wise Blood, Father Watson parallels its themes
to works by canonical and biblical writers. He also recognizes that a story could serve as an introduction to O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away. This letter and others reveal how sequencing of the stories is vital in understanding O’Connor’s fiction.

  SEPT. 1962

  I notice that all your friends, intimate or not, call you by your first name (in part, perhaps, because it is a strange and strangely attractive first name), and as I certainly wish to be counted a friend, if only a poor friend (like a poor relation), I shall do as the others. Moreover, your own most friendly custom of signing your letters “Flannery” encourages me to think that I’m not overbold. Your book and note came while I was away making my annual retreat at our novitiate at Grand Coteau (where the good God sends rain to my spiritual roots); since then I’ve been unusually busy with a number of more or less urgent details; hence it is only now that I finally find myself free to acknowledge your kindness. Thank you very much for the copy of Wise Blood. I’m “extra-grateful” for the autograph and “most grateful” of all for the friendship it so succinctly expresses.

  When I get a chance I certainly wish to reread Wise Blood, and don’t doubt that I’ll find it still more gripping than the first time I read it. Your note to the second edition is truly helpful. The one short paragraph is packed with important ideas, each one of which deserves a commentary but I’ll spare you this. Just a few passing words. Your characterization of Wise Blood as “a comic novel about a Christian malgre lui” is the sort of pithy description one would look for in a first-rate critic. Most authors—at least contemporary ones—don’t seem to have so clear a notion of what they are trying to do. What you say of the exact nature of Hazel Motes’ integrity is particularly illuminating and strikingly put. As to what you say of the “many wills conflicting in one man,” St. Augustine, as you doubtless know, talked long ago of the divided will and before him St. Paul had dramatized the struggle between the two “wills.” During my retreat I read a little book by the famous Austrian theologian Karl Rahner (called Happiness Through Prayer), which contains some stimulating pages on the mystery of freedom, though Father Rahner stresses rather how the present action of a man embodies his whole past or, at least, may do so. Presumably, not all our “wills” are free or not equally so at any rate. “God alone knows what is in man,” writes Father Rahner. “No one knows what really to make of himself in his poor distracted heart; whether his real self lives in his longing for a greater love of God, or in his unacknowledged and unrepentant grumbling at the immeasurable demands of this love.” Yet if the nature and precise location of free will are mysterious, the fact of freedom is certain. Authors who deny this fact, not only in theory, but in practical conviction play havoc with their lives and simultaneously make it impossible for themselves to write great literature. That you hold firmly to freedom while not limiting the mystery is one of your strengths as a writer.