I have a confession to make: I don’t like Flannery O’Conner. I know that sounds sacrilegious, even downright blasphemous, to those who dwell in Literaryland, especially if the dwellers are Catholics.
In school, I was forced to read “Wise Blood” and “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and a few others I don’t remember now. I do remember everybody going ooooh and aaaah, and all that, while I sat there wondering, What the hell is this? I wasn’t Christian at the time and maybe that had something to do with it, but it shouldn’t have. One shouldn’t like a writer merely because one shares the writer’s faith, obviously. After school, I never read O’Conner again.
For me, O’Conner is Depressing (capitalized for emphasis), given to pointless shock and to what I call “gut-wonder.” But it’s never been really required of me to explain why I don’t like her—I just don’t. I’ve said things like, It’s just a matter of taste, I guess, or, We have nothing in common, maybe. I’m a woman, childless and single, Georgian, Catholic, and a writer (well, sorta, anyway). But there it ends. Flannery and I just never had anything to say to each other.
Until recently. Flannery-fans will disapprove of this, maybe even disbelieve it, but having avoided all things O’Conner, I’d never come across the remark she made somewhere regarding the Eucharist: “Well, if it’s just a symbol, then to hell with it.”
What is the Eucharist? Everything. It’s the complete Gospel. It’s the culmination of Jewish history and the sum of the Christian faith. It’s the entire Catechism of the Catholic Church. It speaks not a word because it is the Word. It’s everything that ever mattered or ever will matter. It’s what you believe or don’t believe—and yes, that’s a decision you make, not an intellectual argument, and not a coercive sentiment—none of that stuff. A decision. Stark—and simple.
If you decide that it is, that decision will determine literally everything else. There is no place for all the chatter about liturgy, about finer points of theology, about any of that. There is only one thing to do: take off your shoes for you’re on holy ground, spend your life in worship and awe of this inexplicable wondrous thing, live every moment in gratitude—I could go on.
But if it’s a symbol, then to hell with it. We are soulmates now, Flannery and me.
Flannery fans may like to know I checked out Wise Blood on DVD this week from my local library. It’s been difficult/pricey to get on VHS, so I was pleasantly surprised to see it available on DVD.
There are more than you think that don’t particularly like Flannery O’Connor. Frankly, if she were alive today she would be repelled by the way her name gets bandied about to justify all sorts of stuff in “Catholic Literature” or otherwise in the culture at large. I wonder what she would have to say about somebody bringing up her name to praise something like…a Tarantino movie?
But more especially, why do aspiring Catholic writers try to write like her? It’s stupid. Get over it. Learn how to write stories, and get over this notion that each story must be some sort of epiphanous laser beam of grace penetrating the reader’s stupid mind. To the hard of hearing you shout, and to the blind you…blah, whatever. And here’s another thing, writer’s need to just stop writing “with an audience in mind”. Tolkien didn’t write The Lord of the Rings with an audience in mind. It became the best selling book of all time just behind The Bible.
During a certain period I read O’Connor profusely, and I loved her. While I haven’t gone to the other extreme, such as I have with Thomas Merton (I can’t force myself to pick up anything of his anymore), I haven’t picked up anything of hers for quite a while.
Her short stories are masterful. Her two novels feel like short stories stretched out like butter scraped over too much bread.
There is also the atmosphere that seemed to surround the Catholic writers that cropped up during that time, which influences today’s. YOU MUST NOT BE FLOWERY. For everything that one writes, one must go out of one’s way to articulate what one does *not* mean by it. You must go on about how you’re not being merely pietistic and communicate your seriousness in intense, clipped prose.
”Catholics believe that all creation is good and that evil is the wrong use of good and that without Grace we use it wrong most of the time. It’s almost impossible to write about supernatural Grace in fiction. We almost have to approach it negatively. As to natural Grace, we have to take that the way it comes–through …nature. In any case, it operates surrounded by evil.” – Flannery O’Connor
It’s hard to make a critique of someone’s writing without seeming to dislike the actual author, or seeming to write that person off altogether. I should say that I think Flannery O’Connor was probably a saint. Having been diagnosed with Lupus and not long to live, and however long she did live, there always being that uncertainty – to have that and still write what she wrote…well, that’s more than can be said for a lot of people, myself of course included.
And I’m no one to say anything negative about her two novels. They ‘re masterpieces, and Wiseblood especially made an impact on me when I first read it.
And of course, Thomas Merton’s writing is great.
Nicely stated, Dena!!
Thanks, Lorraine!
To Paul: My sentiments exactly–on all points. I’m going to say this out loud: I don’t think there’s any such thing as “Catholic literature.” Forget it. If you’re a Catholic, your faith pervades everything you do … that’s all. (Moreover, I wouldn’t like to see literature get labeled with that adjective. Such little boxes as feminist, or black–or Catholic–have confining effects.)
On Flannery the person: Yes, based on what little I know about her, I think I’d like her, though I’m not fond of her fiction. As for how her name “gets bandied about,” I suspect her reaction might be something like, “Oh, good grief.”
I can’t pick up Merton, either.