The New York Review of Books has the Obligatory Large Roundup Following a New Biography of an Author. This issue, it's Flannery O'Connor's turn following the publication of the new biography by Brad Gooch, Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor
Here's what I want to pass on to you:
First, Oates comments on the fact that of O'Connnor's milleiu, including Capote and McCullers, O'Connor seems to be the one that is surviving into another generation.
Then, there's this from one of Ms. O'Connor's letters:
If the writer believes that our life is and will remain essentially mysterious, if he looks upon us as beings existing in a created order to whose laws we freely respond, then what he sees on the surface will be of interest to him only as he can go through it into an experience of mystery itself. His kind of fiction will always be pushing its own limits outward toward the limits of mystery....
Then, there's this:
Whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.
After reading Ms. Oate's piece, I was struck by how hard O'Connor struggled with a lifetime of illness, how devoted she was to her Catholicism and how solitary and isolated she was from the rest of the world. It seems to me to be a life that was ripe with tragedy and yet, she created works of art that transcend time, space, background and so much more. That's a life any one should be proud to live.
