Let us know your plans.
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO ROSLYN BARNES
O’Connor informs Barnes (June 29, 1962) that she has signed a movie contract for “The River.” Subsequently, several more stories became films: “The Displaced Person,” the American Short Story series (1979), and Wise Blood (1979), directed by John Huston. Good Country Pictures has secured the rights to many O’Connor stories and The Violent Bear It Away for television and movie production (www.goodcountrypictures.com).
Well I’m glad you’re really there. I’ve heard a lot about Msgr. Illych [Ivan Illich] from two friends of mine who know him—Caroline Gordon and [Erik] Langkjaer. You must need somebody violent to run an outfit like that. I want to hear more…
I have just signed a contract with a young man [Robert Jiras] to make a movie of “The River.” The Lord only knows what he will do with it. He has been trying for 5 years to get the money to do it and has just succeeded in getting enough to start. He’s never made a movie before & I’m sure isn’t aware much of the religious meaning in the story. We shall see.
We had the cub scouts yesterday and the nursery school this morning. Shot killed a 5 ft. water rattler while the nursery school was here but no one was any the wiser.19
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO FATHER JAMES McCOWN
O’Connor was impressed with Roslyn Barnes’s missionary formation (August 5, 1962). Barnes was one of the few from the Papal Auxiliary Volunteers for Latin America accepted by the Intercultural Documentation Center at Cuernavaca, Mexico. Founded in 1961 by Msgr. Ivan Illich, a native of Austria, the center offered language courses to missionaries from North America, including volunteers from the Alliance for Progress, a program supported by President Kennedy. Msgr. Illich, however, was critical of such efforts in general because he thought they failed to eliminate “apostolic tourism” in North American missionaries. He was dedicated to eradicating a superior Western perspective originally associated with Spanish colonialism that persisted in the attitudes of some North American missionaries sent to Latin America. Msgr. Illich was critical of the core progressivist perspective and the cultural values of industrialized nations. In particular, Illich believed that the faithful of Latin America should not be expected to conform to the American values of social equality, standardized public education, and material prosperity. Msgr. Illich required an extensive commitment of several years by North American missionaries. The process entailed the divesting of missionaries of “Americanism” and their embracing the indigenous cultural traditions of the faithful of Latin America.
The enclosed is a letter from a young friend of mine who is a Papal Volunteer at the school in Cuernavaca, and I am sending it to you because I know if you know about her you will pray for her. Send me the letter back but remember her. She’s a convert of about two years, very bright, and with a real vocation. Her family are violently opposed to what she is doing but she goes her own way. She says Msgr. is straight out of Dostoievsky.20
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO ROSLYN BARNES
O’Connor mentions (September 17, 1962) that the matriarchy of the local college is concerned about her friend’s welfare. O’Connor expects a report from a faculty member dispatched to Mexico to see the situation firsthand. O’Connor writes (September 24, 1962) that Msgr. Illich won the approval of a college matriarch.
H.I. Green finally appeared and gave us a very funny account of her visit to Chula Vista [original villa at the center]. She took up the 1st 20 minutes expressing her relief that you were among nice people. All along she must have been thinking that you had fallen in with cut-throats and assassins. She seems to feel better about the religion too—that you haven’t just been took. She thinks that man [Msgr. Illich] is the “growing tip.” According to her he is antiAmerican. She was most impressed with the scantness of the meals. No foolishness. She said you had a “little service” in the morning—I presumed this was Mass—and a “little program” at night—everything was translated into the language of WCG and I had to translate it back. I figured the “little program” was benediction or compline. I wish she could have stayed six months.21
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO FATHER JAMES McCOWN
O’Connor distances herself from a right-wing activist who had publicly criticized Dallas merchants for selling imported goods from Communist countries. She also praises again the article on her novel by Robert McCown.
MILLEDGEVILLE
18 AUGUST 62
Thanks for the edifying editorial. That Bowen [Robert O.] must be getting crazier and crazier. I enclose an antidote.
In the last issue of The Critic there is an interview with me by Joel Wells and he mentions your brother’s essay in the Kansas Magazine.22 I sent it to him.* I told him I hadn’t corresponded with your brother about The Violent Bear It Away and he wrote in the interview that I hadn’t corresponded with him at all. However, I don’t think it makes any difference. The point was just that he arrived at his analysis without discussing the book with me.
I hope you will get sent where you will do a lot of good but as I think you will do a lot of good wherever you are sent this about cancels itself out.
Roslyn’s name in Roslyn Barnes, Aptdo. 479, Cuernavaca, Morelas. I am sure that if you wanted to write her and tell her that you are a friend of mine who loves Mexico and I asked you to pray for her and you are doing it, that she would be encouraged. Since she’s such a recent Catholic, she doesn’t have too many people to pray for her and I am very sorry at it. I forget. She might not like my sending you her letter so you had better not tell her that. Apparently when you go to do that kind of work you have to get over what they call “cultural shock.” It didn’t seem to bother you, but it must be pretty bad on her.
The box of old Integrity magazines now [illegible] has just arrived and I have put the contents on the bookshelf and will read some of them with interest and keep them all for you—so when you want them, you know where they are. I wouldn’t think of throwing them away.
Cheers and best to your mamma.
*The Kansas Magazine to Wells
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO ROSLYN BARNES
O’Connor informs her friend that prayers by O’Connor’s colleague are rooted in a shared love of Mexico.
MILLEDGEVILLE
26 AUG. 62
Well I am much cheered that you have got over the mid-term and are still there, not that I had any doubt about it. I have a Jesuit friend, Fr. McCown, whom I asked to pray for you. He is a great lover of Mexico and has done everything he could to be sent there but he is 51 so they say he’s too old (which seems ridiculous). Anyway he may write you a letter and tell you he’s praying for you.
ROSLYN BARNES TO FATHER JAMES McCOWN
O’Connor’s prayers are answered in the new friendship between Barnes and Father McCown. He tore up Barnes’s letters only to patch them together. They reveal a new perspective in Barnes’s cheerful, seamless blending in with Latin American peoples peppered by discussion of the writings of O’Connor and Walker Percy. Barnes provides an unusual context for understanding their fiction. She also praises Father McCown’s Mexico narrative, With McCown in Mexico.
CASILLA 1280
U. DEL NORTE
ANTOFAGASTA, CHILE
Remember me? I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t after having gone so long without hearing from me. Just returned day before yesterday from the summer’s wanderings, & found your magazines waiting for me. Thank you so much, I will enjoy them, & use some of them for my students too. Peru is a strange savage sort of country. The people express themselves mostly in a wild sad music. They give you the impression of being dazed, as having received a blow at the Spanish Conquest from which they have never recovered. In the…, most of them do not speak Spanish. They have degenerated terribly since the days of the….They do not seem to remember their past. The
y chew cocoa leaves and live in a kind of dream or semi-conscious state. I visited a few weeks with a friend on the shore of Lake Titicaca, 2 ½ miles high. She is an intelligent young woman, Superior of a new Franciscan convent of 4 nuns. We all studied together at Cuernavaca. They brought a stereo and popcorn when they came, so we had glorious music and midnight snacks along with our perfect view of lake civilization, so I had a real retreat. All one has to do to observe the rule of perfect silence is to step outside the door.
I was also in Santiago, & in the south of Chile, which they call, “the Switzerland of L.A.” It is really beautiful, snow-capped mts. lakes & lakes & lakes, thick forests and fields of sunflowers and roses. Active volcanoes too. An eruption destroyed in…a month ago.
Guess what I came across that trip down South?—a priest with a library. He is only in Chile since a few months. The mission office nabbed him to give direction & retreats to all the people that wanted it. Small world, he was spiritual director to the young priest that gave me instruction 3 yrs ago. Has much training in psychology & psychiatry & his specialty seems to be direction. So you don’t have to worry about my library anymore; am quite well fixed up for the next months. Am enjoying Ign…immensely, have you read him? The Psychology of Loving is excellent. Another thing I acquired in Santiago is a Spanish guitar. Here we go-Ay! falisco!
I like the chapter you sent from your book. Before you ever wrote me when Flannery told me she had a priest friend who was writing a book on Mexico, I shuddered to think of it! It would either be sentimental, or it would condemn the indigenous culture as “pagan.” Yours has done neither—congratulations! It is really good and accurate, as only a love which has nothing in it of condescension could have made it. My only suggestion would be that you might leave out the term “brain-washing” in relation to CIF [Center for Intercultural Formation, Msgr. Illich’s school]…I…is too often accused of that & people might take you seriously. CIF is having its troubles right now, you know. The new training center at Po…, P. R, has taken the majority of the students. Nobody can play dirtier than religious, Father, when the Devil gets into them. Most of the priests & nuns from my…have got up a petition to have Msgr…fired & have sent it to Fordham Univ. My Franciscan friends were almost the only ones who refused to sign it.
Holy Thursday was my 3rd birthday in the Church. Christ remembered that it was our anniversary, and we were together…How is your Mexican friend who entered the convent? Write me and tell me about your summer—I mean, winter. Hope you’re having the kind of Easter you want to have. Bye for now. Your friend,
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO THOMAS AND LOUISE GOSSETT
O’Connor’s friends are interested in the Second Vatican Council. She recommends books that will assist their inquiry.
OCTOBER, 1962
I guess you all are glad that you are already shut of your doctrines.
I was glad to hear that you really have a legitimate pair of peafowl, even if the hen doesn’t mind her eggs always like she ought to. The one I gave the Cancer Home in Atlanta also didn’t mind her eggs the first year she was there. The second year she produced two peachickens. This year I brought up five—all hens. But my one-eyed swan died. I think her trouble was old age and I think I didn’t have a mated pair. I think her supposed mate was her last year’s hatch. He doesn’t seem even to be aware that she is gone. One of my litry friends wrote me that it was a shame to lose “so Oedipal a bird.”
I am going to get a look at Texas next month, East Texas State College; then I am going to the University of Southwestern Louisiana, then Loyola, then Southeastern Louisiana State College, all this bang bang bang. I hope I survive. Then for a long time I am not going nowhere.
If you are interested in the Council, read a book called The Council, Reform and Reunion, by Hans Kung (Sheed & Ward). It’s the best thing on it and you will enjoy it.
My mamma and several bull-dozers have dug a new pond. Now she is doing over the tenant house. All her ducks are in a row.
Keep us posted on your goings and comings and when we may look for a visit.
Cheers,
P.S. Fr. McC. has been moved from Texas but I don’t know where yet.
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO TOM GOSSETT
O’Connor worries about an ambitious lecture schedule all in the midst of an understated reference to the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. O’Connor took the prospect of nuclear exchange in stride—the possible catastrophe could interrupt her speaking tour.
MILLEDGEVILLE
27 OCTOBER 62
I just don’t see how I can work it in on this trip though I would love to come. Maybe we can work on it for next year. I feel as if I’ve already taken on more than my energy is good for on this round— four talks in six days, cold war permitting. I even have to ride on something called Trans Texas for three and a half hours from Dallas to Lafayette. My doubts about this trip get graver by the minute.
When you lay hands on Fr. McCown’s address I’d really like to have it. I’m glad they’ve finally sent him somewhere he can function in his native capacity.
I’ll send you a report on my opinion of Texas if I can generate an opinion in a day and a half.
Cheers and thanks & I wish I could come.
Yours,
*My trip is Nov 15–21—all the wrong days
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO TOM AND LOUISE GOSSETT
On a lecture tour O’Connor mentions she saw the home of a controversial American general. The model for right-wing military characters in movies such as Seven Days in May and Thirteen Days, the general was known for anti-Communist extremism. His views provoked President Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, to try to kill him just weeks before murdering Kennedy. A CNN documentary aired on November 22, 2013, the fiftieth observance of President Kennedy’s assassination, featured a segment on the general’s attempted murder.
On the same lecture tour O’Connor briefly met Mr. and Mrs. Walker Percy one evening at Loyola University, New Orleans.
MILLEDGEVILLE
GEORGIA
25 NOVEMBER 62
Dear Tom & Louise,
The first thing I was shown in Dallas was General Walker’s house. Do you know this landmark? It is a battleship grey two-story monstrosity with a giant picture window in front in which you see a ceramic Uncle Sam with a lamp on top of him. Texas and US flags flying on the lawn. The people that showed it to me thought it was funny too. I didn’t run into any arch conservatism, but I caught it on the wind. The head of the department there is a Dr. Barrus originally from Iowa and very nice…
In Louisiana they were all talking about a Representative Wellborn Jack, who is apparently harassing the colleges to see they don’t hire anybody with wild ideas.
When I went to Hammond, they told me that a Dr. Doyle would drive me back to New Orleans the next day. This proved to be Joan Doyle and she proved to be very fond of you all. I was impressed with her.
Thanks for F. McCown’s address. I forthwith wrote him and have a letter in return. He says he’s in hog heaven.
Cheers and Merry Christmas. I’m starting early.
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO FATHER JAMES McCOWN
O’Connor mentions in the next two letters her copyediting her colleague’s “Mexican letters” which she offers to present to a publisher. A master of sequencing in her own stories, O’Connor advises him about the order of episodes.
MILLEDGEVILLE
12 FEBRUARY 63
I think this is going great and just the way it should. I had a few objections, mostly stylistic, which I marked with a green pencil. I am such a loyal child of you-know-where that I begin celebrating The Feast immediately after Ground Hog Day. I think the title is fine. I would get farther along in it before I started worrying about a publisher. When you do
get more of it to show, I’ll write my editor at FS&C and see if they would like to see it. You’ll probably just have to try them all until you hit the one that likes it. I gather that the retreat at the end of the trip will kind of gather all this up into some kind of appreciation of Mexico and God’s image in the world. Anyway, it ought to work up to a kind of quiet underplayed climax like that I should think. I want to see the rest of it.
I should speculate that a publisher would not want your pictures because it would make the book too expensive, but I don’t know of course.
I hope you manage to stay out of the hospital. Maybe your ulcer didn’t like Mexican food, as well as you did. If you should get around by General Walker’s house, let me know if the ceramic statue of Uncle Sam in the picture window really has a lampshade on top of it. Of late it has seemed to me that perhaps my imagination supplied the lampshade. The statue I am sure of.
The cold has clobbered us three times. My mother spends all her time plumbing.
Cheers to you & don’t fail to send me the rest of the book. I’ll be particularly interested in the closing chapter.
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO ELIZABETH HESTER
Changes in a movie version of “The River” elicit O’Connor’s displeasure. She also is skeptical of pedagogy in local schools and critical of a future academic conference. The situation in the schools led O’Connor to write a penetrating essay, “Total Effect and the Eighth Grade.” Therein she prophetically identifies “the devil of Educationism that possesses us” and which can be “cast out only by prayer and fasting.”23 O’Connor identifies the spiritual root of “educationism,” whose deleterious impact she traces in many letters in this collection, as well as in The Violent Bear It Away. Her observations raise philosophic questions about the rationale and wisdom of both public and parochial schooling rooted in “educationism.” O’Connor consistently notes the widening gulf between “schooling” and wisdom.
Good Things out of Nazareth Page 27
