The enclosed will amuse you. It is a section that Powers [J. F.] censored out of a book called Conversations with Catholics that Lippincott is going to publish soon—tape recorded sessions with McDonald. A friend of mine at Lippincott sent it to me, which she wasn’t of course supposed to do so don’t mention it to anybody else. I can’t understand why either of them should the mummy hard to understand. I thought it dangerously obvious.
I’ve sent you Christ and Apollo [William F. Lynch, S.J.] which has some good answers to the question of what-are-you-saying. But when people ask you this, there is no answer for them except to say you are saying what can’t be said otherwise than with your whole book, that you can’t substitute an abstraction and have the same thing.
This version I sent you of “The Partridge Festival” has the mater’s seal of toleration. I am undecided about it though I think it is a great improvement on the other version. Lemme hear how it strikes you.
Cheers,
Flannery
I forgot. Ashley [Brown] and Carol [Johnson] were here last Thursday and Friday and Carol said, “How is Elizabeth? I would have liked to talk to her.” “Elizabeth who?” says I. “The girl,” she said, “who came down that Saturday.” So it seems you are Elizabeth, how I don’t know. A. was taking her as far as he was going, Nashville. My mother said she would just as soon have a broom in the car with her as Carol. Somebody in Virginia has had a little booklet of her poems printed for her and she is going to send you one, via me; but it hasn’t come yet.
6-13-60
I meant it would be bad for you. Nothing worse than ignorant folks telling you what they think of your books. That is why I am all against writers’ clubs where they read their works to each other—ignorance, malice, and flattery. I am sure that lady had no malice, but she doesn’t know anything. Sometimes people associated with the outside of books get the illusion they know something about the inside—very bad.
Watch out for all those theories of your own. Miss Nancy deserves just what she got from you, no more. She won’t take more weight. Send it to those places whether you like it or not.
Cecil [Dawkins] is still in Waukesha and will be there until the end of June probably. I heard from her today and she asked what had happened to you. Cecil is kind of a displaced person. I suspect she needs you.
I will try to get that bottle out of that child’s mouth. I changed that around and thought I had her cleared to talk but I must have done just the opposite. I will also learn to spell nickel. Perhaps. It is dreadful to be corrupting others.
By now you will have read yclept Billy’s [Sessions] manuscript. I have the feeling—and I didn’t say this to him because it is just a feeling—but the feeling that this might have been written by some old man who fancied himself a Bernanos type. There are a lot of lovely passages, but it seems to me imitation Bernanos wrapped around Tennessee Williams. Billy is too good an impersonator for his own good. He shows exactly what he has read. I liked the angel being part of the spinning equipment, but found his entrance rather startling at that point. Billy enclosed a dollar bill in the ms. He sent it fourth class for 33¢ and wrote manuscript on the outside but the mailman told my momma it would have to be first so I owe Billy 34¢ or so. Or maybe I should forward this 34¢ to you and you should send it to him 4th class. I think we might cut a few corners ourselves in dealing with William.
I accept all your kind words about how find I address an envelope. I feel myself I am very good at it. If there is One thing I can do, I always say, it is address an envelope.
If you won’t come down when M. [Maurice-Edgar] Coindreau is here, pick another Sareday. I expect no more visitors unless they be unannounced.
Cheers,
Flannery
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO WILLIAM A. SESSIONS
O’Connor is critical of her friend’s play. Staging supernatural occurrences is very difficult and requires a rare gift, like Shakespeare’s presentation of a ghost in Hamlet. Pulitzer Prize winner, August Wilson, in The Piano Lesson, also powerfully presents a demonic presence on stage. Sessions’s attempts put him among exalted playwrights, but the results are not as successful.
MILLEDGEVILLE
23 JULY 60
Dear Billy,
I have just finished the play and while it is fresh in my haid I will tell you a few of my reactions, since I may have forgot them by Saturday next.
While I think you have made your intellectual intentions clearer than in the other version, I think you have weakened the play dramatically. It is awful talky. You just can’t read this psychologizing talk-talk for long. The reader gets bored with Hugh and his problems. When you had those other characters there was at least some exiting and entrancing to break the monotony.
You have moved the good bit about the angel being seen as part of the spinning equipment to the very end—where it is dramatically ineffective. You need that in an earlier place to give the vision reality. That was the good thing about it in the other version, apart from its being good in itself. We believed in the vision right away. Now I do not believe in it. I think Durwood is weaker in this version. You have prepared for the angel better, but then when you come to it, it is weak. That last speech of Elena’s about the angel when Durwood has the knife at her throat is bad—just wouldn’t be. All I could think of is this is not Elena with a knife at her throat, this is Billy philosophysing his play. Very frequently in this version, I don’t hear the characters at all—I hear you.
I think if you could combine some of the better aspects of this version without sacrificing what you had in the other version, you would do better. Of the two version[s], I would prefer the first. But I think you can do a better one than either.
I would put Harvey and the old lady back in there if I was you and I would sure move that angel coming out of the spindle to where you had it before.
Durwood is not very real to me. Somehow I still see you commenting on things through Durwood. I think you need to get more distance on the whole thing.
We’ll be looking for you and Betty at high noon on Saturday. Cheers,
Flannery
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO ELIZABETH HESTER
SAT AFT
Dear B,
The enclosed is what I told the lad [William Sessions] but don’t tell him I sent you a copy. I think he has just tried to tighten it up and hasn’t succeeded and it is much worse as you say. You hear him talking through all these people. A play with 4 characters—all Bill—the theatre will die when it sees him coming if he keeps this up.
Chrs F
MILLEDGEVILLE
27 JULY 60
Dear Betty,
I’ve got WALK EGYPT [Vinnie Williams] in the house but haven’t set myself down to it. I did read four pages and I decided it was not for me, but since you say it’s good, I’ll have another go at it. I judged from my four pages that it was linsey-woolsy poor-folksy, one of those where you have to watch the grass grow. I’m really a bad reader. Something don’t pay off line by line I’m gone.
I’m distressed to hear what you say about Cecilia. I wrote her a note after you said about her son and she didn’t answer it. I’ll try again.
Sit-downs in the Legion Auxiliary! Well! We’ll all have to retreat now to the UDC.
We’ll be looking for you Saturday. Cheers.
F
* * *
This letter borders on becoming a story rooted in one of O’Connor’s masterful plot devices: travel. The pilgrimage to Milledgeville, possible travails of the journey, and potential scandal illustrate O’Connor’s storytelling gifts.
MILLEDGEVILLE
6 AUGUST 60
Dear Betty,
Me and momma we both INSIST that you come on Wednesday in
stead of Friday. In the first place, if you come on Friday you won’t get yourself relaxed before you have to turn around and go back. In the second place it is one thing to ride with Louis going back and another thing to ride with him coming down. Coming down, his car is full of kegs, crates, cardboards boxes, rolled wire, automotive equipment, fishing equipment and other impedimenta. At Shady Dale he stops and leads up with peaches. After a ride down with him you would be in no condition to enjoy the view. Going back, he has dumped all this stuff. In the third place, if it is scandal you are worried about, you can forget it. If I investigated the past of everybody that visits us, I would have to close down the place. In the fourth place, we figure you to be the kind of company who can eat what we ordinarily eat and for whom we don’t have to put on the good silver or the linen napkins. Bring some work you want to do or something you want to read. You won’t even see me in the morning. You can do your own work or go to town with Regina and set and watch the bugs. If you won’t come Wednesday, then come Thursday; but I’d like you to see these people if any of them are around. I mean the ones that come on Wednesday. If you insist on coming with Louis Friday, don’t say I didn’t warn you. TRAVEL AT YR OWN RISK.
Yesterday in the Constitution [Atlanta] Doris Lockerman had her colyum on Vinnie Williams’s book. She mostly quoted from it, reflections on this and that. I can’t say I liked the quotes.
If you have a persistent headache you ought to go to the doctor and find out why. These headaches associated with the period are often due to water retention. I know a girl that had them practically all month. You can take a hydrodiuril tablet that will probably correct it. You can’t get anything done with a headache.
If you think that section of Caroline’s [Gordon] novel is nuts, you ought to hear about the rest of it. She insists it is a novel but has no precedent. Which I can well see is the case. Catherine Carver read that chapter and wrote me: “Can’t she be deterred?” Ashley [Brown] thinks she may pull it off.
According to Elizabeth McKee, HOLLIDAY would pay me $500 for a piece on peacocks. I am thinking about it [“Living with a Peacock”].
I am not going to turn the Sister’s ms. into anything of merit along literary lines because it would be impossible. I’ll just have to see what can be done with it. We spent the day with them Tuesday. It is a most impressive place.
Cheers and kindly come on Wednesday.
Yrs,
Flannery
* * *
The letter commemorates the birthday of a president not ranked on the first or even second tier of U.S. chief executives. President Benjamin Harrison was a grandson of President William Henry Harrison, and a great-grandson of Benjamin Harrison V, a Virginia planter and signer of the Declaration of Independence. O’Connor’s recognition comports with her refreshing, unconventional perspective on American history present throughout the letters.
O’Connor also addresses Betty as a peer able to recognize well-crafted works of literary realism. She asks her to read what O’Connor considers a pious, ill-written work by a religious. Similarly, a novel that became an American classic is deficient. O’Connor, however, from the time she was a student at Iowa, admits her blunt opinions had repercussions. She writes in her Prayer Journal about a “lack of charity” and “to make my mind vigilant about that. I say many many, too many uncharitable things about people every day.”3 A more tolerant voice also appears in her reviews of books for the diocesan newspaper.
MILLEDGEVILLE
BENJAMIN HARRISON’S BIRTHDAY
[AUGUST 20, 1960]
Dear Betty,
I am glad you have seen fit to take my excellent advice and get here Wednesday. As to what those people read, they don’t read nothing. I have to find a story and somebody reads it after they get here, if anything is read at all. Half of them are on vacation but there will probably be a couple here. They mostly just sit around. We will meetcha at the gate, or anyways at the spot where there ought to be a gate but is not.
When you come you can sit down and read the Sister’s manuscript [A Memoir of Mary Ann]. I hope you can stand it. I have permission to cut out anything I want to cut out. I am afraid that the surgery will be so drastic nothing is left but a skeleton.
Thank you for the picture. It looked very much like him. He loved all those rascals, I suppose.
We had lunch with a friend in Eatonton [Georgia] last Sunday who told me there was ONE book I ought to read, namely Harper Lee’s To Kill A Etc. She then recited half of it, which was enough. The lady from Florida wrote me that she had read it and it was no good.
What you say about when the extreme is justifiable in fiction is in different words about what I have said on the subject in the talk I am giving at Minnesota. I am still working on it, but I felt better on reading yours. I am working on that, working on the peafowl thing, and today the Sister sent me the last section of their thing so now I have that in my lap. I am anxious to have you read their ms. It is full of awful pious stuff, phrases like “her tender heart told her,” and in part sounds like a tract for Catholicism, but anyhow, it has to be done.
I was not shocked to find that in my last review in the Bulletin [diocesan newspaper], some knowing soul had changed the word “gnostic” to the word “agnostic.” Probably didn’t know gnostic was a word. Eileen maybe. Mr. Zuber [Leo J.] has the idea I like to review fiction so he wrote and asked if I would like to review The Leopard [Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa]. It is supposed to be very fine, but I am seeing enough spots before my eyes right now; I suggested he try you. Did he? If so you can bring it with you for you will have nothing better to do here than sit on the porch and read yourself blind or walk around and smell the sweet flowers. I have two extra typewriters; but I forget you write in long hand—a reactionary way of doing things, like cooking on a woodstove.
Chrs until Wed.
Flannery
The leopard is caged & awaits my return. Thanx.
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO ROSLYN BARNES
The tone of the letters shifts. Barnes is younger than Betty and is an aspiring writer enrolled in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Having had her own experience with misunderstandings of a regional accent at Iowa, O’Connor is pleased a class could understand Barnes. Learning from Mark Twain and William Faulkner, O’Connor employed regional speech to her advantage in reading to different audiences. Barnes apparently is following her lead.
MILLEDGEVILLE
12 OCTOBER 60
I hope you got over your reading in the Workshop all right and got some help from it. As I recall, the first time I set out to read to the Workshop, there were so many groans as soon as I got started that Engle took the thing away from me and said he would read it himself. Which was all right with me, except he didn’t really read it any better than I would have. While I am in St. Paul, I am going to read on the U. of Minn. Campus. I am quite a ham and enjoy reading. Let me know how yours turned out.
Dr. Walston and Miss Benton were out the other day and appeared able to cope.
No, don’t send me a copy of Mr. Santos’ book. He sent me one himself, but with no return address. It came from Manila. I have just written him care of his publishers. Thanks anyway.
Every campus is full of the kind of students you describe. You have something they don’t; so try to deepen what you’ve got and don’t let them bother you.
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO ELIZABETH HESTER
The letter shows the wide interests of two women of letters, but Betty still remains unknown and unpublished. Having converted to the faith with O’Connor as her sponsor, Hester encouraged her friend to reread a Church father. O’Connor is also reading the galley proofs of a friend and fellow novelist. A distinguished professor of American literature has also arranged a reading for O’Connor. She also continues to express reservations about a Catholic ac
tivist.
MILLEDGEVILLE
15 OCTOBER 60
Dear Betty
I have a Gateway edition of St. Jerome’s letters so when you mentioned it, I fetched it out and read some of them again. St. Jerome was a man seldom content to stop when he had made his point. Reading a book on Christian spirituality of that era, I get the impression he was responsible for a lot of heresies brought on by people who couldn’t take his extremes and reverted therefore to opposite extremes. The Lord must purify the Church in a kind of negative way with the St. Jeromes. He is so rough he drives the devils out of the whole church; a big job.
Last week the galleys of Jack Hawkes novel arrived [The Lime Twig]. It is very short and full of suspence, though it still seems to take place in a dream. Leslie Feidler is going to do the introduction. I am terribly impressed with the writing, but of course I don’t feel I know what it’s all about, and I think Jack has the feeling that if I did, I wouldn’t like it. If they let me keep the galleys I’ll send them to you, as I think you’d get something out of it. I may have to return them.
I got my statement from Farrer, Strauss & Cudahy the other day. The Violent Bear [It Away] sold about 3500 copies. That is about as bad as you can do short of not selling any.
Good Things out of Nazareth Page 23
