Flannery O’Connor: Spiritual Writings, by Flannery O’Connor, edited by Robert Ellsburg, introduction by Richard Giannone, Orbis Books, 2003.
Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) is a writer who is both beloved and baffling. Kurt Vonnegut once referred to her as “the greatest short story writer of my generation,” who managed to create brilliant work while breaking all of the conventional wisdom about crafting fiction. Her tales are full of violence, foolishness, churlishness, and comically flawed characters that display all of the seven deadly sins in shockingly vivid detail. Her fiction is also filled with love, grace, faith, intelligence, and a bushel of other understated virtues.
O’Connor’s Catholicism permeates her work, but unlike many overtly Christian writers, her integration of her faith into her prose is often easy to miss at first glance. Her religious morals are often subtly and cleverly disguised by her focus on Southern Protestantism or the dark nihilistic void that is left in the absence of a religious moral compass. Readers might not expect to find lessons on grace and redemption in tales of family annihilation, open blasphemy, and self-righteous preening, which is why this anthology is a useful guide to understanding the spiritual lessons of her work.
O’Connor suffered from crippling lupus for most of her life, leading to her early death at age thirty-nine. Her published writings consist of two novels, Wise Blood(1952) and The Violent Bear it Away(1960); thirty-one short stories (published in two short collections, A Good Man is Hard to Find(1955) and Everything that Rises Must Converge(1965), and the National Book Award-winning The Complete Stories(1971) containing the two aforementioned collections and several other pieces); numerous lectures, book reviews, and articles (many of which were compiled into the anthologies Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose(1969) and The Presence of Grace: and Other Book Reviews(1983)); and mountains of personal correspondence, some of the best of which was printed in The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor(1979).
All of the aforementioned works are full of O’Connor’s thoughts on faith and religion’s role in culture and society, but as stated earlier, sometimes the “presence of grace” is hard to detect in her work amongst the muck and muddle of human folly, much as it is in real life. Flannery O’Connor: Spiritual Writingsis meant to help highlight the role of religion and spirituality in her work. Even if one already owns all of O’Connor’s books, this book is valuable to readers because of a lengthy critical essay and numerous editorial and contextual comments.
The book opens with Richard Giannone’s introductory essay “Flannery O’Connor’s Dialogue With the Age.” The book is divided into five sections, reflecting O’Connor’s religious views, thoughts on the role of the Christian in society, critical assertions regarding religion in fiction, and ponderings on spiritual mysteries. There is some topical overlap amongst the sections, with the exception of the third, which consists solely of the short story “Revelation.” Ellsburg notes that all of O’Connor’s books have been used for this anthology. Snippets from both of her novels, scenes from many of her short stories, passages from her lectures, and scores of her letters and reviews are included here, all arranged in order to emphasize her points about spirituality.
Like all essays that address the work of a really great writer, Giannone’s introduction doesn’t come close to capturing all of the depth and beauty of O’Connor’s work, but it’s still a very helpful introduction to her work and its themes. Giannone provides a useful overview of the scholarship on O’Connor and a good summary of her life, as well as many salient arguments against the oft-stated assertion of secularists that religious themes have no place in serious fiction. Another Catholic novelist, Alice Thomas Ellis, put it best when she said that, “Once you take away the religious element, you can’t write fiction. Well, you can, but it’s boring.” Many adjectives can be used to describe O’Connor, but ‘boring’ is not one of them.
Most of the excerpts are short. Some of her letters are only half a page in length, and some book passages only fill a couple of pages. Each selection is carefully chosen in order to make a point either about O’Connor’s religious and artistic opinions, or how she managed to use unexpected and unconventional ways to insert her beliefs into her fiction. A few choice scenes from Wise Blood, where the central character, Hazel Motes, proponent of the “Church Without Christ,” illustrate the folly of trying to run away from a God who is always present everywhere.
When many people think of religious fiction, they think of preachy moralizing, saccharine protagonists who are always rewarded for their virtue, and one-dimensional atheistic villains. None of that applies to O’Connor, who was never one for sugar-coating the truth. Sometimes the innocent suffer. Monsters walk the earth in human form. Humans blame God for their own destructiveness. In Spiritual Writings, O’Connor expressed her annoyance at people who labeled her a “Catholic writer,” preferring instead to call herself a “Christian realist.” A substantial percentage of this book is devoted to O’Connor’s literary theories, and her thoughts about what constitutes the perfect balance of religious themes in fiction ought to be required reading for all aspiring writers who want to write about Christian themes.
The one short story reproduced in its entirety, “Revelation,” is an interesting choice. It’s a very good story, but there are so many others that directly address the relationship between God and man that it’s not quite clear why “Revelation” was selected for inclusion and not others. “Revelation” is the story of Ruby Turpin, a woman who is securely convinced of her own moral superiority and increasingly exasperated by the people she views as her moral and social inferiors. Turpin spends a rather disconcerting day in a doctor’s waiting room, and gradually the reader learns just how disgusted she is by the “white trash” that surrounds her and her patronizing attitudes towards black people. The climax of the story, where Turpin receives a world-rocking vision about the state of her own soul and others’ souls, ought to give readers pause over their own lives and evaluate their souls in a different light. The questions O’Connor raises over what truly makes one morally superior and closer to God are not directly answered in the text, which is just as well– readers really need to come up with conclusions on their own. O’Connor is full of opinions, but didacticism has no place in her prose.
One of the most insightful portions of Spiritual Writingsconsists of O’Connor’s letters from The Habit of Being. In them, we see glimpses of O’Connor’s personal life, especially her friendship with an anonymous correspondent. We see O’Connor’s wonder and joy at being a Catholic, as well as her distress when her friend decides to leave the Catholic Church, and O’Connor’s cheerful but disconcerted acknowledgement of her own impeding mortality.
Since Flannery O’Connor: Spiritual Writingsprovides some spoilers for some of O’Connor’s fiction, this book may not be the best introduction to her work. Personally, I would recommend this anthology to readers who are already fans of O’Connor and who want to gain a better appreciation for the religious dimension of her work. If one is not already familiar with her, I suggest that those who have not yet discovered the joys of her work begin by reading some of her short stories and one of her novels, or possibly The Habit of Beingbefore reading Spiritual Writings.
Spiritual Writingswill probably be of most use to those readers who are familiar with O’Connor’s fiction but would like a guide to understanding her religious themes better. The juxtaposition of excerpts from her fiction, her personal musings on literature, and her thoughts on religion will help the reader see the hidden hand of God in each of her works, and quite possibly help readers better understand religious themes in all kinds of fiction. Indeed, after perusing Spiritual Writings, many people may gain a better understanding of how fiction that does nottake religion seriously may sometimes be thematically and intellectually lacking.
–Chris Chan
