On the Southern Literary Trail discussion

Everitt, Thanks for the post. I love reading quotes from authors (and people in general for that matter), and Flannery O'Connor is one of my favorite writers. I think you can learn a lot from someone's perspective simply from a quote. I really like that first one:

"I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one."

Really good insight into the writing process.

The book from which I read "Wise Blood" is a volume of collected works that I got from the library. At the end are some essays and letters.

Here are some quotes I found from the essays (I recommend reading them!).

1. From "The Fiction Writer and His Country" ...

"The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may well be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience."

2. From "The Church and the Fiction Writer"...

"For the writer of fiction everything has its testing point in the eye, an organ which eventually involves the whole personality and as much of the world as can be got into it. Msgr. Guardini has written that the roots of the eye are in the heart."

3. From "The Regional Writer"...

"The Southern writer apparently feels the need of expatriation less than other writers in this country. Moreover, when he does leave and stay gone, he does so at great peril to that balance between principle and fact, between judgment and observation, which is so necessary to maintain if fiction is to be true."

4. From "The Catholic Novelist in the South"...

"I think that Catholic novelists in the future will be able to reinforce the vital strength of Southern literature, for they will know that what has given the South her identity are those beliefs and qualities which she has absorbed from the Scriptures and from her own history of defeat and violation: a distrust of the abstract, a sense of human dependence on the grace of God, and a knowledge that evil is not simply a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be endured."

[I LOVE that quote! JE]

5. From "The Grotesque in Southern Fiction"...

"Henry James said that in his fiction, he did things in the way that took the most doing. I think the writer of the grotesque fiction does them in the way that takes the least, because in his work distances are so great. He's looking for one image that will connect or combine or embody two points; one is a point in the concrete and the other is a point not visible to the naked eye, but believed in by him firmly, just as real to him, really, as the one that everybody sees. It's not necessary to point out that the look of this fiction is going to be wild, that it is almost of necessity going to be violent and comic, because of the discrepancies that it seeks to combine."

"Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one. To be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man, and in the South the general conception of man is still, in the main, theological.... But approaching the subject from the standpoint of the writer, I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted."

In that same book were a few letters written about the time of publication of "Wise Blood."

1. To Helen Greene (written from Middedgeville, 23 May 1952):

"My philosophical notions don't derive from Kierkegard...but from St. Thomas Aquinas. And I don't intend the tone of the book to be pessimistic. It is after all a story about redemption and if you admit redemption, you are no pessimist. The gist of the story is that H. Motes couldn't really believe that he hadn't been redeemed. Maybe this is what R. Neibur...calls Christian pessimism, but if so, it too is a long way from Kafka and Kierkegaard."

[This one I'm spoiler-texting, because O'Connor essentially tells us the meaning of the book, and I'm not sure everyone wants to read it before the book is discussed.]

2. To Carl Hartmann (from Milledgeville, 2 March 1954)

(view spoiler)["Wise Blood is about a Protestant saint, written from the point of view of a Catholic. Of course I don't meant to imply a direct connection between Catholic with a large C and the simple fact of Haze's having declared there was no fall and no sin, but first you must accept the fact that the book is written by some one who believes that there was a fall, has been a Redemption, and will be a judgment. This is what I believe as a Catholic and this is what I imply that Haze could not get away from (though in his terms, not in mine) so I suppose that if you want to say (you don't have to say it) that the irony is directed against Haze for having decided there was no fall you are correct (Great Heavens!) but you are only halfway correct for if there were no more to it than this, it would be of no account.

"The book is about somebody whose insistance on what he would like to think is the truth leads him to what he most does not want. As I see Haze, he most does not want to have been redeemed. He most wants man to be shut of God. Enoch, with his wise blood, unerringly lights on what man looks like without God and obligingly brings it for Haze to have a look at.

"Now you are right that Haze himself is without any specific sin in the catalogue sense. But he has a great sense of sin, because he has been taught to believe in the Redemption. If he hadn't believed in it, he wouldn't have had to reject it so vigorously.... He walks a mile with rocks in his shoes to make up for looking at the woman in the sideshow coffin. The Redemption creates a debt that has to be paid.... The Redemption simply changes everything. The fact is that try as he will Haze cannot get rid of his sense of debt and his inner vision of Christ. Mrs. Watts sees this at once. (I never see why when Mrs. Watts saw it nobody else seems to.) Even the taxi driver sees it.

"From my point of view Haze does not come into his absolute integrity until he blinds himself. While he is preaching the Church Without Christ he is going counter actually to his own wise blood. Haze and Enoch both have wise blood, which is something that enables you to go in the right direction after what you want. Enoch's gets him inside and ape suit and Haze's gets him further and further inside himself where one may be supposed to find the answer. When I say he negates his way back to the cross I only mean that complete nihilism has led him the long way (or maybe it's really the short way) around to the Redemption again.

"I sense this is repugnant to you. I wish we could have it both ways. However, I don't think anything I have said contradicts the feeling of the book which is certainly that human beings do have free choice. I as a Catholic look on H. Motes as the only right kind of man, in his circumstances. If the irony is directed against him, this is because he is the only one in the book who can stand it. My Lord, how could you direct any irony at Enoch? Of course he finds that being an animal is no fun either but this is just funny. It's not full dress irony to my way of thinking.

"When Haze blinds himself he turns entirely to an inner vision. Now one irony is that where he started out preaching the Church Without Christ he ends up with Christ without a church. A Catholic can't write about a Catholic world because none exists so he has to write about a Protestant one and you are right I have directed the irony against this Protestant world or against the society that reads the Bible and the Sears Roebuck catalogue wrong, but Haze himself is in it and of it, he is the ultimate Protestant; he transcends it though. Its not either/or, it's both and one through the other. To my mind, you are right, you just arn't right enough.

"I don't mean to suggest that Haze is Christ but I believe that everybody, through suffering, takes part in the Redemption, and I believe they suffer most who live closest to all the possibilities of disbelief....

"The penances are certainly acts of assertion even though they are instinctive. Haze is here asserting his wise blood in the ultimate way. When he says he does it to pay, he means to pay his part of the debt of Redemption." (hide spoiler)]

And one more quote from a letter before I stop:

3. To Ben Griffith (from Milledgeville, 3 March 1954):

"Let me assure you that no one but a Catholic could have written Wise Blood even though it is a book about a kind of Protestant saint. It reduces Protestantism to the twin ultimate absurdities of The Church Without Christ or The Holy Church of Christ Without Christ, which no pious Protestant would do. And of course no unbeliever or agnostic could have written it because it is entirely Redemption-centered in thought. Not too many people are willing to see this, and perhaps it is hard to see because H. Motes is such and admirable nihilist. his nihilism leads him back to the fact of his Redemption, however, which is what he would have liked so much to get away from."

"When you start describing the significance of a symbol like the tunnel which recurs in the book, you immediately begin to limit it and a symbol should go on deepening."

These are interesting. I disagree with O'Connor's assumption, "Motes is such and admirable nihilist" ....(view spoiler)[ he ran that man down with his car and drove back over him again; got out looked at him - no mercy, no pity; all Motes could think about was his own personal agenda (hide spoiler)]. Motes is not admirable. She may have intended him that way, maybe even after the fact, but if he'd had an ounce of humility he might have questioned his rigid assumptions.

Flash Beagle wrote: "These are interesting. I disagree with O'Connor's assumption, "Motes is such and admirable nihilist" ....[spoilers removed]. Motes is not admirable. She may have intended him that way, maybe eve..."

I think O'Connor is using the word "admirable" not in a moral sense, but in the sense of being a person of integrity. (view spoiler)[I think every thing Hazel does up to the end of the book is done to resist that sense of Redemption that O'Connor says he just can't shake. His life is the irresistable force that cannot move the immovable object, which, to O'Connor, shows how much heft there is to Redemption. (hide spoiler)]

Jessie wrote: "And one more quote from a letter before I stop:

Thank you for these quotes.

Randall wrote: "Jessie wrote: "And one more quote from a letter before I stop:

Thank you for these quotes."

I apologize for all the spelling errors! I was just focused on getting all the words down.

I apologize for all the spelling errors! I was just focused on getting all the words d..."

The spelling errors just make it better. (That's what I tell myself all the time!)

Do any of you know anything about "Miss A"? So many letters from FO to Miss A discussing Catholic thought, books, meaning...

During the editorial process of "Wise Blood," Ms O'Connor wrote a letter to the publisher/editor in which she attempted to explain her aim/goal in the wording of a particular segment. One of her sentences began "Perhaps I'm being prematurely arrogant . . ."

That tickled my funny bone so thought I'd pass it along. Cheers 2 all.

Mike Addington

I'm a huge O'Connor fan, but I just don't see much evidence of her Catholicism informing her writing. If I didn't know otherwise, I'd have guessed that she had little, if any, religion, but was fascinated by the hold religion has on so many Southerners. I say this as someone who loves her stories and novels -- and as someone who was raised Catholic. This has long puzzled me -- anyone care to enlighten me? Thanks in advance.

Good thoughts, Everitt. Thanks for responding. I haven't read her letters and essays -- just the fiction. It's not that I want to see her faith show up in her writing, it's just that I don't see it at all. To me, it's just not there.

I have learned so much about O'Connor from this group, mostly related to her Catholicism. I had always been puzzled by her interpretations of religion, but the discussions have convinced me that, as informed by her Catholicism, those interpretations make sense. In that respect, I don't think her writing can be separated from her religion.

I guess I'm looking for evidence that her fiction was "informed by her Catholicism." If I didn't know the backstory, and you had told me those novels and stories were written by a woman with little or no religion herself, but a fascination about religion's hold over the South, I'd have believed it.

David wrote: "I guess I'm looking for evidence that her fiction was "informed by her Catholicism." If I didn't know the backstory, and you had told me those novels and stories were written by a woman with little..."

I also think if you look at our discussions of Wise Blood here, you'll find some evidence. In that novel, her interpretation of Protestantism was so alien to me that it took the explanation of her Catholicism for me to understand what was happening. The whole "saved" versus "redeemed" conversation that we had at the time really opened my eyes.

Jessie wrote: "David wrote: "I guess I'm looking for evidence that her fiction was "informed by her Catholicism." If I didn't know the backstory, and you had told me those novels and stories were written by a wom..."

Interesting. Thanks, Jessie. I'll need to re-read "Wise Blood" -- maybe that didn't jump out the first time because I was reading it as someone who was raised Catholic.