Dear Flannery,
You would be delighted to hear that a situation so like what happens in your story "The Enduring Chill" came to my attention, that I thought of it and had to read the story out loud to my husband and we enjoyed it greatly. So sad and so funny. How we ought to learn to laugh at ourselves!
I fear I am becoming like one of your literary freaks. There is dead silence when I say things in the company of others outside my family, and this is understandable; the things I say are so very foreign from what one commonly hears. And the conversations I have with those who ought to know, turn out to be disappointing at the very least.
Since my last letter I have been thinking about my sentimentality that I feel could so easily turn to bitterness. What if it isn't sentimentality or bitterness at all, but a yearning for sincerity and truth? Okay, I get it, nobody's perfect. There is always some hypocrisy and pride and self-interest and vainglory in all of us. But what if it is evil I'm confronted with? What then?
I'm talking real evil here. Not just human foibles, but a thumbing of the nose at God, a winking at reality and truth, a turning one's back on elemental goodness and allowing its direct opposite to take root.
In former times all such peddlers of foolishness and debauchery would have been run out of town. Not anymore. Our good people now shudder to make judgments, even on principles. They squirm with discomfort at the idea of contending. In refusing to fight, they endure, then pity, then embrace, as Alexander Pope put it.
Yes, there are some who just follow along unthinkingly, floating down a lazy river like children on inner tubes in summer. God only knows who is truly accountable, but I think if we don't stand agin' the devil, we might as well be for 'im.
Things are so crazy lately, I fear I'll go crazy myself from the backlash. That would be just what the devil wants, wouldn't it? Your books and others help me stay sane. Still, I find myself wishing it would all hurry up and totally and incontrovertibly fall apart so we could begin again. It's hard to live amidst one new devilry after another (Tolkien).
Sitting tight,
J.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Letter #12
Dear Flannery,
It is difficult to describe a person’s wholehearted love and loyalty to her church. It encompasses one, like a radiant impenetrable shield. I believe you and I share that same distinct feeling for our respective churches. Like you I was raised in my church, its precepts and practices have been primary constants in my everyday life. In my family our faith goes back generations. Prayer, scripture, church meetings and programs, service, baptism, the Holy Ghost, sacraments, priesthood, temples, are all part of the steadfast and immovable whole. Being a member of my Church has been an identity as much as being a human being, a female, a daughter, a wife, a mother.
You said, "The cultural climate should make no difference in what the Church teaches" (59). You talked about how all human beings are fallible, priests certainly being no exception, but that the Church generally must not teach error. "The Church stands for and preserves always what is larger than human understanding" (90). But I wonder how you would have reacted if your Church actually did "fail to hold her own?"
I am glad you are not here to see what is happening to religion today. I’ve mentioned before that, sad to say, under political, financial, and social pressures, many churches are actually watering down their doctrines, winking at their principles, and widening their policies to go along with the radically secular and sexually permissive cultural climate. You might say everlasting truths are being conveniently ignored. It seems that many churches want to keep their institutions going and at the same time keep up with the "enlightened"world. It is what you called "the vaporization of religion"( 74). I find myself praying for my church, praying for yours, praying for all churches, that they will stand firm for truth and goodness in the heat of this dreadful culture war.
Why would a church presume to exist when it says and does things that contradict its own foundational, transcendent truths? If to the world it doesn't stand for anything truly religious and eternal, it cannot with integrity say or teach anything truly religious or eternal. More and more, America's bastions of faith founded on man's eternal relationship to God now present themselves as, in your words, more Elks Clubs or community centers (39, 74).
You said to “A,” “your pain at the Church's [faults] is "a sign of your nearness to God" 83. I think many people today are experiencing the same pain as their churches soften, make compromising statements, and finally effect changes to accommodate the wickedness of the world. It is nice to know this pain could be a sign of nearness to God rather than what others may perceive, which is disloyalty, fault-finding, apostasy, or plain old sour grapes.
It has been said that you approached your Church "with a warm heart and a clear, cold eye" (37). Yes, "You have to suffer as much from the church as for it. You have to cherish the world at the same time you struggle to endure it" (75).
Your words: "To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness. Charity is hard and endures" (83). To some degree I must have a sentimental view of life because over the years I have sometimes felt the bitterness creeping up on me and have thought a lot about the difference and choice between knowledge and charity. Without charity, realities we must deal with can indeed cause bitterness. So, when we see things we'd rather not see, and know things we'd rather not know, it is only charity, the pure love of Christ (all those impossible-seeming godly qualities like patience, long-suffering, humility, selflessness) that will save us from drowning in an ocean of bitterness.
Yours, "thrown back on the living God" (141),
J.
Flannery O'Connor, Spiritual Writings, edited by Robert Ellsberg, Orbis Books, 2003.
It is difficult to describe a person’s wholehearted love and loyalty to her church. It encompasses one, like a radiant impenetrable shield. I believe you and I share that same distinct feeling for our respective churches. Like you I was raised in my church, its precepts and practices have been primary constants in my everyday life. In my family our faith goes back generations. Prayer, scripture, church meetings and programs, service, baptism, the Holy Ghost, sacraments, priesthood, temples, are all part of the steadfast and immovable whole. Being a member of my Church has been an identity as much as being a human being, a female, a daughter, a wife, a mother.
You said, "The cultural climate should make no difference in what the Church teaches" (59). You talked about how all human beings are fallible, priests certainly being no exception, but that the Church generally must not teach error. "The Church stands for and preserves always what is larger than human understanding" (90). But I wonder how you would have reacted if your Church actually did "fail to hold her own?"
I am glad you are not here to see what is happening to religion today. I’ve mentioned before that, sad to say, under political, financial, and social pressures, many churches are actually watering down their doctrines, winking at their principles, and widening their policies to go along with the radically secular and sexually permissive cultural climate. You might say everlasting truths are being conveniently ignored. It seems that many churches want to keep their institutions going and at the same time keep up with the "enlightened"world. It is what you called "the vaporization of religion"( 74). I find myself praying for my church, praying for yours, praying for all churches, that they will stand firm for truth and goodness in the heat of this dreadful culture war.
Why would a church presume to exist when it says and does things that contradict its own foundational, transcendent truths? If to the world it doesn't stand for anything truly religious and eternal, it cannot with integrity say or teach anything truly religious or eternal. More and more, America's bastions of faith founded on man's eternal relationship to God now present themselves as, in your words, more Elks Clubs or community centers (39, 74).
You said to “A,” “your pain at the Church's [faults] is "a sign of your nearness to God" 83. I think many people today are experiencing the same pain as their churches soften, make compromising statements, and finally effect changes to accommodate the wickedness of the world. It is nice to know this pain could be a sign of nearness to God rather than what others may perceive, which is disloyalty, fault-finding, apostasy, or plain old sour grapes.
It has been said that you approached your Church "with a warm heart and a clear, cold eye" (37). Yes, "You have to suffer as much from the church as for it. You have to cherish the world at the same time you struggle to endure it" (75).
Your words: "To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life and this is a softness that ends in bitterness. Charity is hard and endures" (83). To some degree I must have a sentimental view of life because over the years I have sometimes felt the bitterness creeping up on me and have thought a lot about the difference and choice between knowledge and charity. Without charity, realities we must deal with can indeed cause bitterness. So, when we see things we'd rather not see, and know things we'd rather not know, it is only charity, the pure love of Christ (all those impossible-seeming godly qualities like patience, long-suffering, humility, selflessness) that will save us from drowning in an ocean of bitterness.
Yours, "thrown back on the living God" (141),
J.
Flannery O'Connor, Spiritual Writings, edited by Robert Ellsberg, Orbis Books, 2003.
Friday, June 17, 2011
Letter #11
Dear Flannery,
You wrote that your audience were “the kind of people who think God is dead.” Well, I am deciding that it’s different now. Public sentiment has shifted yet more. I think now you would have had to write for people who think God never existed, and perhaps that’s quite a different thing, or at least a brash and bold escalation.
Of course in a world where God never existed, there is no source or standard for goodness. The world we have today is one that not only denies the presence of God and goodness, but is so angry that the idea of God and goodness persists (if only in the conscience) that it flips good into evil and evil into good as easily as flipping a pancake. It’s Christianity, morality, God, family, freedom, hard work, and country that are the great evils now. And it’s atheism, social justice, "entitlements" (handouts), conformity, lawlessness, force, and humanism that are the great good. Most of those who still personally hold to the former are intimidated into a life of contradiction, silence, and smiling acquiescence. And I’m talking mainstream here, in our homes, schools, churches, administrations, and government. Rarely does anyone speak in any uncertain terms against the evils turned good.
You also wrote, “ I want to make sure that the Devil gets identified as the Devil and not simply taken for this or that psychological tendency.” In our culture today there is no devil as well as no God. And beyond that, evil is past being mistaken for this or that abnormal psychological tendency. Like I said, it is now mistaken for goodness. It doesn’t lurk anymore, it parades. And so we are treated to countless justifications for any evil. There are no mysteries, no miracles, no sins, no punishments, no redemption, just human explanations and human solutions that don't hold water and don't work well or permanently.
Some good people are doing their utmost. But I guess I am a realist. I don’t see things getting any better.
These thoughts seem to be the result of rereading, or rather poring over and over with a furrowed brow, a book that is a collection of your words called Flannery O’Connor, Spiritual Writings. It has a long introduction by a man named Richard Giannone which is helpful for the most part. But one thing I take strong exception to is his take on your story “Revelation.” I think he got it wrong with a capital W. He says “We haven’t lived until we’ve joined the parade,” which is true in the sense that we cannot begin to progress spiritually until we confess our sinful human nature and rely on Christ, but this is not what he meant. He says the story makes the political point that “no group is passed over, no life style excluded” when it comes to “converging on God” and being “held in the church’s arms.” I say, huh? That’s not what you meant. It was Ruby’s personal vision made possible purely through divine grace, not the author of the story on a temporal, multi-culti, sexual-diversity soapbox. What Mrs. Turpin saw with such shock and pain and surprise as she gazed beyond the pig pen on that parade to heaven, and what had the potential to change her into someone new and humble and full of joy, was that she and her ilk were not at the front but bringing up the rear, marching way behind those she considered much lower than herself. Yes, I have just read the last two pages of the story again, and I believe I have it right. “Powerful political point?” Hogwash. Those who believe themselves first shall be last, and those who believe themselves last shall be first.
Shouting hallelujah,
Janice
Spiritual Writings 49, 29, 42, 123-4
You wrote that your audience were “the kind of people who think God is dead.” Well, I am deciding that it’s different now. Public sentiment has shifted yet more. I think now you would have had to write for people who think God never existed, and perhaps that’s quite a different thing, or at least a brash and bold escalation.
Of course in a world where God never existed, there is no source or standard for goodness. The world we have today is one that not only denies the presence of God and goodness, but is so angry that the idea of God and goodness persists (if only in the conscience) that it flips good into evil and evil into good as easily as flipping a pancake. It’s Christianity, morality, God, family, freedom, hard work, and country that are the great evils now. And it’s atheism, social justice, "entitlements" (handouts), conformity, lawlessness, force, and humanism that are the great good. Most of those who still personally hold to the former are intimidated into a life of contradiction, silence, and smiling acquiescence. And I’m talking mainstream here, in our homes, schools, churches, administrations, and government. Rarely does anyone speak in any uncertain terms against the evils turned good.
You also wrote, “ I want to make sure that the Devil gets identified as the Devil and not simply taken for this or that psychological tendency.” In our culture today there is no devil as well as no God. And beyond that, evil is past being mistaken for this or that abnormal psychological tendency. Like I said, it is now mistaken for goodness. It doesn’t lurk anymore, it parades. And so we are treated to countless justifications for any evil. There are no mysteries, no miracles, no sins, no punishments, no redemption, just human explanations and human solutions that don't hold water and don't work well or permanently.
Some good people are doing their utmost. But I guess I am a realist. I don’t see things getting any better.
These thoughts seem to be the result of rereading, or rather poring over and over with a furrowed brow, a book that is a collection of your words called Flannery O’Connor, Spiritual Writings. It has a long introduction by a man named Richard Giannone which is helpful for the most part. But one thing I take strong exception to is his take on your story “Revelation.” I think he got it wrong with a capital W. He says “We haven’t lived until we’ve joined the parade,” which is true in the sense that we cannot begin to progress spiritually until we confess our sinful human nature and rely on Christ, but this is not what he meant. He says the story makes the political point that “no group is passed over, no life style excluded” when it comes to “converging on God” and being “held in the church’s arms.” I say, huh? That’s not what you meant. It was Ruby’s personal vision made possible purely through divine grace, not the author of the story on a temporal, multi-culti, sexual-diversity soapbox. What Mrs. Turpin saw with such shock and pain and surprise as she gazed beyond the pig pen on that parade to heaven, and what had the potential to change her into someone new and humble and full of joy, was that she and her ilk were not at the front but bringing up the rear, marching way behind those she considered much lower than herself. Yes, I have just read the last two pages of the story again, and I believe I have it right. “Powerful political point?” Hogwash. Those who believe themselves first shall be last, and those who believe themselves last shall be first.
Shouting hallelujah,
Janice
Spiritual Writings 49, 29, 42, 123-4
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Letter #10
Dear Flannery,
People around me are dropping like flies. Not so much bodily, although my elderly across-the-street neighbors of 27 years have died a year apart, the husband and now the wife, and just this week their stately red brick house set on its hill, emptied, and got a For Sale sign stuck in its lawn. No, it's souls that are dying, deep down, which I think is much more sad. Physically we’ll all die one day, no exceptions. But we don’t have to be dead to anything right and good, ever.
The last few weeks I have been in a state of marveling over this phenomenon, which of course is a big waste of time. Marvel not, said the Lord, this is the way things are. I should know this by now, by my own experience with my own flawed self, aided by all this reading of wisdom I’ve been doing coming from the greatest thinkers the world has ever known, including you, plus all the practice I get by living in these times. Why can't I get it into my head that it’s always been this way, there’s nothing new under the sun, a good man is hard to . . . Yes, but these unprecedented incidents are now creeping up on me right where I live, surprising me, and leaving me in a foggy heap as if I hadn't learned a thing about any of it.
They are stacking up, but here's one case in point. I was recently asked to give a presentation at a luncheon to a small group of older women in my church. But when I let the powers that be know what I would feel capable of presenting (the information in my newest, gentle, reader-friendly book about certain basic truths and certainties being grossly misrepresented and denied in our culture today), I was turned down. Not only turned down, but told in writing that my subject was "not applicable," that the “rejection” I was “feeling” was not “intentional," and that I should improve my personality and better fulfill my duties. And here I thought that the topic was indisputably applicable, that it was intentionally rejected, and that me improving my personality and fulfilling my duties would have been some of the benefits of the little exercise!(There I go fogging up again.)
Bear in mind that much-promoted recent presenters at said luncheons have included a lady who displayed and discussed her plethora of puffy homemade quilts and a lady who treated everyone to an exuberant travelogue of her trip to Jerusalem. (I luxuriated in the quilts, but didn’t make it to the Holy Land.)
Are these your "good country people?" But I think it's worse than that. Like you said, "Ignorance is excusable when it is borne like a cross, but when it is wielded like an ax, it becomes something else indeed" (Mystery and Manners, 189-90).
This is the world, our culture, as it is now, just more of what you saw. There is still plenty to enjoy on its surface, like fancy luncheons, pretty quilts, and trips although second-hand to interesting places. But its heart has stopped beating. It has become an empty shell.
I don't know whether to give up or go back to the drawing board.
Your foiled friend,
J.
People around me are dropping like flies. Not so much bodily, although my elderly across-the-street neighbors of 27 years have died a year apart, the husband and now the wife, and just this week their stately red brick house set on its hill, emptied, and got a For Sale sign stuck in its lawn. No, it's souls that are dying, deep down, which I think is much more sad. Physically we’ll all die one day, no exceptions. But we don’t have to be dead to anything right and good, ever.
The last few weeks I have been in a state of marveling over this phenomenon, which of course is a big waste of time. Marvel not, said the Lord, this is the way things are. I should know this by now, by my own experience with my own flawed self, aided by all this reading of wisdom I’ve been doing coming from the greatest thinkers the world has ever known, including you, plus all the practice I get by living in these times. Why can't I get it into my head that it’s always been this way, there’s nothing new under the sun, a good man is hard to . . . Yes, but these unprecedented incidents are now creeping up on me right where I live, surprising me, and leaving me in a foggy heap as if I hadn't learned a thing about any of it.
They are stacking up, but here's one case in point. I was recently asked to give a presentation at a luncheon to a small group of older women in my church. But when I let the powers that be know what I would feel capable of presenting (the information in my newest, gentle, reader-friendly book about certain basic truths and certainties being grossly misrepresented and denied in our culture today), I was turned down. Not only turned down, but told in writing that my subject was "not applicable," that the “rejection” I was “feeling” was not “intentional," and that I should improve my personality and better fulfill my duties. And here I thought that the topic was indisputably applicable, that it was intentionally rejected, and that me improving my personality and fulfilling my duties would have been some of the benefits of the little exercise!(There I go fogging up again.)
Bear in mind that much-promoted recent presenters at said luncheons have included a lady who displayed and discussed her plethora of puffy homemade quilts and a lady who treated everyone to an exuberant travelogue of her trip to Jerusalem. (I luxuriated in the quilts, but didn’t make it to the Holy Land.)
Are these your "good country people?" But I think it's worse than that. Like you said, "Ignorance is excusable when it is borne like a cross, but when it is wielded like an ax, it becomes something else indeed" (Mystery and Manners, 189-90).
This is the world, our culture, as it is now, just more of what you saw. There is still plenty to enjoy on its surface, like fancy luncheons, pretty quilts, and trips although second-hand to interesting places. But its heart has stopped beating. It has become an empty shell.
I don't know whether to give up or go back to the drawing board.
Your foiled friend,
J.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Letter #9
Dear Flannery,
Something in that article I told you about by Benjamin Alexander has been continually firming up and settling in my head. I knew it before, but it’s nice to be reminded and validated. It’s that the characters in your stories who appear to be the most normal are the real monsters. And it’s the characters who appear to be monsters who are the honest seekers of truth, struggling with the most important issues, as socially alienated and nonconforming as they are. Yes of course, Ruby Turpin, Hulga, the grandma, Rayber, Asbury, Sheppard, these are the freaks you love and are trying to reach. More and more, they are to me too. Not the prophet-freaks: the ugly girl in the doctor's office, the bizarre Bible salesman, the murderous Misfit, Dr. Block, Rufus, or Francis Marion Tarwater, and of course not Hazel Motes; these exist only to accentuate the freakishness of those whom we see as the regular people. It’s easy to forget this. It’s just such a huge, true, strange and sweeping idea, so opposite from everything around us. I have to discover it again and again with astonishment in every one of your stories. (Sometimes I think I even might have Enoch Emery figured out; he's nothing more than a gorilla in a man suit, right?)
I have to say, the more I study your writings and your life, the crazier it feels that I am writing letters to you. To say that I am wandering into waters much too deep for me would be a gross understatement. Still, I think you would encourage a person like me. You would encourage people to read beyond their intellect and think beyond their natural boundaries and to try to write whatever they could dream of writing.
My big excitement is, in that article I found another book about you I didn’t know existed. I immediately ordered it on the internet. It must be rare-ish because even a used copy was a bit expensive ($20). It arrived yesterday, a slim plain green library hardback, no dust jacket, with the white call number sticker forever cemented to its spine, from the University of California at San Diego. It’s called Flannery O’Connor’s Library: Resources of Being, published by the University of Georgia Press in 1985 put together by Alfred F. Kinney. When you consider that I was going to make such a list myself from your letters so I could explore the books you treasured, this is a treasure. It’s a list of the books you owned and apparently prized and kept in your glass-doored Victorian bookcases made of Georgia walnut. It gives the exact editions, contains some passages from these books that you marked, even some of your “marginalia.” I plunged into it yesterday and was totally blown away, intellectually speaking. These bottomless books you read on philosophy, religion, history, art, and literature are to me unfathomable. And yet I can’t resist presuming to become acquainted with them, trying to get something from them, however incompletely I see and understand.
“We must remember that our state of contemplation must not be a state of inertia, but a state of preparation, a state in which we accumulate fervour, generosity, grace, so as to be ready and eager for any work to which the Lord may call us. We should be in our retirement like lions in their den; we should meditate in our house like taut bows, like wine in a bottle, like a force under pressure, so that in due time we may expand and burst forth.” You marked that in your copy of Rosmini: Priest, Philosopher and Patriot, by Claude Leetham. I have to believe this can apply to me, too, or else why was I given this interest?
A fellow booklist lover,
J.
Something in that article I told you about by Benjamin Alexander has been continually firming up and settling in my head. I knew it before, but it’s nice to be reminded and validated. It’s that the characters in your stories who appear to be the most normal are the real monsters. And it’s the characters who appear to be monsters who are the honest seekers of truth, struggling with the most important issues, as socially alienated and nonconforming as they are. Yes of course, Ruby Turpin, Hulga, the grandma, Rayber, Asbury, Sheppard, these are the freaks you love and are trying to reach. More and more, they are to me too. Not the prophet-freaks: the ugly girl in the doctor's office, the bizarre Bible salesman, the murderous Misfit, Dr. Block, Rufus, or Francis Marion Tarwater, and of course not Hazel Motes; these exist only to accentuate the freakishness of those whom we see as the regular people. It’s easy to forget this. It’s just such a huge, true, strange and sweeping idea, so opposite from everything around us. I have to discover it again and again with astonishment in every one of your stories. (Sometimes I think I even might have Enoch Emery figured out; he's nothing more than a gorilla in a man suit, right?)
I have to say, the more I study your writings and your life, the crazier it feels that I am writing letters to you. To say that I am wandering into waters much too deep for me would be a gross understatement. Still, I think you would encourage a person like me. You would encourage people to read beyond their intellect and think beyond their natural boundaries and to try to write whatever they could dream of writing.
My big excitement is, in that article I found another book about you I didn’t know existed. I immediately ordered it on the internet. It must be rare-ish because even a used copy was a bit expensive ($20). It arrived yesterday, a slim plain green library hardback, no dust jacket, with the white call number sticker forever cemented to its spine, from the University of California at San Diego. It’s called Flannery O’Connor’s Library: Resources of Being, published by the University of Georgia Press in 1985 put together by Alfred F. Kinney. When you consider that I was going to make such a list myself from your letters so I could explore the books you treasured, this is a treasure. It’s a list of the books you owned and apparently prized and kept in your glass-doored Victorian bookcases made of Georgia walnut. It gives the exact editions, contains some passages from these books that you marked, even some of your “marginalia.” I plunged into it yesterday and was totally blown away, intellectually speaking. These bottomless books you read on philosophy, religion, history, art, and literature are to me unfathomable. And yet I can’t resist presuming to become acquainted with them, trying to get something from them, however incompletely I see and understand.
“We must remember that our state of contemplation must not be a state of inertia, but a state of preparation, a state in which we accumulate fervour, generosity, grace, so as to be ready and eager for any work to which the Lord may call us. We should be in our retirement like lions in their den; we should meditate in our house like taut bows, like wine in a bottle, like a force under pressure, so that in due time we may expand and burst forth.” You marked that in your copy of Rosmini: Priest, Philosopher and Patriot, by Claude Leetham. I have to believe this can apply to me, too, or else why was I given this interest?
A fellow booklist lover,
J.
Monday, May 2, 2011
Letter #8
Dear Flannery,
"For my money, Dante is about as great as you can get."
You wrote that in a letter to “A” in 1955. I was chatting with a visitor in my home two days ago and mentioned that I had just finished reading Dante's Divine Comedy as part of my attempt to fill in some gaping holes in my literary education. (I mentioned this ongoing project to you earlier. I have been making some progress lately through my book stacks and although I grasp very little I find myself miraculously becoming a bit less confused which I constantly remind myself is all I can hope for.) This visitor whom I believe is college-educated mumbled quite humbly that she never even heard of Dante. I strove to hide my disappointment. Never heard of Dante? How can this happen? This is the unsettling and sometimes astonishing state of modern affairs.
You saw this in your time and it has become much, much worse. Not many are interested in the accumulated wisdom of the world anymore. The great majority of teachers don’t teach it so students never hear of it. Or is it that teachers don’t instill a love of learning so people grow up with no interest in it? Or could it be that our “advanced technological age” makes both entertainment and learning equally and instantly accessible and we humans characteristically choose mindless amusements over knowledge? It could just be the pervasive new-age attitude that old is valueless, new is best (or what people perceive as old and new). If the ancient or old is referred to at all, it is often twisted to suit shallow and misguided modern sensibilities. And that’s sad, wrong, and ignorant. As if just because we are living in the present time we are smarter, better human beings than those who came before. Since when has that ever been true?
I was thrilled to find at the touch of my fingertips, glowing on my computer screen, a lengthy paper from 1989 called “Flannery O’Connor and Dante’s Divine Comedy” by Benjamin B. Alexander, a lecturer and assistant university professor of English and Religion. This I printed out at another touch for perusal at my convenience. Incidentally, all this amazing modern facilitation I enjoy makes me think of you laboriously typing and retyping your stories and novels on a mid-20th century typewriter, painstakingly making corrections--with what, an ink eraser? And then sending out precious copies to editors and publishers. (I think I remember reading that you eventually got an electric typewriter which must have been nice but not much technical help.) Beyond that, it makes me think of Dante himself, writing in the Middle Ages . . . with what? (Wait, I’ll look it up on Google.) Wax tablets, perhaps (he was probably too poor to employ a scribe), and then pen and parchment. In elegant script. No, we have no excuse nowadays, for any sort of laziness in learning or writing, do we?
You may be surprised and pleased that Alexander finds striking similarities between your writings and our esteemed 14th Century Italian’s. Both of you wrote to illuminate the divine life, or the Holy Spirit, in everyday people’s lives. He says you parallel Dante in the crafting of your stories. Yes, I believe I can see that. He goes on to acknowledge that while Dante lived in a time when he could take for granted that the people around him shared his view of heaven and hell as “unquestionable truth,” you lived in a world of “pluralistic options and existential dilemmas” when all things God had become “a conditional alternative.” There was no longer a universally shared faith. In other words, you had extenuating circumstances Dante did not have to contend with.
A world losing both its faith and its certainties was the world you wrote for, an “age with doubts both fact and value, and which is swept this way and that by momentary convictions.” Even so, you would not recognize the world we live in today. You would see those momentary convictions flowing mainstream from our new god, Secularism, the new fountain of “truth,” decorated with demonic distortions, violence, and filth right out of the Inferno. Dante’s readers recognized the hellish as “deformed and perverse, whereas contemporary culture increasingly equates hellish iconography with the normative and chic.” Alexander wrote these words over 20 years ago, and in the last outrageous and unprecedented 20 years, things have gotten worse.
It’s really become quite unfriendly here for those who believe this world is not our real home, who care about the welfare of immortal souls, who exercise faith that there is a spiritual universe we can begin to explore and know here and now. Even churches of every denomination have been caught up in the popular secular current. Their once firm doctrines are now diluted and watery and swirl among shallow, liquid, ever-changing sophistries. As a result, for some, sitting in a crowded chapel on a Sunday feels like the loneliest place on earth.
Glimpsing light from Dante’s “dark wood,”
J.
"For my money, Dante is about as great as you can get."
You wrote that in a letter to “A” in 1955. I was chatting with a visitor in my home two days ago and mentioned that I had just finished reading Dante's Divine Comedy as part of my attempt to fill in some gaping holes in my literary education. (I mentioned this ongoing project to you earlier. I have been making some progress lately through my book stacks and although I grasp very little I find myself miraculously becoming a bit less confused which I constantly remind myself is all I can hope for.) This visitor whom I believe is college-educated mumbled quite humbly that she never even heard of Dante. I strove to hide my disappointment. Never heard of Dante? How can this happen? This is the unsettling and sometimes astonishing state of modern affairs.
You saw this in your time and it has become much, much worse. Not many are interested in the accumulated wisdom of the world anymore. The great majority of teachers don’t teach it so students never hear of it. Or is it that teachers don’t instill a love of learning so people grow up with no interest in it? Or could it be that our “advanced technological age” makes both entertainment and learning equally and instantly accessible and we humans characteristically choose mindless amusements over knowledge? It could just be the pervasive new-age attitude that old is valueless, new is best (or what people perceive as old and new). If the ancient or old is referred to at all, it is often twisted to suit shallow and misguided modern sensibilities. And that’s sad, wrong, and ignorant. As if just because we are living in the present time we are smarter, better human beings than those who came before. Since when has that ever been true?
I was thrilled to find at the touch of my fingertips, glowing on my computer screen, a lengthy paper from 1989 called “Flannery O’Connor and Dante’s Divine Comedy” by Benjamin B. Alexander, a lecturer and assistant university professor of English and Religion. This I printed out at another touch for perusal at my convenience. Incidentally, all this amazing modern facilitation I enjoy makes me think of you laboriously typing and retyping your stories and novels on a mid-20th century typewriter, painstakingly making corrections--with what, an ink eraser? And then sending out precious copies to editors and publishers. (I think I remember reading that you eventually got an electric typewriter which must have been nice but not much technical help.) Beyond that, it makes me think of Dante himself, writing in the Middle Ages . . . with what? (Wait, I’ll look it up on Google.) Wax tablets, perhaps (he was probably too poor to employ a scribe), and then pen and parchment. In elegant script. No, we have no excuse nowadays, for any sort of laziness in learning or writing, do we?
You may be surprised and pleased that Alexander finds striking similarities between your writings and our esteemed 14th Century Italian’s. Both of you wrote to illuminate the divine life, or the Holy Spirit, in everyday people’s lives. He says you parallel Dante in the crafting of your stories. Yes, I believe I can see that. He goes on to acknowledge that while Dante lived in a time when he could take for granted that the people around him shared his view of heaven and hell as “unquestionable truth,” you lived in a world of “pluralistic options and existential dilemmas” when all things God had become “a conditional alternative.” There was no longer a universally shared faith. In other words, you had extenuating circumstances Dante did not have to contend with.
A world losing both its faith and its certainties was the world you wrote for, an “age with doubts both fact and value, and which is swept this way and that by momentary convictions.” Even so, you would not recognize the world we live in today. You would see those momentary convictions flowing mainstream from our new god, Secularism, the new fountain of “truth,” decorated with demonic distortions, violence, and filth right out of the Inferno. Dante’s readers recognized the hellish as “deformed and perverse, whereas contemporary culture increasingly equates hellish iconography with the normative and chic.” Alexander wrote these words over 20 years ago, and in the last outrageous and unprecedented 20 years, things have gotten worse.
It’s really become quite unfriendly here for those who believe this world is not our real home, who care about the welfare of immortal souls, who exercise faith that there is a spiritual universe we can begin to explore and know here and now. Even churches of every denomination have been caught up in the popular secular current. Their once firm doctrines are now diluted and watery and swirl among shallow, liquid, ever-changing sophistries. As a result, for some, sitting in a crowded chapel on a Sunday feels like the loneliest place on earth.
Glimpsing light from Dante’s “dark wood,”
J.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Letter #7
Dear Flannery,
Sorry I haven’t written in several weeks. I have been across the country and very busy staying with my daughter who has one-year-old triplets who got sick. Can you imagine one person caring around the clock for three coughy, runny-nosed, whiny, clingy, sleepless, inconsolable, heavy babies? One is enough to drive a person to distraction. Of course her husband is a good help but he’s at work all day. To top it off she caught whatever they had and was pretty sick at the same time and really needed some help. It was quite intense there for a week or so of my stay. But gradually they all grew blessedly well again, laughing, toddling, playing, and making great healthy messes of all kinds, and now I am home again. I have made many such trips since the dear babies were born and it's always an adjustment at either end of the journey. Whereas for weeks I have been changing, wiping, dressing, bathing, feeding, carrying, rocking, and singing favorite silly songs in a self-contained all-baby universe, I am now experiencing the quiet shock of participating in my ordinary solitary pastimes.
This latest experience with the triplets reminds me how different my life has been from yours. Aside from us both being female, Caucasian, American, and Christian, I don’t know how two lives could be more different. You grew up in Georgia, I grew up in California and Guam. You were raised Catholic and I was raised in an evangelical Christian religion. You were 15 when your father died, I was 54. You were single, I married young. You excelled in college, I never finished. You had no children, I have seven, and 15 grandkids. You were a genius, I am not. You were a famous writer, I am only a writer. You got sick and passed on at 39, and I have always been healthy and am 56 and still here.
And yet . . . and yet . . . as far as I can see, we share some very basic and deep beliefs about the most important things, and that sameness feels infinitely more important than all of the above differences. Yes, even more important than places and people and churches and accomplishments and temporal circumstances. Even more important than life and even more important than death. This is why I call you friend. There is so much to say!
Back to reading and writing,
J.
Sorry I haven’t written in several weeks. I have been across the country and very busy staying with my daughter who has one-year-old triplets who got sick. Can you imagine one person caring around the clock for three coughy, runny-nosed, whiny, clingy, sleepless, inconsolable, heavy babies? One is enough to drive a person to distraction. Of course her husband is a good help but he’s at work all day. To top it off she caught whatever they had and was pretty sick at the same time and really needed some help. It was quite intense there for a week or so of my stay. But gradually they all grew blessedly well again, laughing, toddling, playing, and making great healthy messes of all kinds, and now I am home again. I have made many such trips since the dear babies were born and it's always an adjustment at either end of the journey. Whereas for weeks I have been changing, wiping, dressing, bathing, feeding, carrying, rocking, and singing favorite silly songs in a self-contained all-baby universe, I am now experiencing the quiet shock of participating in my ordinary solitary pastimes.
This latest experience with the triplets reminds me how different my life has been from yours. Aside from us both being female, Caucasian, American, and Christian, I don’t know how two lives could be more different. You grew up in Georgia, I grew up in California and Guam. You were raised Catholic and I was raised in an evangelical Christian religion. You were 15 when your father died, I was 54. You were single, I married young. You excelled in college, I never finished. You had no children, I have seven, and 15 grandkids. You were a genius, I am not. You were a famous writer, I am only a writer. You got sick and passed on at 39, and I have always been healthy and am 56 and still here.
And yet . . . and yet . . . as far as I can see, we share some very basic and deep beliefs about the most important things, and that sameness feels infinitely more important than all of the above differences. Yes, even more important than places and people and churches and accomplishments and temporal circumstances. Even more important than life and even more important than death. This is why I call you friend. There is so much to say!
Back to reading and writing,
J.
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