Writer's Notebook: A Streetcar Named Tennessee

But in 1950, O’Connor began exhibiting symptoms of the Lupus Erythematosus that had killed her father. She returned to Milledgeville and settled in at “Andalusia”, a sprawling 200-acre family farm populated by animals, exotic birds, and peafowl, which often were written into her stories. The farm gave her not just a physical landscape to live in, but one to use as the rural setting in which to set her fiction.

Hospitalization, frequent doctor’s visits, and a dependence on crutches followed. Yet, the period from 1951 until her death was an intensely productive period in her life. She published Wise Blood in 1952, then pumped out a highly acclaimed collection of short stories, including her most read and anthologized work, A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955). This was followed by another novel, The Violent Bear It Away (1960) and a second collection of short stories, Everything That Rises Must Converge. She also wrote reviews and commentaries for magazines and traveled extensively to maintain a busy speaking schedule.

While she chose the rural South as the setting for her stories, it is the religious landscape of the region—that curious mix of fiery Bible belt fundamentalism, sin, and repentance—that figures most prominently in her work. Like Walker Percy, Flannery O’Connor was deeply spiritual. Her writing drew from her Catholic roots, work that is deeply informed by the theology of the sacramental, a non-didactic Christian prose deeply imbued with the Thomist notion that God is everywhere in the created world. Nowhere does her writing approach the sort of apologetic fiction that was so popular in the Catholic literature of her day. She explained simply, “A writer’s meaning must be evident in his or her fiction without didacticism”. She wrote dark, often painful, violent, and disturbing fiction involving grotesque or stereotyped characters—usually fundamental Protestants—as they might be touched by divine grace under the worst of human circumstances. Race often looms in the background. Each character is limited in perception, gravely unaware of the awful fate awaiting them just ahead.

		A GOOD AUTHOR IS HARD TO FIND: Rediscovering Flannery O'Connor
		She wrote only two novels and thirty-one short stories before her life was tragically cut short by disease at age 39. Yet, from this meager body of work, Flannery O’Connor became one of the pre-eminent voices of modern American literature and an inspiration to generations of writers who came after her. Today her writings, like those of William Faulkner and other great southern authors, are being rediscovered by a whole new generation of readers. She was born Mary Flannery O’Connor on March 25, 1925 in Savannah, Georgia, the only child of Edward and Regina O’Connor. They were devout Roman Catholics in a region of the country renowned for its fundamentalist Bible belt evangelism and protestant heritage. When she was twelve, her father, a Federal Housing Authority real estate appraiser, was diagnosed with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) , a hereditary blood disorder that attacks the body’s auto-immune system. In 1940, the family moved to Milledgeville and to her mother’s ancestral home on Greene Street, where her father died the following year. She was devastated by his death and rarely spoke of him again. While living in Milledgeville, O’Connor attended Peabody High School, became editor of her college magazine at Georgia State College for Women, and published her first short story at age 21. She left in 1945 to study at the University of Iowa, where she attended the prestigious Iowa Writer’s Workshop and earned her Master of Fine Arts degree in 1947. After graduation, she began work on her first novel Wise Blood, and moved to New York City and later to Ridgefield, Conn., where she lived with friends.
		O'Connor with her book "Wise Blood." (right) "Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man, Freedom cannot be conceived simply." (Wise Blood, 1952) .	Flannery O'Connor (1925-1963)
		But in 1950, O’Connor began exhibiting symptoms of the Lupus Erythematosus that had killed her father. She returned to Milledgeville and settled in at “Andalusia”, a sprawling 200-acre family farm populated by animals, exotic birds, and peafowl, which often were written into her stories. The farm gave her not just a physical landscape to live in, but one to use as the rural setting in which to set her fiction. Hospitalization, frequent doctor’s visits, and a dependence on crutches followed. Yet, the period from 1951 until her death was an intensely productive period in her life. She published Wise Blood in 1952, then pumped out a highly acclaimed collection of short stories, including her most read and anthologized work, A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955). This was followed by another novel, The Violent Bear It Away (1960) and a second collection of short stories, Everything That Rises Must Converge. She also wrote reviews and commentaries for magazines and traveled extensively to maintain a busy speaking schedule. While she chose the rural South as the setting for her stories, it is the religious landscape of the region—that curious mix of fiery Bible belt fundamentalism, sin, and repentance—that figures most prominently in her work. Like Walker Percy, Flannery O’Connor was deeply spiritual. Her writing drew from her Catholic roots, work that is deeply informed by the theology of the sacramental, a non-didactic Christian prose deeply imbued with the Thomist notion that God is everywhere in the created world. Nowhere does her writing approach the sort of apologetic fiction that was so popular in the Catholic literature of her day. She explained simply, “A writer’s meaning must be evident in his or her fiction without didacticism”. She wrote dark, often painful, violent, and disturbing fiction involving grotesque or stereotyped characters—usually fundamental Protestants—as they might be touched by divine grace under the worst of human circumstances. Race often looms in the background. Each character is limited in perception, gravely unaware of the awful fate awaiting them just ahead.
		Flannery (sitting at center) was the editor of The Corinthian, a literary magazine at Georgia State College for Women (now Georgia College & State University).
		Christian faith was not O’Connor’s sole literary focus. Her work also bears witness to her familiarity with the most pressing and sensitive contemporary issues of her day. As she neared the end of her life, her work reflected a deeper concern with matters of race and human dignity, touching on the Holocaust in her famous story, The Displaced Person and the subject of integration in Everything that Rises Must Converge (1965). After 1955, O’Connor was forced to use crutches. She continued to write and travel, but her physical deterioration eventually confined her to Andalusia. She died there on August 3, 1964 at the age of 39 from complications of Lupus. In the years following her death, her popularity waned. But today, in a world lacking literary figures the stature and significance of a Faulkner or Hemingway, contemporary culture is looking backward to the more meaningful works of writers that speak to universal human truths. Flannery O’Connor’s work does that: it is the real thing. Her stories and novels are today being reprinted in record number, and she is being rediscovered by a whole new generation of serious readers.
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		Stephen Enzweiler is a journalist and short story writer. He is a contributing writer to Y'all Magazine. Write to him at either se@stephenenzweiler.com. or steve@yall.com.