Phil Eiger Newmann, Flannery O’Connor, 2021.
1,971 words
Today is the 100th birthday of Flannery O’Connor, one of America’s greatest storytellers and an underappreciated woman of the Right. In her short life of 39 years, O’Connor wrote two novels, 31 short stories, more than a hundred lectures, essays, and reviews, and a vast number of letters. Her fiction reflects her strong identity as both a Catholic and a white Southern woman.
Mary Flannery O’Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia. She was the only child of Edward Francis O’Connor and Regina Cline, both Irish-American Catholics. Edward O’Connor ran a real estate and property management business until the Great Depression, when he took a job with the US government in Atlanta. Regina Cline came from a large, wealthy, and well-connected family. When Edward O’Connor took his job in Atlanta, the O’Connors moved to Milledgeville, where Regina and Mary Flannery lived in the Cline mansion with a number of relatives. Edward O’Connor commuted back to Milledgeville on weekends. In 1937, Edward O’Connor was diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus, which led to his death in 1941.
In 1942, Mary Flannery entered an accelerated three-year program at Georgia State College for Women (now Georgia College and State University) and graduated in June 1945 with a BA in sociology and English literature. In both high school and college, she wrote articles and produced often sardonic cartoons for the student newspapers. She also wrote stories and poems for the college literary magazine, The Corinthian. While in college, she began to sign her work simply Flannery O’Connor, although her family continued to call her Mary Flannery.
In 1945, O’Connor was accepted to study at the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. Initially, she studied journalism but soon switched to creative writing. O’Connor received her Master of Fine Arts from the University of Iowa in 1947. She remained at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop for another year on a fellowship, working on her first novel, Wise Blood, and a number of short stories.
She continued working on Wise Blood at Yaddo, an artists’ retreat in Saratoga Springs, New York, beginning in the summer of 1948. O’Connor left Yaddo early, in 1949, when she and several other fellows petitioned the board to dismiss director Elizabeth Ames for endangering Yaddo by harboring a Soviet spy and propagandist, Agnes Smedley.
O’Connor then spent some time in New York City before moving to Ridgefield, Connecticut, to live with poet and translator Robert Fitzgerald and his wife Sally until the end of 1950, when O’Connor came down with lupus. After that, she spent the rest of her life living with her mother near Milledgeville on a family farm named Andalusia.
O’Connor & the Right
O’Connor’s relationship to the Right deserves extensive treatment. This is just a sketch.
O’Connor was a raised in a conservative, Southern, Irish-Catholic home. A highly gifted child, she may have chafed against the unintellectual aspects of this upbringing, but she never broke with it and eventually found a way to reconcile herself with it. Her Catholicism was orthodox and traditional. She did not believe the church needed to accommodate itself to liberalism and Marxism. She believed the world needed to accommodate itself to the Church. In high school and college, she was exposed to modern progressivism, liberalism, and Marxism. She rejected them all. She believed that the progressive thesis of the perfectibility of man was false.[1] Her fiction is filled with scathing satires of modern liberal intellectuals as vain, sentimental, tyrannical, and treasonous. She even thought that future generations would be better off if they were less educated.[2]
O’Connor believed that “Communism is a religion of the state, committed to the extinction of the Church,”[3] thus she opposed it fervently. This first manifested itself when she took a stand at Yaddo against Elizabeth Ames for harboring the Soviet agent, Agnes Smedley. She also felt deep disgust for the Leftist smear campaign launched in defense of Smedley and Ames.[4] To the end of her life, O’Connor did not allow translations of her books behind the Iron Curtain because she did not want her work to be used as anti-American propaganda.[5]
While at the University of Iowa, O’Connor met Robert Penn Warren, John Crowe Ransom, and Andrew Lytle, prominent members of the Southern Agrarians, America’s first truly anti-liberal metapolitical movement. They quickly saw her talent. Lytle and Ransom became important patrons of her work, publishing her stories, reviewing her books, and helping her get grants.
In 1951, Flannery O’Connor began corresponding with Caroline Gordon Tate, the wife of prominent Agrarian Andrew Tate. Caroline Gordon Tate became an important mentor for the rest of O’Connor’s life. Their surviving correspondence has been turned into a book.[6]
In 1953, Caroline and Andrew Tate introduced Flannery to Brainard and Fannie Cheney, who played an especially important role in the Agrarian milieu as networkers. O’Connor’s correspondence with the Cheneys has also been published as a book.[7] The Cheneys and Tates were converts to Catholicism, which was another bond with O’Connor.
O’Connor admitted that the Agrarians were important for her work.[8] Their influence is especially strong in her defense of regionalism and the spirit of place. She also shared their skepticism about progressivism. But O’Connor did not romanticize the Old South and what she somewhat dismissively called the “Wah Between the States.”[9]
Another important Right-wing influence on O’Connor was Russell Kirk, the author of The Conservative Mind, whom O’Connor met in October 1955 at the home of the Cheneys in Tennessee. O’Connor read a number of Kirk’s books, including The Conservative Mind, A Program for Conservatives, Academic Freedom, and Beyond the Dreams of Avarice. She also read Kirk’s journal, Modern Age. Kirk’s Burkean influence is visible in O’Connor’s distrust of theory and her conviction that secular humanitarianism leads inevitably to tyranny and terror.
Another conservative intellectual O’Connor read and admired was Eric Voegelin. She even reviewed the first three volumes of his monumental Order and History.[10]
O’Connor was also quite familiar with a number of literary figures who were out-and-out fascists, including Louis-Ferdinand Céline,[11] Percy Wyndham Lewis,[12] and Ezra Pound.
She probably heard about these figures from the poet Robert Lowell, whom she knew from the University of Iowa. Lowell visited Ezra Pound at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Washington, D.C., where he had been incarcerated after World War II. Lowell also knew Ezra’s wife, Dorothy, and son, Omar. O’Connor writes as if she also knew Omar.[13]
Another Pound connection was through translator and poet Robert Fitzgerald, who knew Pound and his family as well.[14] Apparently, in 1954, the Fitzgeralds stayed with Pound’s daughter Mary and her husband Boris de Rachewiltz in their castle in the Tyrolean Alps. O’Connor seemed to know a great deal about Pound’s complicated family life and writes as if she actually knew Mary Pound.[15]
These links may have something to do with Betty Hester’s accusation, in a lost letter to O’Connor, that her friend was a “fascist,” a charge that she disputed in several letters.[16] It certainly merits more study.
Like many Southern conservatives of her time, O’Connor despised the Republican Party. In one letter, she described herself as a “Kennedy conservative.”[17]
As a Catholic and an intellectual, O’Connor regarded the Ku Klux Klan with bemused contempt, but it didn’t prevent her from joking about attending Klan rallies with a liberal correspondent.[18] Beyond that, as I demonstrate in an ongoing series, O’Connor was very much a race realist, whose preferred solution to America’s race problem was to send all the blacks back to Africa, a position associated with “white trash,” the Klan, and neo-Nazis, not her family’s genteel social circles. She also despised the self-righteousness and sentimentalism of Northern integrationists and thought nothing good would come from them. Short of repatriating blacks, she hoped that America would somehow muddle through with desegregation. Had she lived beyond 1964, I seriously doubt she would have regarded integration as a success. It would have required too much self-deception.
During her lifetime, O’Connor completed four books:
- Wise Blood (a novel) (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1952).
- A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1955).
- The Violent Bear It Away (a novel) (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1960).
- Everything That Rises Must Converge (short stories, published posthumously) (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1965).
After O’Connor’s death, a number of other works have appeared:
- Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, ed. Sally and Robert Fitzgerald (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969).
- The Complete Stories, ed. Robert Giroux (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1971).
- The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor, ed. Sally Fitzgerald (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1979).
- Collected Works, ed. Sally Fitzgerald (New York: The Library of America, 1988). (This beautiful Library of America volume contains Wise Blood, A Good Man Is Hard to Find, The Violent Bear it Away, and Everything That Rises Must Converge, plus some additional short stories and large selections from Mystery and Manners andThe Habit of Being. It should be everyone’s first Flannery O’Connor volume.)
Other posthumous works:
- The Presence of Grace and Other Book Reviews , compiled by Leo J. Zuber, ed. Carter W. Martin (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1983).
- The Correspondence of Flannery O’Connor and the Brainard Cheneys, ed. C. Ralph Stephens (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1986).
- Conversations with Flannery O’Connor, ed. Rosemary M. Magee (a collection of interviews) (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1987).
- Flannery O’Connor: The Cartoons, ed. Barry Moser (Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2012).
- A Prayer Journal, ed. W. A. Sessions (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2013).
- The Letters of Flannery O’Connor and Caroline Gordon, ed. Christine Flanagan (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2018).
- Good Things out of Nazareth: The Uncollected Letters of Flannery O’Connor and Friends, ed. Benjamin B. Alexander (New York: Convergent, 2019).
- Dear Regina: Flannery O’Connor’s Letters from Iowa, ed. Monica Carol Miller (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2022).
- Flannery O’Connor’s Why Do The Heathen Rage? A Behind-the-Scenes Look at a Work in Progress, ed. Jessica Hooten Wilson (fragments from an unfinished third novel) (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press, 2024).
The O’Connor Estate authorized two biographies of Flannery O’Connor, both by friends who knew her well: Sally Fitzgerald and William Sessions. Unfortunately, both authors died before their work could be completed. The best biography is Brad Gooch, Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor (New York: Little, Brown & Co., 2009).
Counter-Currents has already published a number of works on O’Connor, and we will continue to explore her life, work, and legacy.
On O’Connor:
- James J. O’Meara, “Angst and the City: The Education of Flannery O’Connor.”
- Greg Johnson, “Flannery O’Connor and Racism, Part 1: The Cancellation of Flannery O’Connor.”
- Greg Johnson, “Flannery O’Connor and Racism, Part 2: Down on the Farm.“
- Trevor Lynch reviews Wildcat.
- Trevor Lynch reviews John Huston’s Wise Blood.
- Margot Metroland, “Remembering Flannery O’Connor (March 25, 1925–August 4, 1964).”
- Margot Metroland, “Flannery O’Connor’s Mean Words.”
Interviews Mentioning Flannery O’Connor:
- “The Films of David Lynch, Part 1.”
- “Jonathan Bowden’s Last Interview, Part 1.”
- “The Sublime & the Grotesque.”
- “Interview with Tito Perdue, Part 1.”
See also posts tagged Flannery O’Connor.
Notes
[1] The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor, ed. Sally Fitzgerald (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1979), p. 302
[2] The Habit of Being, p. 311
[3] The Habit of Being, p. 347.
[4] The Habit of Being, pp. 11–12.
[5] The Habit of Being, p. 151. Cf. Good Things out of Nazareth: The Uncollected Letters of Flannery O’Connor and Friends, ed. Benjamin B. Alexander (New York: Convergent, 2019), p. 348
[6] The Letters of Flannery O’Connor and Caroline Gordon, ed. Christine Flanagan (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2018).
[7] The Correspondence of Flannery O’Connor and the Brainard Cheneys, ed. C. Ralph Stephens (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1986).
[8] The Habit of Being, p. 148.
[9] The Habit of Being, p. 428.
[10] Flannery O’Connor, The Presence of Grace and Other Book Reviews, compiled by Leo J. Zuber, ed. Carter W. Martin (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1983).
[11] The Habit of Being, pp. 95, 105, 124.
[12] The Habit of Being, pp. 96, 111, 161, 167, 174, 179–80, 217, 229, 393.
[13] The Habit of Being, p. 36.
[14] The Habit of Being, p. 132.
[15] The Letters of Flannery O’Connor and Caroline Gordon, pp. 104–105.
[16] The Habit of Being, pp. 97, 103, 107.
[17] The Habit of Being, p. 499.
[18] The Habit of Being, p. 573.
18 comments
I’ve appreciated O’Connor’s stories, and I find that I get more out of them each time I read them. This piece by Dr. Johnson and the other items here at CC make me think that her actual life could be even more interesting than her fiction!
One of her stories that stood out for me was “Everything That Rises Must Converge.” As I recall, considering the time in which it was written, O’Connor showed remarkable compassion in it for a woman character who, in post-WWII times, would be denounced for being guilty of WrongThink. There was another vivid story, whose name escapes me now, about a teenaged boy and his grandfather from the country who have a revealing visit in Atlanta. And, “The Displaced Person” was terribly sad. O’Connor sure didn’t shy away from the ugly aspects of life, but unlike some modern writers, it’s not all ugliness in her work, if you look carefully here and there.
Recently I’ve been delving into Nikolay Gogol’s stories, which I also find rewarding. Of course he and O’Connor lived in very different times and places, but there seem to be some common threads in their work–views on human nature and folly, absurdities and grotesqueness of life, mixed with a compassionate understanding of the authors, etc.
Thank you for this “Remembering” piece. The Habit of Being and other works cited here are next on my list. So much great stuff to read, so little time!
The story you are thinking of is “The Artificial Nigger.”
O’Connor liked Gogol. She shared his taste for the absurd.
Thank you, yes, that’s the title. How could I forget?! 🙂
The translator of the Gogol volume which I’m reading also describes Gogol as having “verve.” That’s another quality that I’ve come to enjoy and appreciate a lot.
What flannery O’Connor story is AN most similar to? That question is for everyone. Nobody wants to talk about The Stories.
Sorry, DP, I wish I knew the answer. I’m sure someone else here does. It has been a long time since I read a lot of her stories, so I’m pretty fuzzy on most, but I’m inspired now to re-read them! There was another one that haunted me about a little boy whose parents are on the neglectful side, and who has a tragedy trying to meet Jesus. And “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” is another gut-puncher. Among many, actually.
On another note, I wanted to say regarding the Kindle theft that you described elsewhere, if you had only had paper-copy books at that cafe, I’m sure they would have all been completely safe from the perpetrator! 🙂
Yeah, they want it as a status symbol primarily. I like to leave a lot of poetry books and all in my car as repellent against break-ins, usually effective, however, some south of the border enrichment did attempt to steal my car. I caught them in the act, but I had to get a new car door from the damage done.
Beset on all sides by troublesome minorities!
I was not aware that O’Connor had connections with L F Céline. Calling Céline an “out-and-out fascist” is somewhat misleading.
She read Celine.
She actually seemed to have met Omar Pound and Mary Pound. Also, she talks about two erstwhile boyfriends who visited Pound in St. Elizabeth’s. One is Robert Lowell, the other may be a person she refers to simply as a “doctor.”
And clearly the Fitzgeralds had a Pound connection.
It would be very interesting to see if there is Pound related correspondence in the archives of Flannery’s letters.
I’m unsure about absolute fascist sympathies but it would not surprise me since Celine’s Trifles for a Massacre is a most brutal and oblivionizing one-man attack on jewish everything. How it wasn’t globally banned is beyond me.
More literary white women should read Flannery rather than Jane Austen, whose novels portray a vanished world. Flannery and her ideas are not that remote from this era.
Very persuasive, very impressive “sketch” there. I was only seeing her as a decent person who was ill-done by, thanks to Cancel Culture faddery or whatever. No one bothered with a frontal attack before because she was just a regional writer, somewhere to the rear of Eudora Welty. But her stature grew and grew and got too big to ignore.
There is an extensive article on O’Connor in today’s international edition of The Guardian. Surprisingly enough they don’t make much of her alleged racism.
By the way, I remember that until quite recently, people born around 1925 were not particularly old. In the 1990s they were normal, rather younger pensioners. Then most of them suddenly died after 2005. It seems like yesterday. When I was a boy, these people were in their sixties. The really old ones were people born around 1910.
Oh tell me about it. Three of my four grandparents were born in the 1880s, and all eight of my great-grandparents grew up during the Civil War (mainly PA, Upstate NY, and IL), all between 7 and 14 when that war ended.
A better way to put things into perspective: John F. Kennedy turned 8 just after Flannery was born; Jack Kerouac was already 6; Winston Churchill was now a stout parliamentary has-been of 50, scribbling a six-volume history of the Great War.
Meanwhile Dick Van Dyke, also born in 1925, is still with us and can even tapdance on a table. Now you can feel young again.
Pagan hails to my fellow Celt. I like birds too (much more than I like non-Whites, actually)
I have her collected stories and I’m going to crack it open this weekend after I finish the next few days of my unrewarding maintenance job
Stay safe Counter-Currents.
Is there any worthwhile TV or movie biopic of her life available?
Here is one: https://counter-currents.com/2025/01/wildcat/
There is also a 2020 PBS documentary called Flannery in which you see a lot of family photos and home movies and hear from friends like Sally Fitzgerald (very classy lady) and Bill Sessions.
Fascinating; I read GMIHTF in high school and it was one of those works that stuck out for its violence and overall strangeness. She was so young when she died, and at such a pivotal time.
secularists or Protestants can hardly understand how devastating the non council, the so called Vatican 2 council and its subsequent magisterium and phony “mass” had on the Catholic world. There’s no way O’Connor could have had much experience with the liberalism Vatican 2 would teach since it wasn’t concluded until 65 and the NO worship service wasn’t imposed on the world until the early 1970s. The mass is the real interaction most Catholics have with the faith. I have watched my moms (‘45) a cradle Catholic have the faith driven out of her by that new order mass. Most Catholics do not study their faith it’s infused in them by the mass, be it traditional like the mass from Trent or progressive like the one written by bugninni and montini in the 1960s
the new order mass is a mass of man and of liberalism and it teaches ecumenism and tolerance a sort of vague Protestant world view. Going to it week after week teaches that stuff to you no matter how “conservative “ the sermons.
id like to think O’Connor would have resisted Vatican 2 and the no by doing what I do: praying at home; but the pull to “do something on Sunday morning “ is very powerful especially for women even if she was an exceptional woman.
also, the pressure to conform to race mixing and one world one race ideology is very hard to resist.
she may have just quietly retired and kept her views to herself and her family. It’s fun to think about what she would have written into the 1970s and 80s if she had lived
im so glad you have brought her more to our attention, and I hope there is more study of her by our people in the future
If you have a Subscriber access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.
Note on comments privacy & moderation
Your email is never published nor shared.
Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.