Flannery O’Connor

Facsimile: The Flannery O’Connor Stamp

R.T. Smith

I was disappointed when the U.S. Postal Service recently unveiled its new Flannery O’Connor stamp, which slightly resembles one extant photo of Ms. O’Connor as a co-ed but would not be recognizable to many people who are familiar with the most prevalent, and representative, photographs of her as an adult artist. Lawrence Downes in The New York Times has likened the stamp image to Betty Crocker, and Joyce Carol Oates Tweeted that the artist who painted the portrait which was digitalized for the stamp not only could never have seen a photo of Ms. O’Connor, but must, also, have never read a word the Georgia author wrote. I’m not sure I’m convinced of that, but this is certainly a missed opportunity to “put a face on” many of the most piercing and sadly humorous American short stories, certainly a dozen of my favorite pieces, genre aside, in world literature. Below are the stamp itself, the closest FOC image to the stamp and a photo from the series by Joe McTyre, one of many in which he saw her spirit:

The picture which artist Sam Weber may have been working from was taken while O’Connor was a student at Georgia State College for Women, though the pearls may have been imported from one of the 1962 photographs taken at Andalusia by Atlanta Journal-Constitution photographer Joe McTyre. My favorite shot (McTyre’s favorite showed her sitting under a self-portrait with a partridge) displays her on that day (during the warm half of the year, if I read the vegetation correctly) seated in the parlor, smiling, somewhat scholarly in those signature cat-eye glasses, not looking frail at all, her crutches out of sight and an open book on her lap. I’m a little conflicted on the matter of the crutches, as they’re not necessary for a photo of a seated person, nor should this occasion be an opportunity to make a point about physical disabilities. Or should it? I’m of two minds. O’Connor was stricken by disease, smitten by the love of her God and beloved of the muse and whatever other dieties confer a capacity for sweat and vision. However tempting it is to focus on her process, her domestic circumstances, her struggle and personal steel, the real point is the work, which I think would be more effectively celebrated by an image of the writer during the time she was crafting it. Crafting it almost every morning, I might add, from just after mass till lunch at the Sanford House Tea Room (often shrimp and peppermint pie).

Once lupus struck the young Flannery’s immune system, it damaged her body, her features, her stamina. The marvel is that it did not decrease her sense of mischief, theological seriousness, cultural understanding, caustic wit, originality of metaphor, allegorical logic, fierce discipline, compassion and instinct for the right words to “draw in large and startling figures for the blind.”

What I see in the portrait on the stamp is a more ordinary face, an unworldly young woman of the early fifties, somewhat blithe, the remarkableness of the heart and imagination not yet much in evidence in the eyes as she sits for a school picture (though the stamp artist has added some years, I think). I don’t really see the early signs of her vulnerability or her strength, which together with action and humor constitute character. Her Communion Day photo of 1932 reveals more grit and mischief in those windows to the soul than the co-ed shot.

But this is a tempest in a teapot, and I don’t think the trickster, cartoonist and satirist Mary Flannery O’Connor would have been very interested in either the postal image or my disappointment. We have the stamp (sadly, not the first class one I’d hoped for), which is a long-overdue tribute, and many who see it will say either “Who?” or “So that’s what she looked like.” Others will be reminded of Wise Blood, The Violent Bear It Away, “Revelation,” “Greenleaf,” “Good Country People,” while a few smile and suspect that “a good likeness is not hard to find.” Maybe someone will be moved to go out to the fields and read “A Circle in the Fire” aloud, “as if the prophets were dancing in the fiery furnace, in the circle the angel had cleared for them.” That would suit me.

[R. T. Smith has been editor of Shenandoah for20 years, over70 issues, including the 60th anniversary Flannery O’Connor issue. He is the author of several books, including The Red Wolf: A Dream of Flannery O’Connor. Smith’s article “Much Mischief Is Divinest Sense: My Flannery Visitation” will appear in the fall issue of The Flannery O’Connor Review.]

R. T. Smith has edited Shenandoah since 1995 and serves as Writer-in-Residence at Washington & Lee. His forthcoming books are Doves in Flight: 13 Fictions and Summoning Shades: New Poems, both due in 2017.

Writers’ Best Friends

Sara Korash-Schiff

On April 5, 1905, the Kansas City Star ran the following post about a lost cat: “Large and intensely black; thick, velvety fur; has a faint fringe of white hair across twain his chest; not easy to find in ordinary light.” The author of this advertisement? None other than Samuel Clemens, otherwise known as Mark Twain, himself. Though this specific ad was about his beloved cat Bambino, Twain collected a variety of other cats throughout the years as well. He loved cats so much that he once said, “I simply can’t resist a cat, particularly a purring one. They are the cleanest, cunningest, and most intelligent things I know, outside of the girl you love, of course.” Twain, however, is not the only writer who fancied feline friendship.

Ernest Hemingway also enjoyed the companionship of cats. He had a six-toed white cat named Snowball, among others. Cats even made their way into his famous work For Whom the Bell Tolls: “No animal has more liberty than the cat, but it buries the mess it makes. The cat is the best anarchist.” To this day, visitors can find more than 50 six-toed (polydactyl, to use the technical term) cats roaming around Hemingway’s home in Key West. It is said that they are the descendants of dear old Snowball.

Joyce Carol Oates has even gone as far as crediting her cat for helping her write. She has said, “I write so much because my cat sits on my lap. She purrs so I don’t want to get up. She’s so much more calming than my husband.”

So what is it with writers and their cats? Why do so many choose to spend their time with those of the feline persuasion? Perhaps, as Oates said, cats encourage writing with their refusal to be dislodged from their resting places. Maybe they dissuade writers’ block with their mysterious air and playful antics. I certainly find cats to be the ideal writing companions. Their warm bodies create a cozy environment and their purring has a calming effect, making for a low-stress writing atmosphere. I can see this being the reason that authors for generations have adored their meowing muses.

It isn’t only cats that steal a place in writers’ hearts, however. Canine companions have been just as present throughout history. Emily Brontë, a great animal lover, had a trusty mastiff sidekick named Keeper. Some even argue that Emily’s adoration of all creatures influenced her writing in Wuthering Heights, as many characters in the novel have quite animalistic qualities. Her contemporary, Emily Dickinson, also had a love for dogs. Dickinson once said, “Dogs are better than human beings because they know but do not tell.”

A more recent writer shared his predecessors’ preference for pups. Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World, once explained “the constant popularity of dogs” by saying, “To his dog, every man is Napoleon.” This quote could explain why some writers keep pooches as pets. Take a survey of any authors and chances are some are going to say they write because they want to make an impact on their readers or even on the world. Perhaps F. Scott Fitzgerald put it best when he said, “You don’t write because you want to say something; you write because you’ve got something to say.” Keeping a dog as a pet allows authors to experience that feeling of heroism on a smaller scale.

Or maybe writers simply have dogs because they bring a certain level of joy that encourages the writing process. Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, asked, “Why does watching a dog be a dog fill one with happiness?” Just as cats inspire writers with their furtiveness, dogs can hearten writers’ work with their blatantly unconditional love and loyalty. Conversely, dogs can reveal the negative side of human nature as well. As John Steinbeck said after years with his treasured poodle, Charley, “I’ve seen a look in dogs’ eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.” While dogs do not necessarily create the same relaxed atmosphere that cats do, I find their constant cheerfulness to be a definite mood-booster, something that always helps with my writing.

Dogs and cats are not the only pets that have kept famous writers company, however. Lord Byron, 19^th century poet, housed a pet bear during his time at Cambridge, even walking it through campus on a leash oconnor . And let us not forget about Flannery O’Connor and the famed peacocks that kept her company. She once wrote of them, “Visitors to our place, instead of being barked at by dogs rushing from under our porch, are squalled at by peacocks whose blue necks and crested heads pop up from behind tufts of grass, peer out of bushes, and crane downward from the roof of the house, where the bird has flown, perhaps for the view.”

So, while many authors may use historical figures or real-life acquaintances for inspiration in their writing, some turn instead to their furrier pals, giving a new perspective on the phrase “man’s best friend.”

— Cara Scott

Sara Korash-Schiff is a senior English and journalism and mass communications major at Washington and Lee. She has served as an intern for Hachette Book Group in Nashville and a reporting intern for The Springfield Republican. After graduation, she plans to travel throughout Europe and attend a graduate creative writing program in fiction.

Breaking into the Literary Pantheon

Mac McKee

If you spend enough time in English classes or just around books, you learn that there are a few canonical names: Milton, Eliot, Faulkner, Woolf. These authors’ works are well-chronicled and widely, carefully read. And since many of these greats have come and gone, their bodies of work aren’t usually getting any bigger. Being widely read in the canon is a bit easier when the old masters aren’t coming out with new material anymore. Rarely does a newly-discovered work come up to claim a place among the classics.

But sometimes we get lucky. Sometimes we receive a gift wrapped between two covers. Right now, we’re getting very lucky.

I read in a New Yorker article that Flannery O’Connor’s prayer journal is about to be published. Certainly, a journal may not as carefully crafted or audience-aware as a collection of short stories or a novel, but for writers and students of literature – and especially those who study American Southern literature – this journal offers new insight into the life and thoughts of one of the most important voices in American literature. O’Connor, a devout Catholic growing up and living in the protestant south, made her journal “a record of a Christian who hoped the rightful orientation of her own life would contribute to righting the orientation of the world.” Indeed, as excerpts demonstrate, this journal is a record of the writer’s reconciliation of her faith and her ambitions to become a writer. As her stories often do, O’Connor’s prayer journal offers to connect with readers on several levels: as writers, as believers, as doubters of any kind.

And that’s not all. Sometimes, lucky just doesn’t seem to cover it.

Just over a week ago, HarperCollins announced that they would publish J.R.R. Tolkien’s translation of the old epic Beowulf in late May. Tolkien’s notes and comments on the work itself and a previously unpublished story will accompany the translation. Unlike O’Connor, posthumous publication from Tolkien is a bit less rare than a blue moon. Tolkien lovers though (I count myself among them) and Beowulf scholars (I don’t quite fit that bill) will be enticed at the prospect of reading afresh Tolkien’s elegant, winding prose and read his collected thoughts on the world’s oldest extant English manuscript. Tolkien’s scholarship, which focuses on the monsters in the tale, is held in very high esteem, but that’s not too surprising.

Nevertheless, it’s an exciting time. Both Tolkien and O’Connor are in the Valhalla of writers, and new material just doesn’t come around very frequently. But how does this new material fit in with the rest of their work? How should we think about these writings, how do we apply them to what we’ve already read? What do you think? Have you heard of any new works from the old greats?

Mac McKee is a junior Business Administration major at Washington and Lee. He has a passion for writing and the study of languages.

Putting Recreational Reading to “The Flannery O’Connor Test”

Timothy McAleenan

Flannery O’Connor once said that she stops reading a book the moment that she “would not feel a sense of loss if she were to quit reading.” Professor Smith has mentioned that he regularly reads a twenty to thirty page story and thinks something to the effect of, “This story really begins on page eight.” For the past four years, the English majors have been living in a bubble in the sense that we do not get to decide whether we want to continue reading the work or not—if a teacher assigns a work, we’re obligated to finish it.

But what happens when you enter the realm of recreational reading? If the book isn’t interesting, should we stop reading and turn on Mad Men, or should we work our way through it, and earn our way to the meat of the novel, as if we’re eating lobster? In my personal experience, I feel that way about William Faulkner’s work. I really like the idea of William Faulkner, and I have a great interest in many of the themes, motifs, and sense of nostalgia that animates his texts. But with the exceptions of the short story A Rose for Emily and The Sound and the Fury, I haven’t particularly enjoyed the experience of reading a William Faulkner work—getting through Flags in the Dust felt more like a chore to me than an exhilarating reading experience. Yet, once I was done with the work, I was glad that I read it.

I was willing to slog through Flags in the Dust because I was aware of Faulkner’s reputation and I had a good idea of the subject matter at hand before I even read it. But what happens when we’re dealing with no-named authors writing on topics we’re not familiar with? At that point, it’s like picking a piece in the box of chocolates, but some of the options…aren’t chocolate.

If you’re fifty pages into a novel that’s yet to impress you, what do you do? Do you work your way through it, hoping to find the nugget that makes the experience worthwhile, or do you adopt the “life’s too short mentality” and simply give up on it? My attitude on the matter is this: if the author has a well-earned reputation for quality, I’m going to be charitable and give the book a couple chances to capture my interest. But if I’m doing the equivalent of perusing a book on the rack at a bookstore by some Johnny Come Lately, then I’m much more inclined to move on to the next option, as if I’m cable surfing on the television.