On Losing the War and Being Twice Blest for It
One needs more than a swashbuckling good story of brave men and the wives and mothers they left behind when they went off to fight and die. One needs a theology.
The Cancelling of Flannery O’Connor
It has been 56 years since Flannery O’Connor passed from the earth at the all-too-young age of 39. Her legacy as an outstanding writer and extraordinary human being seemed firmly established. However, two precipitating factors have led to her previously untarnished legacy being questioned and the removal of her name from a residence hall at … Read more
Why Holy Week Is Holy
When a lady complained to the great short story writer that her works “left a bad taste” in her mouth, Flannery O’Connor replied that what she wrote was not meant to be eaten. For the conventional palate, those often-macabre stories can be distasteful, but Miss O’Connor deliberately wanted to avoid the sentimentalism of much pious … Read more
Flannery O’Connor’s Catholic Mind
I have in my study a silver vase holding four peacock plumes and several parrot feathers. The plumes were dropped decades ago by avian residents of Andalusia, a dairy farm near Milledgeville, Georgia. The feathers come from my own Patagonian conures. The farm was once the property of Regina O’Connor and her daughter, Flannery. Both … Read more
Out of the Ruins: Walker Percy Explains
Editor’s note: in this fascinating interview with Crisis Magazine, the acclaimed novelist Walker Percy discusses the vocations crisis, abortion, Vatican II, popes, and (of course) literature. The interview originally appeared in the July 1989 print edition of Crisis. It has been edited for brevity. CRISIS: There is tremendous intellectual opposition in the Church to Pope … Read more
Living Up to Modernity
While traditional Catholic morality might have been suitable in pre-modern times, the circumstances of modern (or postmodern) life make it impractical, unreasonable, and cruel—or so argue the progressives. The world has changed since 1800, they claim, beginning with the Industrial Revolution; societies and their moralities must change with it. Once-unimaginable advances in technique (the term … Read more
‘Joker’ and the Mythology of Madness
After Colin Clive uttered his mad crescendo of “It’s alive!” in the 1931 film Frankenstein, he screamed a line that censorship boards judged as blasphemous. So, a thunderclap was added to obscure him raving, “Now I know what it feels like to be God!” Shocking. What’s even more shocking is that there was such sensitivity … Read more
Parker’s Back: Not Just Another Tattoo
Many civilized readers just don’t know what to do with Flannery O’Connor—and for good reason. If you mashed together the works of Saint Thomas Aquinas and Quentin Tarantino, I think you would get something very like a Flannery O’Connor story, full of theological brilliance and significance, but also earthy, violent, aggressive, and even ugly. O’Connor’s … Read more
Fatherless Sons in Flannery O’Connor’s “The Lame Shall Enter First”
As the city’s recreation director, Sheppard took an interest in the youth he encountered in his work, and also volunteered to counsel troubled boys at the reformatory, “receiving nothing for it but the satisfaction of knowing he was helping boys no one else cared about.” His idea of “help,” however, assumes the form of social … Read more
Social Respectability as Religion in Flannery O’Connor’s “Revelation”
In her short stories Flannery O’Connor presents many religious people who attend church and consider themselves moral and principled, but their religion does not inspire their daily life and govern their human relationships. While they strive to make favorable impressions and distinguish themselves by their manners and morals, their congeniality and propriety do not amount … Read more
The Christmas Triad: Christ, Church, Eucharist
As a cradle Catholic long accustomed to the rituals and feasts of faith, the earliest memories I have coincide, most happily, with membership in what the comedian Lenny Bruce used to call the only the Church. And so there was never a time when Christmas was not an occasion for sheer wonderment and joy, an … Read more
The Grotesque in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood
“There are two kinds of grace: white grace which makes us pleasing to God, and black grace in which we feel his absence. Most people in the world today feel his absence—really feel it, even the atheists.” ∼ Ven. Fulton Sheen For Hazel Motes, the “Christ-haunted” sinner in Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood, Jesus is a “wild … Read more
Is It Over Yet? Lessons for Lent
“Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still Even among these rocks…” ∼ Ash Wednesday T.S. Eliot Can you believe it? It’s only the first week of Lent, and I’m already tired of it. When will this ordeal end? Surely there’s a door somewhere leading out of this desert. Does … Read more
When (Righteous) Anger is Justified
In one of my favorite Flannery O’Connor stories, Revelation, Mrs. Turpin—a very large, very cheerful, and heartily judgmental soul—amuses herself by mentally sorting people into their respective categories. She places all the people she looks down upon beneath herself and her husband, and only those who have more of what she and her husband have … Read more
Unmanly Men in Flannery O’Connor’s Short Stories
Many of O’Connor’s stories portray the ineptness of men to uphold traditional ideals of manhood. The men show no leadership, they do not protect or care for their family members, they lack all manner of chivalry, and they lose a sense of priority as they commit to careers and professions or social and political agendas … Read more
The University Needs the Monastic Spirit More Than Ever
In one of her last stories, “Why Do the Heathen Rage?” Flannery O’Connor told a story of miscomprehension between mother and son. The story retells communication problems between generations by contrasting two valuations of life. Walter and his mother are at odds for reasons which are perfectly comprehensible within the mental world of each but … Read more
A Defense of the Grotesque in Flannery O’Connor’s Art
Art is the pulse of the soul. It expresses much of what is kept hidden and even what could not be expressed in any other form. Many people talk of a crisis in modern art—its abstractness, banality, and, could we even say, ugliness. If there is such a crisis, to me, it is nothing other … Read more
A Good Woman Is Hard to Figure
A few days ago a friend mentioned that this August marks the fiftieth anniversary of Flannery O’Connor’s death, so I poked around the Internet to see whether this milestone is stirring up any interest. It is, but what captivated me was finding a few sites promoting the cause for her canonization and others that were … Read more
A Caution on the Writings of Flannery O’Connor
Several years ago, I received a volume of Flannery O’Connor’s Complete Stories as the very kind and thoughtful fulfillment of a birthday wish. At the time I knew very little about the content of these writings, but I was enthusiastic to encounter the genius of an author who had been highly praised to me on … Read more
Flannery O’Connor—Fifty Years After
Her life bore such eloquence of pain that when she left it—August 3, 1964—her friend Thomas Merton could recall no other writer of the last century to compare her with. Rather, he said, she summoned the voice of Sophocles: an artist whose vision had likewise reached into the dark places of the human heart, there … Read more