Flannery

by Brad Gooch

  197 “Regina was very petite”: Christopher O’Hare interview with Mary Jo Thompson.

  197 “With me, Flannery tended”: Jean Cash, Flannery O’Connor: A Life (Knoxville, University of Tennessee Press, 2002), 171.

  197 “the cows are fat”: “Andalusia Farm Has Milk Production Plus a Varied Assortment of Stock,” Union-Recorder, June 19, 1958.

  198 “Would you check”: FOC to Elizabeth McKee, April 24, 1951, HB, 24.

  198 “I thought, Wow”: Robert Giroux, in discussion with the author, November 13, 2003.

  198 “mighty pleased”: FOC to Mavis McIntosh, June 8, 1951, HB, 25.

  198 “renascence”: “The aspirations for a Catholic ‘renascence’ were expressed in the journal of that title.” Paul Elie, The Life You Save May Be Your Own (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), 496.

  198 “It is no accident”: Caroline Gordon to Brainard Cheney, December 31, 1951. Quoted in Cash, Flannery O’Connor, 207.

  198 “This girl is a real”: Sally Fitzgerald, “A Master Class: From the Correspondence of Caroline Gordon and Flannery O’Connor,” Georgia Review 33, no. 4 (Winter 1979): 828.

  199 “almost my mother”: Robert Lowell to Caroline Gordon, [n.d., fall 1945], The Letters of Robert Lowell, edited by Saskia Hamilton (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), 49.

  199 “She presented herself”: Kenneth Silverman, in discussion with the author, March 8, 2007.

  199 “vague”: FOC to Elizabeth McKee, February 17, 1949, CW, 880.

  199 “a lady around here”: FOC to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, September 20, 1951, CW, 890.

  199 “spending the day”: Ibid., [n.d.] “Tuesday,” CW, 891.

  199 “stout stake”: Gordon’s letter is printed in full in Sally Fitzgerald’s “A Master Class.”

  200 “Johnsonian English”: Ibid., 838.

  200 “All these comments”: FOC to Caroline Gordon, quoted in Ibid., 845.

  201 “autobiographical”: Sally Fitzgerald, “Rooms with a View,” Flannery O’Connor Bulletin 10 (1981): 16.

  201 “freaks”: Caroline Gordon to FOC, quoted in “A Master Class,” 831: “Robert Fitzgerald reported to me something that you said that interested me very much, that your first novel was about freaks, but that your next book would be about folks.”

  201 “I have twenty-one”: FOC to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, September 20, 1951, CW, 890.

  201 “He was sort of like”: Alfred Matysiak, in discussion with the author, July 27, 2004.

  201 “I have just discovered”: FOC to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, [n.d.] “Tuesday,” CW, 891.

  202 “She always tells us”: FOC to Brainard and Frances Neel Cheney, December 15, 1953, CC, 10–11.

  202 “She says she ain’t”: FOC to Sally Fitzgerald,” [n.d. “Friday,” Summer 1953], HB, 62.

  202 “gleaned many”: Carter W. Martin, “Introduction,” The Presence of Grace and Other Book Reviews by Flannery O’Connor (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1983), 3.

  202 “Want to Win”: Union-Recorder, September 14, 1950.

  202 “dashing”: “Confederate Vet to See Wife Get Degree at GSCW,” Union-Recorder, August 23, 1951; August 30, 1951.

  203 “The local High Dining”: FOC to Maryat Lee, November 10, 1957, GCSU.

  203 “It seems like the O’Connors”: Mary Jo Thompson, in discussion with the author, May 25, 2004.

  203 “If it opened at twelve”: Christopher O’Hare interview with Frances Florencourt.

  203 “Flannery mostly ate”: Dorrie Neligan, in discussion with the author, June 3, 2004.

  203Wise Blood: The dedication read, simply, “For Regina.”

  204 “very pretty”: FOC to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, [n.d.] “Wednesday,” CW, 895.

  204 “distressed”: FOC to Helen Greene, May 23, 1952, CW, 897.

  205 “One reason I like”: Betsy Lochridge, “An Afternoon with Flannery O’Connor,” Atlanta Journal and Constitution Magazine (November 1, 1959): 40.

  205 “he was a mystic”: FOC to Betty Hester, November 10, 1955, CW, 968.

  206 “that man owes a lot”: FOC to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, [n.d.] “Saturday,” CW, 892.

  206 “I can tell you”: Christopher O’Hare interview with Robert Giroux.

  206 “I was disappointed”: Robert Giroux, “Introduction,” FOC, The Complete Stories (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971), xii.

  206 “odd”: Milton S. Byam, Library Journal 77 (May 15, 1952): 894; Kirkus Reviews likewise faulted the novel’s “Capoted cosmos”: “A grotesque for the more zealous avantgardists; for others, a deep anaesthesia.” Kirkus Reviews 19, no. 9 (May 1, 1952): 252.

  206 “a writer of power”: William Goyen, “Unending Vengeance,” New York Times Book Review (May 18, 1952): 4.

  206 “arty”: “Southern Dissonance,” Time (June 9, 1952): 108, 110.

  206 “if the struggle”: The New Yorker (June 14, 1952): 106.

  206 “sheer monotony”: Oliver LaFarge, “Manic Gloom,” Saturday Review 35, no. 21 (May 24, 1952): 22.

  206 “I am steeling”: FOC to Robert Giroux, May 24, 1952, HB, 37.

  207 “Flannery O’Connor, in her first”: Sylvia Stallings, “Young Writer with a Bizarre Tale to Tell,” New York Herald Tribune Book Review (May 18, 1952): 3.

  207 “ancestral mansion”: “Frustrated Preacher,” Newsweek (May 19, 1952): 114.

  207 “a remarkably accomplished”: John W. Simons, “A Case of Possession,” Commonweal 56, no. 12 (June 27, 1952): 297.

  207 “My mother said she”: FOC to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald,” [n.d.] “Tuesday,” CW, 891.

  207 “My current literary”: Ibid., [n.d.] “Wednesday,” CW, 895.

  208 “Mrs. Semmes went to bed”: Patricia Persse, “Armstrong State College Panel on O’Connor,” Savannah, Ga., May 1989.

  208 “Wherever did she learn”: Hugh Brown, “Savannah Landmark,” Flannery O’Connor Bulletin 18 (1989): 43.

  208 “I can see her right now”: Charlotte Conn Ferris, in discussion with the author, November 4, 2003.

  208 “I wish you could”: Robert Fitzgerald, “Introduction,” Everything That Rises, xix.

  208 “I also had an 83-year-old”: FOC to John Lynch, February 19, 1956, HB, 138.

  208 “When I read her first novel”: William Schemmel, “Southern Comfort,” Travel-Holiday (June 1988): 72.

  208–209 “I read Wise Blood”: Mary More Jones, in discussion with the author, May 26, 2004.

  209 “I enjoyed it”: James H. McCown, “Remembering Flannery O’Connor,” America (September 8, 1979): 87.

  209 “spotting inconsistencies”: Charles Claffy, “She Returned to Milledgeville and Then She Began Her Work,” Boston Globe (July 2, 1981): 2.

  209 “I hope you won’t”: FOC to Robie Macauley, May 2, 1952, HB, 35.

  210 “Autograph Party”: “Autograph Party Is Planned for Miss O’Connor,” Union-Recorder, May 8, 1952; “Flannery O’Connor to Be Honored at Library Today,” Union-Recorder, May 15, 1952; “Autograph Party Given at Library for Miss O’Connor,” Union-Recorder, May 22, 1952.

  210 “Cocktails were not served”: FOC to Betty Boyd Love, postmarked May 23, 1952, HB, 36.

  210 “most brave”: FOC to Miss Satterfield and the library staff, May 17, 1952, GCSU.

  210 “I have rarely enjoyed”: Margaret Inman Meaders, “Flannery O’Connor: ‘Literary Witch,’” Colorado Quarterly, 10, no. 4 (Spring 1962): 380.

  210 “an old dame”: FOC to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, [n.d.] “Wednesday,” CW, 896.

  211 “I have been told”: Mary Barbara Tate, “Flannery O’Connor at Home in Milledgeville,” Studies in Literary Imagination 20, no. 2 (1987): 34.

  211 “When I was through”: Robert Lowell to Flannery O’Connor,” [n.d., late May or early June 1952], Letters, 187.

  211 “now goes about enraging”: Ibid., December 1953, Iowa City, Letters, 203.

  211 “a Protestant saint”: FOC to Carl Hartman, March 2, 1954, CW, 91
9.

  211 “I think she left”: Andrew Lytle to Thomas H. Carter, June 24, 1952, Thomas Carter Papers, University Library, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Va.

  212 “I still can’t read Flannel Mouth”: Robert Lowell to FOC, March 24, [1954], Letters, 226.

  212 “Thank you for sending”: Quoted in Elie, The Life You Save, 501.

  212 “Evalin Wow”: FOC to Robert and Sally Fitzgerald, [n.d.] “Wednesday,” CW, 897.

  212 “Does he suppose”: FOC to Robert Lowell, May 2, 1952, CW, 896.

  212 “writes of an insane”: Isaac Rosenfeld, “To Win by Default,” New Republic, 127 no. 1 (July 7, 1952): 19–20.

  212 “in a pallid light”: FOC to Robert Fitzgerald, [n.d.] “Tuesday,” CW, 899.

  213 “But Rosenfeld”: Robert Fitzgerald, “Introduction,” Everything That Rises, xviii.

  213 “looking ravaged”: Ibid., xix.

  213 “climbed in the car”: FOC to Caroline Gordon, September 10, 1952, CW, 900.

  214 “after being helpful”: Robert Fitzgerald, “Introduction,” Everything That Rises, xix.

  214 “allergic”: FOC to Robert Fitzgerald, [n.d.] “Tuesday,” CW, 899.

  214 “slum child”: Robert Fitzgerald, “Introduction,” Everything That Rises, xix.

  214 “had to stay”: FOC to Robert Fitzgerald, [n.d.] “Tuesday,” CW, 898.

  214 “pure Georgia rhetoric”: Robert Fitzgerald, “Introduction,” Everything That Rises, xix.

  215 “Flannery, you don’t have”: The account is taken from Christopher O’Hare’s interview with Sally Fitzgerald.

  216 “You always overdo!” Rosemary Magee and Emily Wright, “The Good Guide: A Final Conversation with Sally Fitzgerald,” Flannery O’Connor Review 3 (2005): 22.

  216 “She was a very nice-looking”: FOC to Sally Fitzgerald, [n.d.] “Tuesday,” July 1952, HB, 38.

  216 “It was a great boon”: FOC to Robert Fitzgerald, [n.d.] “Tuesday,” CW, 899.

  217 “a kind of Guggenheim”: FOC to Sally Fitzgerald, [n.d.], Summer 1952, HB, 40.

  217 “I know now that it is”: FOC to Robert Fitzgerald, [n.d.] “Tuesday,” CW, 899.

  217 “over the phone”: FOC to Sally Fitzgerald, [n.d.] Summer 1952, HB, 40.

  218 “a gret place”: FOC to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, [n.d., Summer 1952], “Sunday,” HB, 40.

  218 “I’m going to order”: FOC, “The King of the Birds,” CW, 833.

  219 “my one-cylander”: FOC to John Hawkes, July 27, 1958, CW, 1075: “I braved the Faulkner, without tragic results. Probably the real reason I don’t read him is because he makes me feel that with my one-cylander syntax I should quit writing and raise chickens altogether.”

  220 “Someone said you had something”: Robert Lowell to Flannery O’Connor, [n.d.] December 1953, Letters, 203.

  220 “I did have one in Harper’s”: FOC to Robert Lowell, January 1, [1954], HB, 65.

  220 Shiftlet: “Harry Shiftlet Now with Airborne Artillery Battalion,” Union-Recorder, May 12, 1955.

  220 “a triumph”: Robert Fitzgerald, “Introduction,” Everything That Rises, xx.

  221Kenyon Review fiction fellowship: The Kenyon Review Fellowship in Fiction was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. The two other 1953 fellows were Irving Howe, in Criticism; and Edwin Watkins, in poetry.

  221 “The Life You Save May Be Your Own”: The story was published in Kenyon Review 15, Spring 1953; reprinted in Prize Stories 1954: The O. Henry Awards, edited by Paul Engle and Hansford Martin; and as the third story in A Good Man Is Hard to Find.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: THE “BIBLE” SALESMAN

  222 “Like all good farm folk”: FOC to Louise and Tom Gossett, April 10, 1961, HB, 438.

  222 “routine is a condition”: FOC to Betty Hester, February 10, 1962, HB, 465.

  222 “14th century man”: Thomas Merton, The Journals of Thomas Merton: Volume Four, 1960–1963, edited by Victor A. Kramer (San Francisco: Harper, 1997): “March 11 1961” entry, 98.

  223 “hermit novelist”: FOC to Maryat Lee, June 28, 1957, CW, 1036.

  223A Short Breviary: O’Connor picked up from the Fitzgeralds the practice of reading from this collection of daily hymns, offices, and prayers for the canonical hours, used especially by monks, nuns, and priests.

  223 “Flannery sat in the fifth”: Elizabeth Horne, quoted in George A. Kilcourse, Jr., Flannery O’Connor’s Religious Imagination (New York: Paulist Press, 2001), 2.

  223 “I like to go”: FOC to Brainard Cheney, November 29, 1953, CC, 10.

  223 “Nobody lays a hand”: FOC to Betty Hester, August 3, 1963, HB, 533.

  223 “She didn’t want to come back”: Christopher O’Hare interview with Margaret Florencourt Mann.

  223 “My round uncle”: FOC to William Sessions, September 1, 1955, HB, 240.

  224 “Get that scoundrel”: FOC, “The King of the Birds,” CW, 840.

  224 “That was our weekend”: Mary Jo Thompson, in discussion with the author, May 25, 2004.

  224 “the colored milker”: FOC to Brainard and Frances Neel Cheney, December 10, 1957, CC, 63.

  224 “blundering around”: FOC to Thomas Stritch, January 22, 1964, CW, 1196.

  224–225 “around here”: FOC to Betty Hester, January 11, 1958, CW, 1059.

  225 “Wormless they did not”: FOC to Mrs. Rumsey Haynes, July 18, 1956, GSCU.

  225 “set time”: FOC to Cecil Dawkins, September 22, 1957, CW, 1043.

  225 “But I may tear it”: Betsy Lochridge, “An Afternoon with Flannery O’Connor,” Atlanta Journal and Constitution Magazine (November 1, 1959): 40.

  225 “I have a large ugly”: FOC to Betty Hester, June 1, 1956, HB, 161.

  225 “rat’s nest”: Ibid., October 12, 1955, HB, 109.

  225 “You Can’t Be Any Poorer Than Dead” was published in New World Writing 8, October 1955, and revised and rewritten as the opening chapter of The Violent Bear It Away. Its original title, when first submitted to NWW, was “When the Plague Beckons.”

  226 “The River” was published in Sewanee Review 61, Summer 1953, and as the second story in A Good Man Is Hard to Find.

  226 “Evy eye”: FOC to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, [n.d.] “Thursday,” CW, 904.

  226 “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” was published in The Avon Book of Modern Writing I, edited by William Phillips and Philip Rahv, 1953, including stories by Colette, Diana Trilling, Irving Howe, Isaac Rosenfeld; reprinted in 1960 in The House of Fiction, edited by Caroline Gordon and Allen Tate; and was the opening story in the collection of the same title.

  226 “The Misfit”: “‘The Misfit’ Robs Office, Escapes with $150,” Atlanta Constitution (November 6, 1952): 29.

  226 Bessie Smith’s: Sally Fitzgerald, “Happy Endings,” Image: A Journal of the Arts and Religion 16 (Summer 1977): 77.

  226 “It was no coincidence”: Christopher O’Hare interview with Sally Fitzgerald.

  227 “Catie would read”: Robert Giroux, in discussion with the author, November 13, 2003.

  227 “I remember one day”: Christopher O’Hare interview with Robert Giroux.

  227 “Both the baptizing”: Robert Lowell to FOC, [n.d.] December 1953, Letters, 203.

  227 “a fresh mind”: FOC to Cecil Dawkins, September 22, 1957, CW, 1043.

  227 “receiving on the front”: FOC to Maryat Lee, [n.d.] “Thursday,” HB, 447.

  227 “I work in the mornings”: FOC to Louise Abbot, February 27, 1957, HB, 205.

  227 “One of the few signs”: Christopher O’Hare interview with Louise Abbot.

  227–228 “None of my paintings”: FOC to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, [n.d.] “Friday,” CW, 912.

  228 “Never saw such long”: FOC, “The King of the Birds,” CW, 837.

  228 “I go to bed at nine”: FOC to Betty Hester, August 9, 1957, CW, 1042.

  228 “I read it for about twenty”: Ibid., August 9, 1955, CW, 945.

  228 “I read a lot of theology”: FOC to Cudden Ward, March 29, 1964, UNC.r />
  229 “I can with one eye”: FOC to Elizabeth Hardwick and Robert Lowell, March 17, 1953, CW, 910.

  229 “I stayed away”: FOC to Cecil Dawkins, July 16, 1957, CW, 1037.

  229 “a Dane”: Ann Waldron, Close Connections: Caroline Gordon and the Southern Renaissance (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1987): 350.

  229 “After checking out”: Helen I. Greene, “My Flannery O’Connor,” Flannery O’Connor Bulletin 19 (1990): 47.

  229 “She was sure that Flannery”: Christopher O’Hare interview with Erik Langkjaer.

  230 “He and Mary Flannery”: Greene, “My Flannery O’Connor,” 47.

  231 “I never heard of Conversations”: FOC to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, May 7, 1953, HB, 58.

  231 Danish-British accent: Some of the background details of the account are taken from a personal interview with Erik Langkjaer, on May 7, 2007, as well as several e-mail exchanges.

  231 “that I had come to the U.S.”: Christopher O’Hare interview with Erik Langkjaer.

  232 “You wonder how anybody”: FOC to Erik Langkjaer, April 1, 1955, private collection.

  232 “practically bald-headed”: FOC to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, January 25, 1953, CW, 907.

  232 “a little bloated”: Christopher O’Hare interview with Erik Langkjaer.

  232 “the saint everyone”: Ibid.

  233 “Was he ever handsome”: Mary Jo Thompson, in discussion with the author, May 25, 2004.

  233 “I used to go with her nephew”: FOC to Betty Hester, August 28, 1955, CW, 949.

  234 “the most melodramatic”: FOC to Maryat Lee, October 14, 1959, CW, 1113.

  234 “I remember there were cowbells”: Pete Dexter, in discussion with the author, January 21, 2005.

  234 “The Partridge Festival” was published in the Critic 19, March 1961.

  235 “my mother still didn’t”: FOC to Cecil Dawkins, August 10, 1960, HB, 405.

  235 “Quincy State Hospital”: FOC to John Hawkes, June 22, 1961, CW, 1151.

  235 “She liked to point it out”: Erik Langkjaer, in discussion with the author, May 7, 2007.

  235 “The Cheneys said”: FOC to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, May 7, 1953, HB, 58.

  235 “theologically weighted symbolism”: Brainard Cheney, review of Wise Blood, Shenandoah 3 (Autumn 1952): 57.