A New Flannery O'Connor Book
07/30/2013
Not about, but by! In case you don't read All Manner of Thing, which you should: it's a prayer diary written in her early 20s, and will be published in November. I'm sure she would never have wanted it published, but I certainly look forward to reading it.
Thanks for the heads up! I'll keep my eye out for it.
Posted by: Charles Kinnaird | 07/30/2013 at 01:36 PM
You're welcome. I figure at minimum it will be revealing of her, and there's a good chance it will be good on its own terms, for its spiritual insight.
Posted by: Mac | 07/30/2013 at 04:50 PM
For some writers, their diaries are wonderful but their letters quite dull (Virginia Woolf). For others, their letters are sparkling but their diaries are dire (Evelyn Waugh). It depends on which category Flannery O'Connor falls into! I have certainly put it in my amazon cart, when I read about it on Craig's blog
Posted by: Grumpy | 07/31/2013 at 05:56 AM
You've read the letters, right? If your dichotomy holds, this won't be very interesting. I was about to say it's hard to think of anyone's letters that are more enjoyable, but then I realized it's hard to think of anyone's letters that I've read. I tend to avoid letters, diaries, and biographies of writers I love--don't want to have to see their bad side.
Posted by: Mac | 07/31/2013 at 07:11 AM
I loved FO'Cs letters! I'd probably love to read her prayer diary. I always hated the idea of keeping a diary myself b/c I really *don't* want other people to read it. But a prayer diary is not only very useful, I find it almost indispensable these days. But I truly don't want anyone reading that either, b/c it's just so personal. And I'm not likely to be famous enough that it would be published, but I don't like the thought of family reading it either. I suppose I should leave an instruction to my non-family executor to burn them at my death. (Just thinking out load now).
Posted by: Louise | 07/31/2013 at 08:09 AM
Better to burn it yourself, unless you secretly think it's great and want to passive-aggresively imitate Kafka, whose executor disregarded his instructions to burn his papers.
I've only read FO'C's letters once, thirty years ago, and have been looking forward to the treat of re-reading them. When I do, there'll no doubt be a bunch of quotes here.
Posted by: Mac | 07/31/2013 at 10:06 AM
A prof at Franciscan in Steubenville is working on a new collection of O'Connor letters. Not sure when it'll appear, however.
Posted by: Rob G | 07/31/2013 at 11:21 AM
Oh yeah, I think I saw a reference to that somewhere. Supposed to be stuff that wasn't included in Habit of Being?
Posted by: Mac | 07/31/2013 at 11:38 AM
Cool
Posted by: Pauli | 07/31/2013 at 01:33 PM
I am trying to remember if that big volume of Waugh that I bought contains his letters or his diary. I hope it's the former.
I know I said I'd like this new Flannery O'Conner book for Christmas, but I couldn't resist ordering a copy. Christmas in November, I guess.
Posted by: Craig | 07/31/2013 at 02:24 PM
You won't know it's not Christmas, if you go by the Christmas decorations and advertisements.
Posted by: Mac | 07/31/2013 at 02:33 PM
Christmas starts at the end of September for the really hedonistic and the day after Thanksgiving for the highly disciplined Norman Rockwell types
Posted by: Grumpy | 07/31/2013 at 03:18 PM
Precisely.
Posted by: Mac | 07/31/2013 at 03:31 PM
In many stores here in NZ, the Christmas season starts around the first of February because that's when they start pushing their Christmas clubs, which are special savings accounts that offer discounts on purchases.
Posted by: Marianne | 07/31/2013 at 04:18 PM
So the year consists of a Christmas season with a brief pause after the actual day. Great.
Posted by: Mac | 07/31/2013 at 04:29 PM
"Oh yeah, I think I saw a reference to that somewhere. Supposed to be stuff that wasn't included in Habit of Being?"
Yes, that's the one. The tentative title is Good Things Out of Nazareth.
Posted by: Rob G | 07/31/2013 at 06:18 PM
Or Milledgeville, I guess. Good title if you make that connection.
Posted by: Mac | 07/31/2013 at 06:41 PM
unless you secretly think it's great and want to passive-aggresively imitate Kafka
Amusing.
In many stores here in NZ, the Christmas season starts around the first of February because that's when they start pushing their Christmas clubs, which are special savings accounts that offer discounts on purchases.
oy. It starts in September in Oz. (No Thanksgiving to intervene, you see).
Posted by: Louise | 08/01/2013 at 07:21 AM
A prof at Franciscan in Steubenville is working on a new collection of O'Connor letters.
Oh good. I really loved Habit of Being.
Posted by: Louise | 08/01/2013 at 07:23 AM
I do hope it's not going to show her in a bad light. I wonder how these other letters came to be available.
Posted by: Mac | 08/01/2013 at 10:40 AM
From my teenage years collecting really bad Dylan bootlegs, I tend to distrust out-takes, and cuttings that didn't make it into the big bookt. I tend to think probably the best songs made it onto the album that made it into the top ten. I find it hard to believe that Sally Fitzgerald, who knew Flannery O'C, would exercise worse personal and aesthetic judgement about her writings than a Prof at Stuebenville.
Posted by: Grumpy | 08/01/2013 at 05:40 PM
Yes, that's the nub of my slight uneasiness about the new collection. Maybe they're too revealing of things that should stay private.
I have to put in a good word for some of the songs on those bootlegs, though. Some turned out to be great when recorded by other people.
Posted by: Mac | 08/01/2013 at 06:45 PM
I've now found four titles for that forthcoming book of letters:
Good Things Out of Nazareth: Letters of Flannery O'Connor and Friends
Good Things Out of Nazareth: Letters of Flannery O’Connor, Father McCown and Friends
Good Things Out of Nazareth: Letters of Flannery O'Connor
Good Things Out of Nazareth: Letters of Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, and Caroline Gordon
That last one is in the editor's CV on his website.
It also says that he "[h]as collected unpublished letters and writings of Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, and their mentor, Caroline Gordon whom [he] knew at the University of Dallas. One of three archival scholars to receive the rare authorization from the Mary Flannery O'Connor Trust (2006) to edit letters not contained in The Habit of Being."
Wonder if "Good Things Out of Nazareth" will include just the correspondence between the three writers.
Also perhaps Fitzgerald didn't include them in her collection because of permissions problems with Percy and Gordon's letters.
Posted by: Marianne | 08/01/2013 at 07:43 PM
That would be nice--I mean, it would be good if that were the reason, and not the sort of thing I mentioned. "Fr. McCown"--that's interesting. I'm surprised that he would merit a spot on the cover. He was pastor at a church near here ten or twelve years ago. It was sort of a sad situation. It was a mostly black ("historically black") parish, and he, with all his liberalism civil rights etc.--a supporter when it really took courage, and meant something--was not that well received. He gave these somewhat intellectual homilies that the congregation didn't much like. As I recall there are only a few letters to/from him in Habit.
Posted by: Mac | 08/01/2013 at 09:42 PM
If its letters to and from Caroline Gordon and Walker Percy it would be great!
Posted by: Grumpy | 08/02/2013 at 07:54 PM
The CV says he found the letters in 2000. That means he's been editing them for 13 years.
Posted by: Grumpy | 08/02/2013 at 07:57 PM
A careful scholar.
Posted by: Mac | 08/02/2013 at 10:15 PM
It sounds like they were found in 2000 but he got permission to edit them only in 2006. When I met him in 2010 he was still working on them.
Posted by: Rob G | 08/03/2013 at 02:29 PM
There is something to be said for the pressure to publish in mainstream universities. It shouldn't be everything, but it shouldn't be discounted altogether.
Posted by: Grumpy | 08/03/2013 at 03:23 PM
You mean the fact that he isn't at one might be a factor in the amount of time he's taken?
I had not looked at his CV till just now. Ok, now I'm impressed. He once played with The Marcells.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icOBQvYN5OA
Posted by: Mac | 08/03/2013 at 04:50 PM
Yes, they wouldn't let him take that long in GB
Posted by: Grumpy | 08/04/2013 at 09:24 AM
I wonder if the hold-up is with the editor or with the O'Connor trust?
Posted by: Rob G | 08/07/2013 at 09:53 AM