A Life Between the House and the Chicken Yard

“As for biographies, there won’t be any biographies of me because, for only one reason, lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make exciting copy.”
Flannery O’Connor


I have been thinking and reading a lot the last month about the life, work and faith of Mary Flannery O’Connor. In January, I was able to attend a four day retreat on the life and work of O’Connor at the Trappist Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers, Georgia. The retreat was led by Dr. Victor Kramer, retired professor of literature at Georgia State University in Atlanta. I had previously attended a retreat which Dr. Kramer led on the life and work Walker Percy (read my post about the previous retreat). Dr. Kramer is a true scholar and a Catholic gentleman.

During my pilgrimage of literary devotion to Milledgeville last year (read my previous post about my “Pilgrimage To the Shrine of Saint Flannery”), I read Lorraine Murray’s magnificent “spiritual biography,” The Abbess of Andalusia: Flannery O’Connor’s Spiritual Journey (2009).

After returning from Conyers, I was thirsty to hear more. First I read Professor Jean W. Cash’s Flannery O’Connor: A Life (2002). This morning I finished Professor Brad Gooch’s excellent biography Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor (2009). As far as narrative writing skill and non-fiction as literature, Professor Gooch’s book wins the best biography writer contest hands down. In some places, Professor Cash’s book feels like reading a police report: “this and that happened and so and so witnessed it and said thus and such about it.” Gooch’s book delves more into O’Connor’s personal life and struggles while Cash’s book seems more oriented on O’Connor’s literary life. With these two books and Murray’s Abbess of Andalusia, there is no stone unturned in the short life of this great Southern Catholic author.

If I had to recommend just one book about O’Connor’s life, it would have to be Gooch’s. However, after reading all three, I feel like I have spent the afternoon sitting on the porch at Andalusia drinking Coca-Cola spiked with coffee (Yuk!, but according to Professor Gooch, Flannery liked it) and talking with Miss Mary Flannery about the great questions of life and faith.

O’Connor can be placed at the tail end of the so-called “Catholic Literary Revival,” of which her contemporary Thomas Merton was a part. O’Connor and Merton shared the same editor, Robert Giroux, and, although they never met, both admired the work of the other. Although she was one herself, Flannery derided the “Interlecshuls.” Her connections with the literati and Catholic intelligentsia of the 50's and early ‘60s is like a who's who of those “Interlecshuls.”

From a Christian and Catholic perspective, there is a tremendous amount of spiritual wisdom to be gained from a study of this life lived “between the house and the chicken yard.” This is somebody who found her God given gift and used it to the best of her ability despite her debilitating terminal illness. A strong Catholic who appears never to have wavered in her faith, she never lost her sense of humor. She remained optimistic and was still working on her stories up to the last.

Flannery obtained a prayer card with a prayer to Saint Raphael the Archangel which she prayed every day. Murray’s book contains O’Connor’s prayer to St. Raphael in the appendix:

O Raphael, lead us toward those we are waiting for, those who are waiting for us:

Raphael, Angel of happy meetings, lead us by the hand toward those we are looking for. May all our movements be guided by your Light and transfigured with your Joy.

Angel, guide of Tobias, lay the request we now address to you at the feet of Him on whose unveiled Face you are privileged to gaze.

Lonely and tired, crushed by the separations and sorrows of life, we feel the need of calling you and of pleading for the protection of your wings, so that we may not be as strangers in the province of joy, all ignorant of the concerns for our country.

Remember the weak, you who are strong, you whose home lies beyond the region of thunder, in a land that is always peaceful, always serene and bright with the resplendent glory of God.

FAULKNER!

The Bad Catholic has been reading Faulkner! Read all about it at The Eclectic Reader.

Heathen Valley

Heathen Valley, first published in 1962 by the noted playwrite Romulus Linney, is a beautiful book which deserves a far wider readership than it has enjoyed.

The novel is the story of Episcopal Church Deacon William Starns who is sent by the Anglican-Catholic Bishop of North Carolina to establish a mission in the far reaches of the Appalachian Mountains.

The book traces Starns life from his early childhood until his death. Starns was born in poverty in the Mountains, becomes a drifter, kills a man, goes to prison and escapes, and finally is hired by the kindly Bishop as a janitor in the Cathedral Church in Raleigh. After being rescued from alcoholism by the Bishop, Starns undergoes a profound conversion experience. After an experienced Episcopal minister and his wife fail in establishing a Mission Station in the mountains, Starns is ordained as a Missionary Deacon to the mountain people. Eventually the Bishop attempts to found an Anglican Religious Order at the Mission Station.

There is much human drama in this novel which is well written and beautifully told. There are also many horrific episodes and some graphic depictions of sexuality. The descriptions of the Mountain culture and the natural beauty of the Appalachia are wonderful.

For Anglican groupies, the novel also deals with the Evangelical verses Anglican Catholic divide in the Episcopal Church. The novel is very loosely based upon the real story of North Carolina Episcopal Bishop Levi Stillman Ives who eventually left the Episcopal Church and converted to Catholicism. The character of Starns is based upon Deacon William West Skiles who established the Valle Crucis Mission Station in Western North Carolina in the 1850s.

Heathen Valley is a great work of literature which deserves to be read.

The Violent Bear It Away

As I mentioned, the Bad Catholic has been catching up on reading Catholic authors. I have previously read Wise Blood, the short story collection A Good Man is Hard To Find and dipped into the letter collection The Habit of Being. I have also read most of the lectures and non-fiction contained in the Library of America's Flannery O'Connor: Collected Works.

After visiting Graham Greene's West Africa, I decided to pay a visit to Miss Mary Flannery's South. I am aiming to stay for a while.

O'Connor's best writing is in her short stories and in her letters. She wrote two novels Wise Blood and the one under consideration, The Violent Bear It Away. Of the two, I think that the latter is by far the better book. Toward the end, Wise Blood became confusing and hard to follow, whereas, The Violent Bear It Away moves inexorably towards its inevitable, horrifying ending.

Following Jesus is never easy and you are liable to get maimed in the process. Jesus went to suffering and death, and if we are going to follow him then we must be prepared to go to Crucifixion and death along with Him.

The Violent Bear It Away refers to a quote from the Douay-Rheims version of the Bible: "From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away." Matthew 11:12.

The novel is the story of a young teenager, Francis Marion Tarwater. Tarwater has been raised by his great uncle, Mason Tarwater, who kidnapped the orphan child away from Rayber, Mason's nephew and Tarwater's uncle, in order to raise Tarwater to do the Lord's work.

Mason considers himself to be an Old Testament prophet. Rayber, referred to throughout the novel as "the schoolteacher," marries a social worker known as "the welfare woman." Mason tells young Tarwater that the welfare woman was older than Rayber and only able to give him one child, and the Lord spared the child from their evil ways the only way He could by making him dim-witted. Mason believes that he has been chosen by the Lord to baptize Rayber's retarded child, Bishop.

Anyone wanting the rest of the plot summary can read the entire thing here. Otherwise, I'm going to assume that everybody knows the basic story outline.

The Bad Catholic is also probably a bad literature critic, because, if I'm honest, just like I didn't know what I thought of Greene's The Heart of the Matter, I don't really know what I think of The Violent Bear It Away either. However, I'm a real fan of the Southern Gothic style. Greene is good but he ain't no William Faulkner, or Flannery O'Connor for that matter.

It's pretty obvious that Mason Tarwarter represents the religious outlook on life and that Raber, "the schoolteacher", represents the modern secular world view. Tarwater must either choose the Lord or choose modern agnosticism. In O'Connor's hands there is a certain fanaticism on both sides. Old Mason had been committed to the mental hospital, but in their way, both Rayber and his absent wife are just as crazy. There is a lot to think about here. Why would a good God let there be retarded children like Bishop? If there is no God, is everyone better off if Bishop was dead?

This being an O'Connor novel, even without knowing the ending, when I read that Rayber had once tried to drown his son in the ocean but couldn't go through with it, I knew that Tarwater would drown Bishop while baptizing him. Thus the paradox. If Rayber had drowned Bishop, in Rayber's secular world view, Bishop would just be dead. When Tarwater drowns Bishop and baptizes him at the same time, Bishop becomes the Lord's and is born to new life.

O'Connor's sacramental theology runs throughout the book. As in the teachings of the Catholic Church, baptism operates as a channel of grace which affects the individual whether the person wants it to or not. You can reject the grace, like Rayber has, but you can't ignore it. It exists whether you like it or not.

I also don't know what I think about Tarwater's voice that he hears througout the novel challenging him to go against his destiny. Is it the devil? The evil side of himself? The rational side? Because we know that following the Lord isn't rational. You got to be a fool for God like all them prophets in the Old Testament was, and like Saint Francis was. After all, Jesus himself went and got his self kilt when all he would have had to done to avoid it was to keep his mouth shut and not be a raisin' the dead and healing the lame and a makin' the blind see.

I have to say that the homosexual child molester that gets Tarwater near the end of the book surprised me as much as the murder of the family by the Misfit in A Good Man is Hard to Find surprised me when I first read it.

Tarwater is destined to be a prophet of the Lord. No matter what he does he can't shake off the destiny that the Lord has for him. He can try to reject it, but he can't get away from it.

Well, the Bad Catholic has a got get up from this here computer and quit bloggin' and git on with his bidnis of lawyerin' and makin' a livin' and fallin down and worshipin' the Great God Mammon and all like that.

The Violent Bear It Away is grotesque, silly, and profound all at the same time. I think that that's a good definition of a masterpiece. Don't you?



Miss Flannery rocking on the porch.