Flannery O'Connor & The School of the Holy Ghost

For the last few months I've been on a Flannery O'Connor kick. Years ago my eldest son gave me her Complete Stories, but I never got very far with them. Then a friend mentioned enjoying O'Connor's letters even more than her stories, and I promptly got The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor from the library. I love that book, and I hope to own it someday so I can highlight all of my favorites of O'Connor's profound and pithy comments. O'Connor was born in 1925, two years after my now deceased mother, and there is a certain attitude I recognized in Flannery's letters which seemed reminiscent of my mother. Or maybe it is just that they were two Catholic women who grew up in the same time period, but whatever, I felt I closer to my mom reading O'Connor's correspondence. And my own mother was living in the Quad cities in Iowa when Flannery was some 50 miles away at the Writer's Workshop at the U of I in Iowa City. I wonder if their paths ever crossed?

Reading the author's commentary in The Habit of Being on several of her stories sent me back to the book from my son, and I read most of them with newfound understanding and appreciation. Then I picked up her novels, Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away. I thoroughly enjoyed the latter; Wise Blood will need another reading before I give my opinion.

But the reason for this blog post is the book I am now enjoying: Paul Elie's The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. From the inside cover of the jacket: It is the story of four American Catholics in the mid-twentieth century who, "working independently of one another, came to believe that the best way to explore the quandaries of religious faith was in writing...a vivid and enthralling account of great writers and their power over us." Who were these writers? Flannery O'Connor, Thomas Merton, Percy Walker, and Dorothy Day. I don't know what Flannery O'Connor would think of such a summation; Elie paints at times a different picture of O'Connor than the impression given in her letters. His is an intentional telling of the stories of these writers' lives whereas Flannery's letters were not necessarily written with a mind to a larger reading audience. Nevertheless, Elie is skillful in describing his subjects' parallel lives and drawing the reader's attention to their commonalities and differences.

Flannery carried on a correspondence with Walker Percy--which I will now want to re-read. Percy went to medical school and specialized in pathology before pursuing writing in earnest. He, like O'Connor, was from the South. Thomas Merton was quite taken with O'Connor's work and she was pleased that he "got it." It is Merton who is quoted on the front flap of the jacket of The Violent Bear It Away, likening her to Sophocles. In her letters, O'Connor makes only passing references to Dorothy Day, about whom one of Flannery's friends, Caroline Gordon, writes a biography. Day's name does not immediately call to mind "writer" as I associate her with social justice issues and have not read her books nor her articles, so Elie's portrayal is a revelation to me, in more ways than one. Merton, Percy, and Day are converts to Catholicism, while Flannery was "born Catholic."

I'm less than half-way through Paul Elie's book, yet I'm finding it fascinating enough to propel me back into the blogosphere to encourage others to read it, others who also recognize "the ways we look to great books and writers to help us make sense of our experience," and "the power of literature to change--to save--our lives." (from the front jacket flap)