I like even more what she said about Ayn Rand:
I hope you don’t have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.
Two quotes from her letters. The first is in response to her friend Maryat’s* attempts to arrange a visit to her home in Milledgeville, Georgia by the writer James Baldwin:
(I can’t find a copy online, but she also declined a meeting with Frank Yerby, one of the bestselling writers of the 50s and a major fan, when he was visiting relatives in his native Georgia. That also was because he was, by Georgia law, a black man (though as obvious from his appearance, he had far more white and Cherokee ancestry than black).
Perhaps her best known excerpt from a letter on the subject of religion:
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For those not familiar with her biography, as much an essential part as the mid 20th century south was to O’Connor’s identity/writing/existence was her 20 year old battle with lupus. Though her parents were well-to-do and Roman Catholic she was an only child, and as was very close to her father. When she was in adolescence he was diagnosed with lupus, which then was in the infancy of any kind of treatment, and he died of it (after a very painful final year) when she was 15. When she was in her 20s and a student/struggling writer in New England, she too was diagnosed with the disease, and having watched her father die of it she knew what was in store (the treatment had not improved that much since her father’s death). She had good periods and bad periods afterwards but was often bedridden and in pain and having to undergo constant transfusions and other treatments.
I wasn’t aware Sedaris was a fan, but when I worked at her shrine it was continually getting visitors (none of them local) and there were photos of Conan O’Brien and Bruce Willis, both big fans, who came to see the place when they were in Georgia. (The pilgrimage is all the more impressive when you realize that Milledgeville is convenient to approximately nothing [other than perhaps Eatonton, hometown of Joel Chandler Harris and Alice Walker, about 15 miles down the road.)
An absolutely story about O’Connor’s effects that’s worthy of O’Connor’s work is this:
Flannery’s mother, Regina Cline “Miss Reggie” O’Connor, had to take over a large farm and other business interests when her husband and her brother became ill. She developed a deserved reputation as a hard-headed business woman (there are actually people in the area who are only vaguely aware that Flannery was a world famous writer but to whom “Miss Reggie” is still spoken of with great reverence). After Flannery’s death Regina, who was literate but not the least bit literary, gave herself a crash course in copyright law and literary management and handled her daughter’s affairs for most of the next 30 years (she died in the 1990s, when she was in her 90s); by all accounts she did a good job of managing her daughter’s literary estate, not just financially but (more important to Regina) in reputation and respect, etc…
However, while she managed the daughter’s writings very well, the actual documents were another matter. When Flannery died, Regina basically boxed her stuff, stored it in her rooms at the plantation house, and moved to their in-town house (about 5 miles away). They remained there for many many years, in (non archival quality) boxes, Regina not wanting to give them away (understandable- Flannery had been her only child and pretty much her life, and who would want to see strangers with gloves handling your baby’s items?). They still remained there after Regina died as relatives squabbled over the estate.
Around 1999-2000 (shortly before I moved to Milledgeville) the abandoned house at Andalusia was broken into and ransacked. The burglars dumped out boxes filled with original manuscripts written by Flannery O’Connor looking for valuables. Considering that illegally obtained amateur photographs of the interior of the O’Connor’s in-town house sold for several hundred dollars in the early 21st century (the family got an injunction and the negatives), the value of these manuscripts, some handwritten and virtually all with handwritten marginalia and many of them with [quite good] doodles, can only be roughly guessed at.
The thieves left the property with two fishing rods and a broken radio.
When the story broke much was made about how they had “bypassed a fortune in American literary treasures to steal $5 worth of property” (and then got caught with that). Of course this essentially sent a big flare into the sky saying “Hey! That abandoned farmhouse behind the gate across from the Hampton Inn has a bunch of papers that are worth a bloody fortune! Some say they’re worth billions!”, so the family (after many expletives) had to set up vigil until the manuscripts and other effects were boxed and finally donated to the archives.
*Maryat Lee was an openly lesbian ACLU and NAACP member southerner at the height of the Civil Rights era and was constantly exasperated by Flannery and other writer friends not doing more to change the system from within or be open with their views.
Again, the subjectivity is interesting. I’m sure you could find more excerpts from her letters which, standing alone, will support whatever your subjective judgment (speaking of judgmental) of her personality. I’ve read her letters too. Six times at least; I read them almost annually. And my subjective take on her personality is that, yes, she led a sheltered and limited life, but she was the first to be aware of that fact, as your quotes indicate, to me, subjectively. The overall read I get of her from her letters is that, within her limited view of the world, she was one of the most forgiving and nonjudgmental human beings I’ve ever encountered, in life or in letters.
Another unrelated-to-anything-said story about Flannery:
One of the people I knew in M’ville who did not like her was a very snooty aristocratic sounding [allegedly] “old money” co-worker I’ll call “Claudia”. I later found out the real reason she didn’t like her: Claudia’s mother was the inspiration for the “general’s” old maid granddaughter in Late Encounter With the Enemy.
For those not familiar with the story, it’s about the last moments in the life of a centenarian Civil War veteran who is attending his 60 year old granddaughter’s college graduation (though he doesn’t know it). In the story the old man really was a Confederate soldier but he was actually a low ranking undistinguished officer who got “promoted” to general when trotted out for various appearances during the publicity for Gone With the Wind (though the film’s never named) and given a studio Confederate general’s uniform that he still wears.
Anyway, for those who think SoGoth writers embellish, they often minimize in actuality. Claudia’s mother was actually not the granddaughter of a Civil War centenarian but was his wife; there was about a 50+ year age difference. Claudia’s mother was born to a dirt poor “one mule whitetrash” background, married Claudia’s father who was a pharmacist who made a fortune from an indigestion product you’ve heard of (hint: it’s active ingredient is kaolin, one of Georgia’s abundant minerals) and died when Claudia’s mother was fairly young. Since “the General” (who in real life was a non-com but called “The General” because he was the last living rebel soldier in the area) was both famous and from a very socially prominent family but also essentially indigent, Claudia’s mother married him in a marriage of convenience when she was under 40 and he was over 90; she made his last years comfortable but in exchange pimped him every chance she got at public appearances and when she began teaching (“My husband, the last Confederate veteran in this area, and I are having a little get together…”) and was much laughed at behind her back for her blatant use of the old man and his name for social climbing and for her own malapropisms (she was a “mule in horse’s harness” as Mammy says in GWTW).
Anyway, Flannery changed a few things but the inspiration was very real. So were the barber shop and the professor she used in several stories and the names of the “real” both were quite well known.
There’s a funny section in a book I own that’s a memoir by a psychiatrist who worked at the Georgia Lunatic Asylum in the 1950s entitled But for the Grace of God. At that time the G.L.A. was the largest mental institution in America if not on Earth; now it’s Central State Hospital and has about 1,000 patients, but then it had closer to 20,000 and was so horrible that an expose on conditions won the Pulitzer. (LOTS of great stories there, including how and why it got so big and how it survived the Civil War, but I digress).
Anyway, the psychiatrist very obviously considered himself a man of great literary talent, though he comes across as an arrogant condescending dude with a much used thesaurus. (He later wrote several novels, none of which seem to have made it to a second printing, but he also made a fortune as a creator of The $64,000 Question.) Anyway, he often refers to the hick-town nature of Milledgeville (my term, not his) and in one chapter says something to the affect of “I went to a wine and cheese reception for a local young lady who graduated from the college here and managed to get a magazine article published and is of course being held up as the second coming of Jane Austen”. He doesn’t name her, but from the when and the where and even mentioning her being Catholic it’s clear he’s talking about “Little Mary Flannery O’Connor”; it’s one of those great moments when you can give a “hah-HAH” sneer to an arrogant poseur who’s been forgotten for half-a-century (not that he was ever really known) snarking on a woman whose work is never likely to go out of print.
I give up. What does that mean?? I can’t even figure out for sure if she means it as an insult or not. Frankly, I’d rather stick to her stories. They’re far easier to interpret than the quotes from her letters here. Well, except the Rand one, which just isn’t funny.
It is not an insult.
She is saying that just the fact that Faulkner is writing changes what she (or anyone else) can write. No other writer can, even if he wants to, follow the same path as Faulkner because that writer cannot hope to be as powerful a writer as Faulkner - Faulkner will run-over that writer because Faulkner’s writing will be so much more powerful.
All the other writers are just mules and wagons; Faulkner is a powerful train.
Paris Trout was written by Pete Dexter who at the time was a columnist for the Sacramento Bee–I read the book because he pimped it in his column. Man, that Paris was one horrible character, I gotta say, and the whole book notably sordid. I liked Dexter’s work as an essayist, he had a nice streak o’sarcasm which was very welcome in the quite conservative McClatchy run Bee.
The real man/real events (scroll down to Marion Stembridge) were even worse. Ironically, he and his victims and Flannery are all buried within yards of each other in Memory Hill, a super cool old cemetery in Milledgeville. The Marion Stembridge/Paris Trout house is now subdivided into apartments by a M’ville- ahem- real estate developer* who mostly ahem- renovates* old houses into apartments and rents them to students. The house is said to be hellishly haunted, but then it’s a run-down mansion that’s associated with a murder- there’s not way the “hellishly haunted” rumor isn’t going to be spread regardless of its merit. (Damn, it occurs sometimes how much I miss Milledgeville.)
Pete Dexter was actually present on the day that the murders took place, incidentally. He was born up north but one of his parents was a southerner and he was visiting some relative or other who lived in Milledgeville at the time, but of course he wasn’t witness to anything and his fascination with the crime didn’t begin until he was an adult.
Dexter also wrote a novel called Deadwood that’s about the same town/era/people as the TV show of the same name. I’ve never read it so I have no idea whether it inspired or influenced the series in anyway.
[Some call him a slumlord but I won’t due to possible legal ramifications, I’ll just reiterate that other people do- often. A popular joke around town is that "___ _______ [the guy’s name] did what Sherman couldn’t do- he destroyed every beautiful old house in Milledgeville.
Maybe not, but it’s certainly true.
As an undersized asterixial aside to an undersized asterixial aside, I should mention in fairness to northern brethren (and to thwart would be historical nitpickers- not naming any names) that the only things Sherman destroyed in Milledgeville (which he occupied for a week) were legitimate military targets: a prison, an armory, a wing of the state capitol, and a pipe organ [which I used to argue with blue hairs WAS a legitimate target as they could be and at times were used to send coded messages]. His “path of scorched earth and wanton destruction”, while it did have some roots in reality, is largely overstated and mythologized as his main interest on his march was finding food for his army and not to work up a Number 6 on the population, and he left far more mansions and farmhouses and towns standing in his path than he destroyed. His greatest damage was to the fields and smokehouses, though my own Confederate ancestors in Wheeler’s Cavalry, also forced to “live off the land” without supply lines, were just as hated for riding behind him and “requisitioning” whatever edibles Sherman had left at a place to feed their own men and animals while harassing Sherman’s flanks.
Yeah, I’ll certainly give her that one.
I have to reiterate that I do like Flannery O’Connor and I truly think she was a tremendous talent, she’s just not on my short list of favorites. She’s so… depressing (not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I prefer the homemade to the storebought). And my “somewhat judgmental” critique extends mainly to her view of atheists and agnostics (especially Hazel Motes from Wise Blood, the film of which was [as a matter of trivia] adapted for the screen by Benedict Fitzgerald, the son of close friends of O’Connor, and whose only blockbuster screen writing credit was Passion of the Christ.)
One more and then I’ll hush a while. By far my favorite Flannery stories are:
A Good Man is Hard to Find (which may seem at odds to my “too depressing” complaint, but I have to admit that dark as it is I love it, especially the last few sentences. The sentence
is one of the most chilling in all of literature to me. (I didn’t spoilerize it because you have to read the story for context anyway.)
and
The Life You Save May Be Your Own- which is the funniest thing she wrote in my opinion, particularly due to her use of dialect.
Same for me.
I got extra credit bonus point for writing about the humor in the story called “Good Country People” about the traveling preacher and the girl with the fake leg.
Spoiler alert-- spoiler to follow:
Spoiler: In the story “Good Country People” a young woman with a sense of moral superiority experiences her downfall. The protagonist, Joy Hopewell, has an artificial leg as a result of a hunting accident. She has a Ph.D. in philosophy and she has changed her name legally from Joy to Hulga. Joy-Hulga tries to seduce a Bible salesman, a simple-seeming country boy, with the obvious phallic name of Manley Pointer. He turns out to be another ‘Hazel Motes’ and disappears with her artificial leg.
Also a great ending line, and a great observation on southern agnosticism. As a longtime Bible-Belt atheist myself I have to admit it’s really true that, at least in the Bible Belt, most atheists tend to fit into two categories: the educated or intellectuals who look down on the masses of sheeple, and the embittered & downtrodden who’ve long given up any notions of God’s love and mercy being real (though often yell “Amen” the loudest when buttering up the wealthier classes).* The remaining atheists tend to be scattered into many different camps with those being by far the two largest pluralities.
Eh, so I lied about shutting up…
*(I’m a little of both if you’re wondering. 
)
To mention Faulkner and Williams in the same sentence as as O’Connor and McCullers is to flatter the first two all out of proportion to their accomplishments, IMNAAHO.
Everything by Flannery O’Connor that I’ve read (which would be all of her fiction, but not the correspondence etc.) was absolutely stellar – fascinating and truthful and sometimes hilarious in an oh-my-God, gagging-on-the-laughter way; same for Carson McCullers’ novels although I can’t say the same for her shorter works.
Some of T. Williams’ material is all right, but about a third of the time it’s the fictional equivalent of the Ten-In-One in an old school carnival: very interesting, in a"Jeezus, wouldja look at that freaky shit!" way
And Faulkner…puh-lease. I’ve read a handful of his short stories that were pretty good (especially “Wash” and the longer version of “That Evening Sun Go Down”,) but his novels all struck me as being self-consciously Literary, deliberately opaque salamagundis, the sort of thing that’s read mainly because it’s required reading. The Sound And The Fury was puffed to me as one of the hottest things ever written in American English, so I tried to read it several times before realizing it didn’t make a lick of sense (or none I found worth making the effort to decode), and there were a zillion other things out there I’d rather read.