Flannery O'Connor

In Spanish the fact that a writer or novelist is Catholic is not frequently pointed out. Is this perhaps because in the Spanish-speaking cultural world the majority of people are children of the Church? It would appear so and can be taken for granted as such. It's not the same in other places; in English-speaking countries, for example, a Catholic author usually identifies himself as such or, failing that, literary critics never cease to point it out. The case of the famous novelist and thinker Walker Percy is a typical example. This identification of the author's faith also occurs in the case of Mary Flannery O'Connor. On one occasion, referring to the work of Catholic authors, she pointed out that even among Catholics "all the author's circumstances are ignored except for his faith."

A Southerner

Her work clearly reflects the characteristics of the southern United States. She was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1925. She was the descendent of Catholic residents that immigrated to that state when the anti-Catholic laws were no longer valid, towards the end of the 18th century. She lived in Milledgeville and the surrounding country almost all her life. At the beginning of the '50's she was diagnosed with lupus, a sickness which accompanied her until the end of her earthly pilgrimage. It caused her complications during a delicate operation to remove a cancer in 1964. After a few days of asking for and receiving the Sacrament of the Sick she slipped into a coma from which she wouldn't recover. She died on August 2nd of that year.

A Complex Work

Since 1946 O'Connor wrote numerous stories which, after first being published in magazines, were edited into books. She also took some of this material and transformed it into novels. Her illuminating correspondence was published posthumously. Her letters are indispensable for anyone who wishes to understand her life and work.

Despite her popularity, which instead of declining continues to increase, O'Connor is not well understood. The books and studies of her work that continue to be published from dissimilar perspectives are by no means few. There already exist tens of books, numerous chapters of many more, and perhaps hundreds of articles that try to capture the meaning of her life and work. Just as she often had to clarify the reach of her work during her own lifetime, today people turn to the pages she wrote to find an expression of the author's impulse and horizon.

Granted the real complexity of disentangling the key to this famous writer's literature, we would have to believe her when she says that all of her work is called to illustrate the action of grace. And, of course, we should keep in mind that she herself noted that her work lends itself to a "lack of understanding of how the operation of grace appears in fiction."

Flannery O'Connor was certainly a practicing Catholic and very conscious of her faith. She loved the Church and she believed what She taught. Her correspondences reflect this unequivocally. The reality of faith always has to be taken into account. But her works - if we are to be attentive to the variety of opinions concerning them - don't seem to be so transparent. And, of course, we're dealing with symbolic works. Attentive to the canons of her art and those of the story and of the novel, she sought to convey a message through her characters. If the reader's perspective gets submerged in the plot without managing to deepen in the symbolism that the author designs her story with, he´ll stay in the external aspect of the dynamic and miss the message. Of course, he'll also remain in the margins of her message if he doesn't capture precisely the author's intended meaning.

Harold Bloom, for example, reiterated an argument in 1999 which -apparently fruitlessly for some- O'Connor tried to clarify. She, says Bloom, "was ardent in proclaiming Original Sin and the Fall, but I trust in the stories and not in the author. Her most important stories don't show grace correcting nature but rather the condition in which everything fell precisely when and how it was created." It wouldn´t be unfair to say that Bloom has a vision of religious life in North America and that it could well be the filter through which he emits some of his opinions. The question arises: is it that he seeks a direct story or does he accept the challenge of disentangling the significance that the author gives to her characters and stories? It's also fair to say that he is not the only one who remains in a somewhat disconcerted suspense concerning the work of Flannery O'Connor. At the same time one has to take the hermeneutic code of the reader into account, in this case that of the critic, in order to see if they are within conditions to read an author who undoubtedly demonstrates a complexity that conceals itself within an elusive shelter, certainly more profound than the plot and the usually shocking character of her stories.

It doesn't seem possible to read this American author's work without attending to the reflections and keys that she herself offered about it. We should believe the writer and see if what she says can be discovered in her writings. It's certainly necessary in O'Connor's case even if the work does have a life of it´s own.

She employs appearances in order to signify things which are always more profound. Behind the first impression, behind the ordinary reading, a deeper meaning is usually enclosed to which she tries to appeal. Her work seems to be directed at questioning the reader who is capable of allowing himself to be questioned, or otherwise, at simply entertaining him with irony or confronting him with the unpleasant figures she employs to express her message.

Her works may or may not be pleasant, but the fact is that they continue to fascinate many readers. The religious background is always present, sometimes in a disconcerting manner. And, once again, it's crucial to deepen into the symbolic play the author employs and in the role that the religious plays in it. It's a matter of discovering the way in which it points to the profound. Not infrequently it turns out that what appears at first sight is nothing more than the cover of a much more dense and complex meaning.

A good part of O'Connor's work should be taken as a prophetic denunciation of lives which hide themselves in the routine of habits and beliefs, never reaching the person's authentic nucleus. The path by which she chooses to express the situation of life displacing itself onto the periphery of existence, of a life marked by lies whether or not the person is actually aware of it, may or may not be an adequate one. Whether or not she achieves her objective is something each reader must decide for himself in the face of his reaction to what he reads. But, once again, it must be underlined that what the author attempts to do is most definitely an illuminating testimony. Thus the importance of looking for the key to her message above and beyond any artistic merit that may be attributed to it.

What is the key?

O'Connor herself has said that it is grace acting in life. This seems to be the right code with which to begin understanding her stories and novels. And to those who point out that they don't discover this in her fiction writing she responds by saying that there are those who want to read about grace as something "warm and uniting, and not dark and disruptive." She undoubtedly lived the sacramentality of the world. Her biography shows that she had a great sensitivity towards all of God's creatures. But within this dynamic of sacramentality, Flannery felt herself touched by a call to use her art to help people see what's dark. And, apparently, she considered that a good way to draw attention to this is to appeal to the shocking and the deformed. Irony is evident in her work. Through it she seeks to appeal to the reader "without softening his vision of things". Therefore the meaning of what she says through her fiction will indeed be difficult to understand if the sacramental perspective of reality, which points to something more, is dispensed with and if the ironic dimension is ignored.

For Flannery O'Connor the author is situated in a particular time. It constitutes the frame within which she must write. She almost nostalgically evokes Dante and his well balanced work between good and evil, in which "he divides his territory remarkably equitably between Heaven, Purgatory and Hell". The convictions of these times don't seem to allow such a division: "Today we live in an age which doubts facts and values, which acts in accordance with this doubt and along momentary convictions, and which considers religion a private matter." Situated in these times, "the novelist now has to conquer - a new balance - counterweighing the prevaling heresy." She sees herself with a mission that in a broad sense can be qualified as prophetic.

She says, with realism, that opinions concerning the prevailing heresy will differ. Maybe because there isn't only one. But, for her, the need to reflect the redemptive act - by which the fallen is restored - is inevitable, but not at the cost of forgetting its price. She thinks that today this dimension is forgotten, and that the reader succumbs to an expectation in which "his sense of evil is diluted or totally absent, and this is why the price of the restoration is forgotten. The price of truth has been forgotten, even in fiction."

Flannery O'Connor, out of her experience of faith, through her life's story, within the social frame in which she lived, considered that the "shock" is fundamental to showing the dimension of mystery in human existence, to opening up consciences to the reality of evil, to showing the sacramentality of existence, to letting the truth illumine the path of whoever passes through this life with his hope placed in He who died on the Cross to redeem it all.

It's not easy to read her, nor is it necessarily pleasant to do so, but if the key to her work is discovered, a vision can be found therein that opens up a contrastingly positive horizon.

1999

Notice: These articles have been translated by members of the Christian Life Movement and have not been revised by the author.

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