On the fiftieth anniversary of Flannery O’Connor’s death, I am reflecting on her body of work, but mostly on my own sustained, and maybe even strengthened, interest in her life. She has been on my shortlist of favorite writers since I was aware that I had favorite writers, and I appreciated her personal theology long before I converted to Catholicism.
I get that others do not necessarily share my level of interest, and I think this primarily stems from her writing’s polarizing effects. Scenes that elicit laugh-out-loud moments from me tend to have an opposite effect on some other readers … but I knew these characters. I grew up with them in small-town, rural America.
I liked that O’Connor wrote honestly, but treated these people with compassion, too. Navigating the morbidly humorous landscape of her South, her characters – and her readers – ultimately arrived at redemption. This redemption was always personally difficult, though, and came at a great price.
Misfits on the edge populated O’Connor’s work: the edge of society, the edge of madness, but also, importantly, the edge of grace. And in that way, to paraphrase the doomed but redeemed grandmother in “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” we’re all included among O’Connor’s “children.”
Flannery O’Connor wrote, “All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful.” Her characters resisted this grace mostly because they had been able to convince themselves that others needed it instead. Their forced self-awareness, though, proved them wrong every time. And their own self-awareness acts as a mirror, and therefore of a grace-conduit, for the reader
Is this the heart of O’Connor’s appeal and/or repulsion? I’m not sure. But I do know that when I read her work, I am encouraged to keep walking (and occasionally stumbling) toward grace myself. And I can occasionally have a good laugh along the journey.
(Image: www.slate.com)
Commemorate Flannery O’Connor today with any of these – or other – works:
Short Stories
Essays and Non-fiction
- The Habit of Being: Letters
- Mystery and Manners
- A Prayer Journal
- The Province of Joy: Praying with Flannery O’Connor (by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell)
