An Encounter with Flannery

Flannery O'Conner, 1947

Today I read several thousand lines of Middle English, and by the end of reading ME, my brain tends to wilt, I can no longer spell, and I need food.  I finished my quota for today, pushed back my chair, and did one of my favorite things: exploring the stacks.  As I climbed the steps, I kept thinking, Grief, I love American Fiction. I flippin' love American writers.  And I found this strange as this is not my primary research.  There were two whole aisles dedicated to these Americans and going past them was like meeting old friends.  I pulled down poetry of Yvor Winters, delighted to discover he was not only an academic, but also a poet.  I found Melville again and my heart swelled, and I was shocked that I didn't recognize any of the secondary texts, and was affirmed again, that your research is totally based on where you study.  I passed Hemmingway, and perused long at Faulkner, disappointed I could not find Light in August. (Nor Walker Percy's The Moviegoer.) I held Absalom, Absalom! in my hand, when I lit on O'Conner.  I read the first page of her biography "Flannery O'Conner was born in Savannah, Georgia on 25 March 1925" and I was home.

I knew Flannery was a beacon of Southern writers, but I had avoided her as I had mostly encountered her in sermons.  But on mentioning Savannah, Savannah!  My favorite city in the world (the entire world) and I had never run across her name on a plaque in the oak grove full of Spanish moss nor the graveyard full of revolutionaries and pirates.  I had come across lesser names-- the woman who founded the Girl Scouts, Edward Teach, even poet Conrad Aiken, but never, not even in the giftshops, found O'Conner.

After reading the introduction, the desire for homeland, the desire for roots, the desire to be extremely Southern and not this itinerant American abroad, welled. 

Thoughts, inspired by F.O.

- I am now adamant about getting peacocks one day. And other foul. Pheasants.
- Painting. We are learning to do this, self.
- An MFA. I have never had a desire to do an MFA. NEVER.
- Rewriting work.  She rewrote and rewrote and rewrote. I think all my work is rubbish and not worth the time of rewriting.
- Aloneness. She thought that characterized her work, and what made her and Thomas Merton such friends. I find that fascinating.
- Letters between editors and their authors.
- Her MFA professor could not understand her speech.  She had to write down what she said. The link between home and the primal desire to be understood.
- Land. The great American dream.

I'll spare you the details of all I love about the South, but it's especially lovely to open a page to find that someone else not only knew the same things you do, but could write, write beautifully of things you call home. Love xo