Rediscovering Flannery O'Connor
We are now living in an age which doubts both fact and value. It is the life of this age that we wish to see and judge. Flannery O'Connor - In the Devil's Territory
As proof of the proposition that education is wasted on the young, it took me almost 35 years to rediscover the works of Flannery O'Connor. My wife Nancy reminded me that in our last year at university we took a Modern American Literature course together. O'Connor was one of the authors we studied though I confess to remembering very little of what I learned of her writing.
Our tenured professor's idea of a stirring lecture was to address us for about 5 minutes then turn on a 40 minute tape recording of an actor reading Mark Twain. I would walk out and go back to the law library to study something more interesting like the Sale of Goods Act or the principle of subrogation in Insurance Law. That I was able to earn a better mark in the final than Nancy did (despite missing 75% of the lectures) serves as both a tribute to her fine note taking and as proof of the inherent unfairness of life.
What I missed 35 years ago was an exposure to a remarkable mind - though I have serious doubts that this dull and lazy professor would have been much help to me in unearthing the richness of thought and belief that lies beneath her writing.
A reference to her understanding of the Christian concept of grace, delivered in a recent Sunday morning homily, led me back to her writing.I knew she was from the southern U.S., I associated her writing with that of Carson McCullers and Nathaniel West, but beyond that I knew little of her work.
O'Connor's writing is, on one level bleak and dark. Her short story, "A Good Man is Hard to Find" centres around a family of 6 that through bad fortune stumbles upon an escaped convict and his henchmen. There is no happy ending in the conventional sense of the fictional genre.
But one has to remember that O'Connor's writing is based on her belief that "for the last few centuries we have lived in a world which has been increasingly convinced that the reaches of reality end very close to the surface, that there is no ultimate divine source, that the things of the world do not pour forth from God in a double way or at all. For nearly two centuries the popular spirit of each succeeding generation has tended more and more to the view that the mysteries of life will eventually fall before the mind of man."
O'Connor suffered from the disease of lupus and died in 1964 at the age of 39 from complications arising from the disease. In 1956 she wrote, " I have never been anywhere but sick. In a sense sickness is a place, more instructive than a long trip to Europe, and it's always a place where there's no company, where nobody can follow. Sickness before death is a very appropriate thing and I think those who don't have it miss one of God's mercies".
A mind and spirit that could think that way and write as beautifully as she did, is one worth learning more about.
As proof of the proposition that education is wasted on the young, it took me almost 35 years to rediscover the works of Flannery O'Connor. My wife Nancy reminded me that in our last year at university we took a Modern American Literature course together. O'Connor was one of the authors we studied though I confess to remembering very little of what I learned of her writing.
Our tenured professor's idea of a stirring lecture was to address us for about 5 minutes then turn on a 40 minute tape recording of an actor reading Mark Twain. I would walk out and go back to the law library to study something more interesting like the Sale of Goods Act or the principle of subrogation in Insurance Law. That I was able to earn a better mark in the final than Nancy did (despite missing 75% of the lectures) serves as both a tribute to her fine note taking and as proof of the inherent unfairness of life.
What I missed 35 years ago was an exposure to a remarkable mind - though I have serious doubts that this dull and lazy professor would have been much help to me in unearthing the richness of thought and belief that lies beneath her writing.
A reference to her understanding of the Christian concept of grace, delivered in a recent Sunday morning homily, led me back to her writing.I knew she was from the southern U.S., I associated her writing with that of Carson McCullers and Nathaniel West, but beyond that I knew little of her work.
O'Connor's writing is, on one level bleak and dark. Her short story, "A Good Man is Hard to Find" centres around a family of 6 that through bad fortune stumbles upon an escaped convict and his henchmen. There is no happy ending in the conventional sense of the fictional genre.
But one has to remember that O'Connor's writing is based on her belief that "for the last few centuries we have lived in a world which has been increasingly convinced that the reaches of reality end very close to the surface, that there is no ultimate divine source, that the things of the world do not pour forth from God in a double way or at all. For nearly two centuries the popular spirit of each succeeding generation has tended more and more to the view that the mysteries of life will eventually fall before the mind of man."
O'Connor suffered from the disease of lupus and died in 1964 at the age of 39 from complications arising from the disease. In 1956 she wrote, " I have never been anywhere but sick. In a sense sickness is a place, more instructive than a long trip to Europe, and it's always a place where there's no company, where nobody can follow. Sickness before death is a very appropriate thing and I think those who don't have it miss one of God's mercies".
A mind and spirit that could think that way and write as beautifully as she did, is one worth learning more about.
posted by Ben Buan | 8:53 p.m.
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