“Everywhere I go, I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them.”
~ From a letter O’Connor wrote to her friend “A” (Betty Hester) dated February 8, 1958, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor, edited by Sally Fitzgerald.
🐦⬛ Before class, please invest in a careful read of the introduction in The Complete Stories. At the end of the post, I’ll include video links for a deeper dive.🐦⬛
🎧 Listen to Audio Here
The day I wrote this post, March 25th, was Mary Flannery O’Connor’s birthday. Born in 1925, in Savannah, Georgia, she would have been a hundred years old, and we would have a library of brilliant writing to show for it. Instead, we have a tight, concise, and amazing collection of works created in her short but immensely productive time here. O’Connor died of complications from lupus in 1964 at age thirty-nine. Despite her illness–confining her to her family farm in Milledgeville, Georgia for much of her adult life–she produced two novels, almost forty short stories, and numerous essays and letters.
O’Connor as Artist
O’Connor’s artistic vision was singular and uncompromising. Her fiction is characterized by gothic elements and southern settings, grotesque characters and violent revelations, sharp, economical prose, dark humor and shocking plot twists that serve as moments of grace
Her dedication to revision was legendary. In her essays, she spoke about the importance of rewriting: “I rewrite as much as I write,” she noted often. Her manuscripts show extensive revisions, demonstrating her commitment to perfecting her craft.
Her story A Good Man Is Hard to Find underwent numerous drafts before publication with O’Connor carefully refining the dialogue, character descriptions, and that infamous ending scene where the Misfit executes the grandmother.
O’Connor as Catholic
O’Connor’s Catholicism was central to her identity and writing. As she explained in her essays: “I write the way I do because I am Catholic. This is a fact and nothing covers it like the bald statement.” O’Connor grew up Catholic surrounded by protestants and battled with bigotry and critics. More so when she entered the intellectual elite of creative writers. One such famous incident appears in several sources including (the above mentioned) Habit of Being. O’Connor attended a literary dinner party in New York, likely in the late 1940s or early 1950s when O’Connor studied at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and spent time in literary circles in New York. The gathering was hosted by Mary McCarthy, a prominent intellectual and writer known for her secular humanism and sharp wit.
According to the most common version of the story, during dinner, the conversation turned to the Eucharist. McCarthy, who had been raised Catholic but had left the faith, spoke about it as a “symbol” that she found interesting from an intellectual perspective.
Silent for much of the evening, O’Connor delivered her famous line: “Well, if it’s a symbol, to hell with it,” thus silencing McCarthy and the room. She is said to have then elaborated, explaining that she believed the Eucharist was truly the body and blood of Christ, not merely a symbol and exemplifies O’Connor’s unwillingness to water down her faith for intellectual acceptance, as well as her characteristic bluntness.
Her faith manifested in her work through:
- The theme of divine grace operating in the material world
- Characters experiencing moments of revelation, often through violence or suffering
- A sacramental view of reality where the physical world reveals spiritual truths
- A preoccupation with sin, redemption, and judgment
Unlike much religious fiction, O’Connor’s work wasn’t didactic or sentimental. Rather, she explored theological concepts through stark, often disturbing narratives.
Going Against the Tide
O’Connor worked against several prevailing currents:
Literary trends: While much mid-20th century American fiction embraced realism or modernist experimentation, O’Connor created her own distinct style that drew from Southern Gothic traditions but transcended them.
Religious sentiment: She rejected pious, sentimental religious fiction in favor of stories that depicted grace in violent, disturbing ways.
Regional expectations: Though a Southern writer, she avoided romanticizing the South and instead portrayed its contradictions and failures.
Gender expectations: As a woman writer in the 1950s, she defied expectations by refusing to write domestic fiction or romances, instead creating dark, theological works populated with complex, often unlikable characters.
The Writer’s Unwavering Vision
One of O’Connor’s most remarkable qualities was her absolute commitment to her vision, even when faced with editorial pressure. A revealing exchange with a publisher regarding the first nine chapters of Wise Blood makes the point:
The editor wrote to her, calling her a “straight shooter” with “an astonishing gift,” but suggested that aspects of the book were “obscured by her habit of rewriting over and over again.” He added that he sensed “a kind of aloneness” in the book, as if she were writing out of her own limited experience, and wished she would “sit down and tell him what was what.”
In response, O’Connor wrote to her friend Miss McKee: “Please tell me what is behind this Sears-Roebuck-Straight-Shooter approach. I presume…either that the publisher will not take the novel as it will be if left to my finish care (it will be essentially as it is), or that the publisher would like to rescue it at this point and train it into a conventional novel… the letter is addressed to a slightly dimwitted Campfire Girl and I cannot look forward with composure to a lifetime of others like them.”
To the publisher himself, she wrote: “I can only hope that in the novel the direction will be clearer…I feel that whatever virtues the novel may have are very much connected with the limitations you mentioned. I am not writing a conventional novel, and I think that the quality of the novel I write will derive precisely from the peculiarity, or aloneness, if you will, of the experience I write from…In short, I am amenable to criticism, but only within the sphere of what I’m trying to do; I will not pretend to do otherwise. The finished book, though I hope less angular, will be just as odd if not odder than the nine chapters you now have.”
Dedication Until the End
O’Connor’s dedication to her craft continued until her final days. Even as her health failed, she continued working. In the last months of her life, she mailed her publisher Robert Giroux Judgment Day and revised versions of The Geranium and An Exile in the East. She worked until she fell into a coma—a testament to her extraordinary commitment.
Literary Legacy
O’Connor’s impact on American literature has been profound. Thomas Merton, author of The Seven Storey Mountain, compared her, not to contemporaries like Hemingway, Porter, or Sartre, but to Sophocles, “…for all the truth and all the craft with which she shows man’s fall and dishonor.”
Elizabeth Bishop wrote: “I’m sure her few books will live on and on in American literature. They are narrow, possibly, but they are clear, hard, vivid and full of bits of description, phases and an odd insight that contains more real poetry than a dozen books of poems.”
Lessons for Modern Writers
O’Connor offers these invaluable lessons:
- Hold all feedback with a light hand: O’Connor demonstrates, by her response to editorial suggestions, what I say in class about taking what “lights you up” and leaving the rest. Rather than seeking approval, seek ways to clarify your vision. IE: Get closer to nature. Be quiet. And most of all, re-write.
- Stop suffering fools: Focus on your work, always and evermore. People might not get you right now, even in your own workshop. Your point isn’t be to “understood” by everyone or even liked. It’s to be a better writer. Don’t react to the people who don’t get you. Instead, get to work. Focus. Write!
- Commitment to craft: Despite her illness, she maintained a strict writing schedule and never stopped revising and perfecting her work. When you are kvetching about time and challenges, remember O’Connor and create a manageable writing plan that plays the long game.
- Embrace the unconventional: O’Connor’s work stands out because she refused to follow literary trends. Take heart in her courage. Create what is true and beautiful and the rest will fall into place.
Reading O’Connor Today
For readers approaching O’Connor’s work, it’s important to remember:
- She is not easy to read: Her stories make many uncomfortable (including myself when I first encountered her) but will never quite leave your mind. Approach with an extremely open mind and you’ll do well here.
- Set aside knee-jerk liberal reactions to her language: O’Connor’s Southern vernacular is part of her historical authenticity. Rather than judging it by cancel culture standards, consider it represents the true southern experience of that time and of those people. She was many things, but O’Connor was not a liar.
- Read more than once: The depth and complexity of O’Connor’s stories reveal themselves through our reactions to them, the more intense the reaction, the more revealing of our own hearts and actions. She has defamiliarized language and storytelling in her collection and each rereading offers new insights.
O’Connor reminds us that great art isn’t always comfortable or easily digestible. It’s often challenging, disorienting, and profoundly unsettling—but ultimately transformative.
Video Resources
- PBS Documentary: Uncommon Life
- Flannery O’Connor Documentary
- Bishop Barron on Revelation
- Behind the Scenes look at Word on Fire, Pivotal Players highlight of Flannery O’Connor
