FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO TOM AND LOUISE GOSSETT
As the result of increasing health problems, O’Connor cancels a lecture tour and a visit to her friends in San Antonio.
MILLEDGEVILLE
18 NOVEMBER 64
Dear Tom & Louise,
I sure do wish I could come but I have had to cancel all the lectures—Boston College, Brown and the University of Texas—and I have very shortly to go to the hospital and be cut upon by the doctors. I suggested they ask me again next year but I don’t know. This is all fairly sudden. I WASN’T LOOKING FOR IT.
Thanks for asking me anyway. If I were coming, I would accept.
Fr. McCown seems to be in Houston. He sho do move around aplenty. Tell him not to forget to send me your lunatic book. Just right for hospital or recuperative reading no doubt.
Cheers,
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO FATHER JAMES H. McCOWN
The next two letters concern immediate hospitalization. O’Connor also notes that Father McCown has become a nomadic retreat leader and lecturer. For almost a decade O’Connor has beseeched prayers from her Jesuit friends and Janet McKane.
MILLEDGEVILLE
20 FEB. 64
You do flit from place to place. One day I get a pamphlet from Houston + the next day a magazine from Mobile. Thanks a lot for both. We’ll give the men the Knights of Columbus pamphlet. That other must have been a joke.
I am being operated on Tuesday here and will be in the hospital 10 days or 2 weeks. Rather serious so kindly commend me to the Lord, formally & informally and ask my friend Fr. Watson to do the same—if you stay in Mobile long enough to receive this.
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO JANET MCKANE
MILLEDGEVILLE
22 FEB 64
Dear Janet,
Well I didn’t have much respite for work. I have to go to the hospital Monday for an operation—abdominal—and I’ll be there about ten days. So I appear to be a fit subject for your prayers at all times. I’d just as soon you didn’t write me for the next ten days because I won’t feel like reading anything. I’ll be full of tubes and jacked up to the apparatus of transfusions and what not. I’ll count on your good prayers.
Cheers,
Flannery
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO JANET MCKANE
O’Connor is thankful for an illustrated book that imparts spiritual strength as she recuperates from surgery.
9 MARCH 64
M’VILLE
Dear Janet,
Just a note to tell you that I am back at home and the operation was a success, and thank you for your prayers and the book of Bible illus. which is wonderful. I feel like a train has run over me and am going to take your advice and let things fade for a while. I dont feel like writing letters or even much like reading them. I guess it’ll take a couple of months. I’m still running a fever. I’ll feel better when I can throw that off.
Many many thanks,
Flannery
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO FATHER SCOTT WATSON
O’Connor replies to Father Watson who had written her a moving letter in which he invoked a Franciscan formulation about “Sister pain” in discussing the death of his brother.
15 MARCH 64
I was real sorry to hear you had lost your brother. I know the pain of a loss like that’s greater than any kind of physical pain.
I came out very well from my operation. I have no strength yet but I guess that will come back in time. Then I will just pray to have something to write that will be worth the expense of energy.
I am going to have a story in the Spring Sewanee Review [“Revelation”] which I hope you will see. I thought it was good until I read the galleys and they always affect me adversely.
Now I just hope it is.
Thank you again for your prayers, I will remember you and your brother in mine.
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO LOUISE AND THOMAS GOSSETT
O’Connor congratulates Tom for the positive review of his book, Race: The History of an Idea, in a popular magazine. O’Connor’s fiction did not fare as well in such publications. O’Connor also demurs from reading a long narrative about the Spanish Civil War. She perhaps preferred the more concise For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway.
20 MARCH 64
MILLEDGEVILLE
Thanks for that hog-sloppin card. It was real inspiring to me and I think I will get well at once. The operation was a success and the doctors are very pleased with themselves but I am still just creeping about and exercising my natural aptitude for doing nothing.
I was real pleased to see that Time took so heavy to your book [“Intellectuals as Racists,” March 13, 1964]. Better to have those people for you than agin you even though they don’t have much sense. Preacher McCown hasn’t sent it yet. Incidentally I hope I can save my soul without reading The Cypresses Believe in God [José María Gironella Pous].
We hope you all are going to Virginia by way of Georgia this year. I’ve got two new swans as my old one “passed on,” as genteel folks say. These new ones are very different from the old ones as to personality. They jabber constantly and the old ones were about 100% silent. Anyway, I hope I have the opportunity of innerducing you to them in June.
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO JANET MCKANE
O’Connor continues to appreciate Janet’s thoughtful gifts. O’Connor continues reading C. S. Lewis, earlier recommended by her friend.
28 MARCH 64
Dear Janet,
How did you know I liked mugs? I drink my coffee out of one every morning and think they are vastly superior to cups. Thank you so much for thinking of me. I like this one a lot.
As for the state of my health that is pretty uncertain at this point. The operation was a success but it kicked up the lupus, which with me means kidney complications, and I have been put back on the steroid drugs. They (steroids) have saved my life before but at the same time they do much side damage to the bones.
The doctors don’t say much but “we’re walking on eggs now.” I’ve been through all this before and it doesn’t mean much to me. One thing suits me about as well as another. It may be summer before I can really get to work. Fortunately I have a natural aptitude for doing nothing.
I am reading CS Lewis’ Letters to Malcolm. You would like it.
Cheers,
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO LOUISE AND THOMAS GOSSETT
Having read a narrative sent by her friends about Africa, O’Connor speculates about ethnology. The subject was germane to Tom Gossett who was one of a handful of academics offering new courses at the time in African American literature and history. O’Connor comments about the connection of African Americans to Africa itself.6
31 MARCH 64
MILLEDGEVILLE
I’m really enjoying Out of Africa [Karen Blixen]. I like [Blixen’s] the Seven Gothic Tales but they are all I had read. I think Regina may like Out of Africa too if she ever lights long enough to read a chapter of it. Our natives aint native, but I recognize in them some of the qualities she talks about. There is no straight answer in their book.
I am still more or less in bed and have been put back on cortesone but I hope not forever. I have taken a swipe or two at my electric typewriter but don’t think I’m ready for it yet.
Everybody here is getting ready for the Garden Club Tour of Homes. My position is usually over the ink spot on the dining room sofa, but this year somebody else will occupy my post.
Cheers and thanks again for the Baroness Blixen and let us know when we can expect you in June.
,
FATHER JAMES McCOWN TO THOMAS GOSSETT
Father McCown writes from Atlanta, Georgia, hometown of Martin Luther King, Jr. J
ust eight years after Gossett’s dismissal from a Georgia college for his support of desegregation, Father McCown reports favorable reception of Gossett’s scholarly work on race, including O’Connor’s praise. While O’Connor was in frail health, Father McCown notes that he had visited her novelist friend, Walker Percy, who supported the Jesuit order’s social activism in behalf of racial justice.
IGNATIUS HOUSE
6700 RIVERSIDE DRIVE, N.W.
ATLANTA 5, GEORGIA
APRIL 9, 1964
Chronologically here is how my awareness of your book [Race: The History of an Idea in America] developed. I mean that it had been published. First your letter, telling me that a copy was being sent me. This arrived, or rather was waiting for me, Monday when I arrived back in Atlanta after my southern sojourn. Since I was very busy getting my Macon talk together (more about this later), I could not answer you just then. Then when I hit Macon I thought I was breaking some fresh news when I told them about your book, only to learn that the whole literate part of the city has been buzzing with excitement since it was written up in the March 13 Time, which, as luck would have it, I had missed completely on my travels [“Intellectuals as Racists,” March 13, 1964]. On my way to Macon I stopped for a most satisfactory visit with Flannery. She immediately launched into an enthusiastic recital of the virtues of your book, which she was ⅔ through. I wanted to borrow her copy to take to Macon to tell them about it, but she wouldn’t part with it. All I could borrow was the dust jacket. Then, when I returned to Atlanta you had found time to write me another card telling me what direction to expect my copy from—and all this before I had had a chance to so much as drop you a line! Am I embarrassed!
Congratulations a thousand times over, Tom! I am so proud of you and your work and of being a friend of yours. Naturally I have not had the chance to read RACE but will eagerly await my copy from the publisher. The writeup in Time which I feverishly found after half of Macon had told me about [it], was wonderful. I don’t know how justified their one adverse criticism of RACE is, but certainly they are over all in deepest admiration of it. The closing line of their review is terrific. Flannery was so visibly pleased over it that it did me good.
Flannery: She looked almost as good, I thought, as when we saw her in late August. Her color is still good, though I thought I caught a hint of purplish cast that I think is one of the symptoms of the lupus or the medicine. She looks far from emaciated or weak, though, once again, she might be a little puffed from the medicine. For, there is no doubt about it, the lupus has been reactivated by her illness, though I got the impression that it was not as severe as feared. She is back on the medicine, but she brushed my anxious inquiries aside by saying that she took it for ten years in the past and survived it, so she is not fearful of going back on it. The “it” is cortisone, I think. She is not doing any work now, but is resting a great deal. Mrs. O’Connor was her bouncy self, and real agreeable. Her sister and niece were there too. Came in just after I arrived. The reason for their presence was that Mrs. O’s other sister Mrs. Cline, is critically ill, not expected to live, just a matter of time. The young lady, Flannery’s cousin [Louise Florencourt], was one of the most beautiful young women I ever met, a lawyer, from Washington, D.C., about 35 years old, who responded to my inevitable nosiness about her unmarried status with the quick reply, “when I find a man who can support me in the manner I am accustomed to live, I’ll gladly marry him.” I stopped at Flannery’s during a dry two hours in the middle of a heavy rainy spell. As I went to get into my car six peacocks, probably celebrating the lull in the rain, did their stuff at the same time. It was shattering.
My reason for going to Macon was that the parish library was celebrating its tenth anniversary with a big blowout at the country club, and I, having been partly responsible for its inception, was to give the talk at the dinner. Well, I chose the ambitious subject NEW HORIZONS IN CATHOLIC LITERATURE. My idea was to talk on just some of the more popular novels that were of Catholic interest, so I wrote Flannery and asked her to name about five important such and to write just a paragraph on each. This and a letter to my brother plus my own cogitating was supposed to build up into a nice talk. Well, it did work that way pretty much. The crowd was pleased with my talk, and I had a marvelous time. There were 180 men and women at the dinner at $2 a piece, at noon on Wednesday. I thought that a wonderful response. The whole affair went off so nicely. It was at that dinner that I displayed the dust jacket of your book and told them about it, only to find out that they all knew. Remember Filomena Campbell? She made the remark to me that Wesleyan will be another ten or fifteen years getting over your departure. Incidentally, at her invitation one of the professors from Wesleyan and his wife were there, name forgotten…
I can’t wait for your trip north this summer. And, don’t forget to stop in to see my Mother in Mobile. She was so pleased over your visit, and has so often spoken of you. And now that you, Tom, are famous, she will be terribly disappointed if you don’t stop by.
Did I tell you that a few weeks ago I spent the better part of a day with Walker Percy, author of THE MOVIE GOER? Flannery says he is very good. Certainly he is one of the most charming people I ever met. He is a doctor, but he (along with five others) contracted TB in his internship from working in a lab on TB specimens. So he does not practice medicine now.
If you plan to come along the gulf coast of Mississippi again, let me know so I can give you some names of friends in Pass Christian and Biloxi, Miss. Thanks for your kindness to me. God bless you. And, again, Tom, congratulations.
WALKER PERCY TO FATHER LOUIS J. TWOMEY
Percy’s friendship with Father McCown was part of a network of Jesuits dedicated to social justice and works of mercy. Percy was influenced by their efforts and took an active role himself in instituting programs in the local community.
APRIL 3, 1968
REV. LOUIS J. TWOMEY, S.J.
INSTITUTE OF HUMAN RELATIONS
LOYOLA UNIVERSITY
NEW ORLEANS, LA.
Dear Father Twomey:
I am writing you on behalf of a group of interested persons in Covington who wish to initiate a Head Start Program and a Day Care Center here. It is our hope to enlist the aid of Loyola University in sponsoring our application to the Office of Economic Opportunity toward this end.
The leader and moving spirit of our group is Fr. Willis V. Reed of Covington, a Negro, and the chief beneficiaries of the program will be the Negro children of the area, though we would hope of course that deprived white children would participate as well.
The need is great, as I am sure Mr. Reed has told you. For one reason or another, St. Tammany Parish has failed to participate in any of such programs made available. A year or so ago, for example, the League of University Women tried to start a Head Start Program but were refused the use of public school facilities. The main stumbling block has been the unavailability of a building adequate enough to meet O.E.O. standards.
Our hopes have been revived by the news that certain excellent new facilities might be available at the Novitiate of the Eucharistic Sisters of St. Dominic which is close by Covington. The building, as I understand it, includes classroom space, kitchen, toilets etc. In fact, Sister Stanislaus of this order first approached us with the suggestion that they would like very much to see their extra space so used.
We would greatly appreciate the good offices of Loyola University in this matter as well as your own advice in getting such a program under way. Ours is a group of responsible persons, black and white, including a pediatrician and an attorney, who would do whatever they could to assist such a program.
I understand there is a time element involved here, that the Eucharistic Sisters have to make a decision about the use of their facilities in the near future. So I am sure that they as well as we would hope to hear from you
and Loyola in the near future.
With kindest personal regards,
Sincerely yours,
Walker Percy
P. O. box 510
Covington, La. 70433
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO WARD ALLISON DORRANCE
Sharing a common regional history with her friend, O’Connor details a gathering of the larger family, including matriarchs. Caroline Gordon also remains in contact. Another esteemed editor and teacher of O’Connor recuperates from serious surgery. O’Connor praises C. S. Lewis again.
MILLEDGEVILLE
9 APRIL 64
Dear Cudden Ward,
I am real pleased to have the picture and such a fine picture! You appear to be made out of some kind of thinking rock. I’ll send you one of me but I’ll have to find one at least a quarter this good. I don’t like photographers in general. A magazine sent one down here last year and the first thing he said to me was, “I can’t take a good picture of you. Your resistance is too great.” He took a lot of pictures however and in every one I looked like one of the Oakie women and this place looked like Oklahoma in the dust storm. Whereas this is really a beautiful place. But he had never photographed anything but migrant fruitpickers and holiness preachers and the inside of flop houses. Anyway I will find you a decent picture when things quiet down here. We are in the state of waiting.
I may not have mentioned that my mother’s oldest sister, Miss Mary, lives in the family home in town. She’s 81 and sort of the matriarch of the family. The cook found her on the floor last Thursday week and she has been in the hospital since, no hope for her, but they all have wills of corrugated iron, and she is holding her own. But all the family has been called and is in and out and there is much confusion. My mother has these three living sisters—Miss Mary, Miss Cleo, and Miss Agnes. Miss Cleo’s domain is Atlanta and Miss Agnes’ Boston. Miss Cleo has a lawyer son, aged 32, who is still under her wing, and Miss Agnes has four high-powered daughters who seldom let her speak, though she continually tries. One of the daughters is here now and another on the way. They are all givers-of-orders, not takers. My aunt doesn’t know how sick she is because she’s full of cortesone and she’s giving orders too from her hospital bed. Regina has the real responsibility and is running herself to death.
Good Things out of Nazareth Page 33
