During the early stages of the COVID pandemic in 2020, I wrote a pop song as a tribute to Flannery O’Connor’s brilliant short story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” Those who know me best will not be surprised that I would do such a thing. She is my favorite author, and I think she was a comic genius – far ahead of her time.
If Flannery O’Connor and Cormac McCarthy had a love child delivered by Neil Young, I can imagine this is what it would sound like when the baby cried. The title of the song is “I Just Don’t Fit.” I decided on a western-style tune to give it some distance from O’Connor’s South, but the darkness is still there. It’s probably enough to turn Bruce Springsteen’s stomach, but it’s the best I can do with what I have.
Me – vocals, lyrics, music, and acoustic guitar Justin Larkin – harmony vocals, electric guitar, bass, drums, mixing, and recording. (Lyrics and performance copyrighted 2021; all rights reserved)
Here’s to clean spectacles and parrot-print shirts.
“I Just Don’t Fit”
(Verse 1) My father called me a different breed, and I guess that’s what I am I must have done a mighty evil deed that even Jesus can’t comprehend You think that if I pray You can walk away But everything’s out of balance now with too many debts we can’t pay
(Chorus) Something must be missing ‘cause I just don’t fit No reconciliation so I shoot from the hip If you’re looking for a good man you might as well quit Something must be missing ‘cause I just don’t fit
(Verse 2) I’ve tried my hand at so many things, and I’ve seen my share of pain You’re gonna need more than common blood if you want to wash away that stain Can’t accept the fall Until you lose it all The undertaker never gets a tip; the remittance is always too small
(Chorus) Something must be missing ‘cause I just don’t fit No reconciliation so I shoot from the hip If you’re looking for a good man you might as well quit Something must be missing ‘cause I just don’t fit No, I just don’t fit
(Instrumental verse solo)
(Chorus) Something must be missing ‘cause I just don’t fit No reconciliation so I shoot from the hip If you’re looking for a good man you might as well quit Something must be missing ‘cause I just don’t . . .
(Final Chorus) Something must be missing ‘cause I just don’t fit No reconciliation so I shoot from the hip I can walk away and leave you bleeding in the ditch Something must be missing ‘cause I just don’t fit No, I just don’t fit
In an earlier blog post, I wrote about the day I accepted an offer from the lawyer representing the executors of the estate of the late author, Flannery O’Connor, to work for the executors to establish the Flannery O’Connor-Andalusia Foundation. Among other objectives, this nonprofit organization would be charged with preserving Andalusia, the farm where O’Connor lived the last 13 years of her life and where she completed her published books. The year was 2000, and I was serving as the director of the local public library. I had been a devoted fan of O’Connor from the time I had studied her work as an undergraduate English major at her alma mater, Georgia College. The institution was called Georgia State College for Women during the time Mary Flannery O’Connor was there in the 1940s. She was larger than life, as so many writers of fine literature are to me. I was in complete awe that someone could write a novel like Wise Blood at the age of 27. She is considered an artistic genius by critics, an intellectual force by most scholars, and even a candidate for sainthood by some of her fellow Catholics. She was almost mythical in my imagination.
Flannery O’Connor
I spent most of 2001 working with memorabilia and artifacts associated with O’Connor’s life and career as a writer. O’Connor’s mother, Regina Cline O’Connor, donated a collection of material to Georgia College six years after the author died. This gift included many of the manuscripts from O’Connor’s published works, along with much of her personal library. However, Regina O’Connor held onto a considerable archive of books, manuscripts, published and unpublished letters, photographs, visual art, cartoons, sketches, journals, notebooks, business and personal records, and juvenilia. I was charged with sorting through and organizing the archive, creating an inventory, and preserving the items using archival containers and methods of storage. The vast majority of that remaining archive is now reposited at Emory University in Atlanta.
I sifted through hundreds of images of O’Connor in posed and candid photographs from infancy to shortly before her death from lupus at age 39. Particularly touching were pictures of her as a young child with her father, Edward, who also died from lupus when she was only 15 years old. I held in my hands the cartoons and sketches that O’Connor created while she was in high school and college, with characters and captions that foreshadowed the wicked humor so central to her fiction as a seasoned writer. I read every letter to her mother when O’Connor was away at graduate school in Iowa, some of which revealed strong emotions as she seemed to be searching for her own voice and an identity independent of the Cline family based in Georgia and Massachusetts. I read through her personal journals where she articulated deep feelings, thoughts, and struggles. I suspect she would be more than embarrassed to know that one of those journals has been published as a monograph.
When the Flannery O’Connor-Andalusia Foundation was officially established in 2002, the board of directors hired me as the organization’s executive director. I collaborated with professionals to design plans for restoring and preserving the farm and launched a campaign to raise money for the work ahead, which was monumental considering the farm was 544 acres with a main house that was not exactly in stellar shape and a dozen outbuildings in various stages of serious deterioration. While preparing the main house for public tours, I touched or picked up almost every object in the two-story 19th century structure, including many of Flannery O’Connor’s personal effects that had been left in the house for over three decades: medicine bottles, paint brushes, clothing, furniture, furnishings, Catholic paraphernalia, and of course, her crutches.
Main house at Andalusia
Honestly, I felt a bit uncomfortable at times in O’Connor’s private space, even decades after her death. I always tried to be respectful and mindful of the intrusion, necessary as it was. I arranged her bedroom/study as much as possible to the way Robert Fitzgerald described it in his introduction to O’Connor’s posthumous short story collection, Everything That Rises Must Converge. He had visited Andalusia shortly after the author died. He described the austere conditions under which O’Connor had written some of the best fiction of the 20th century. Indeed, I always sensed a certain ascetic atmosphere whenever I walked into that room.
Sadly enough, when a diagnosis of lupus forced her back from Connecticut to live at Andalusia with her mother, Flannery O’Connor faced a situation where privacy was almost impossible. A plaster wall with a connecting door separated her bedroom from her mother’s. The young writer had to adapt the first-floor sitting room on the main floor into her bedroom/study because the steep steps would have made walking upstairs an insurmountable challenge for her. The two women shared the only bathroom on the first floor. They ate almost every meal together, many of which were at the kitchen table. During the time I was working at the property, the kitchen was still equipped with the same table, sink, stove, cupboard, and the Hotpoint refrigerator O’Connor purchased with proceeds from the sale of the television rights to her short story, “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.”
Andalusia Farm kitchen
The house still contained much of what the O’Connors had when they lived there. The curtains that her mother had sewn while O’Connor was away on a speaking engagement were still covering the tall windows, clearly a hasty job performed by an otherwise gifted seamstress to avoid objections by the room’s unamenable occupant. On the mantle above the room’s fireplace, small photographs of grandparents in tarnished frames were nestled in with an assortment of novelties and knickknacks, several of which may have been gifts from some of her more unconventional long-distance friends.
Still hanging precariously in the bedroom window was the heavy air conditioner that O’Connor told one of her correspondents was an office supply, which she intended to write off her taxes. If the IRS questioned her, she had decided to argue that it “supplied” her office with cool air and was therefore a legitimate deduction. The humid summers of middle Georgia can be brutal and oppressive without air conditioning. Installed at the opening of the fireplace was a propane gas heater, which likely produced insufficient warmth on the coldest nights of the year to comfort O’Connor’s aching joints, under constant assault from disease and the effect of steroid treatments. She hated bitter cold temperatures, not only because of the physical pain they brought, but because they often resulted in frozen and burst pipes – no water, no plumbing. I can personally attest to the inadequacy of space heaters, which we were still using to heat the drafty old house while I was working there. The frigid air seeping in around the windows and doors and up through the hardwood floors chilled me to the bone. On some days, I wore two pairs of socks and thermal underwear in my office, formerly Regina O’Connor’s bedroom.
Mrs. O’Connor moved back into the Cline family home in town shortly after her daughter’s death, and the main house at Andalusia was never fully occupied again. No one was attempting to keep it clean or regulate the temperature. Regular maintenance was no longer a priority, although family members renovated the back portion of the house, replaced the roof, and rebuilt the front porch in the 1990s. The two-over-two spacious front rooms of the house, which included O’Connor’s bedroom, were mostly closed off for about 35 years. Time was not kind to the interior. Paint peeled and chipped away from the surfaces. The walls cracked, and in some places chunks of the horsehair plaster fell on furniture or to the floor. Insects took up permanent residence, along with the spiders who fed upon them and filled curtains and corners with cobwebs.
Flannery O’Connor’s bed
I worked at Andalusia for 13 years, the same amount of time that Flannery O’Connor lived there. I was alone in the main house a lot of that time, especially before the visitor traffic picked up and the foundation hired a part-time staff member to assist with tours and other tasks. His name is Mark Jurgensen, and he was a lifesaver. During those 13 years, I don’t know how many times, probably hundreds, I paused at the doorway of O’Connor’s bedroom and contemplated what her life must have been like at Andalusia. My eyes wandered around that room with its small bed, beautiful barrister bookcases, reading chair, and the crutches leaning against the wardrobe. O’Connor stared at the back panels of that piece of wooden furniture that served as her closet for several hours each morning at her typewriter, with only a brilliant imagination to assist her in crafting such powerful stories, letters, essays, and speeches.
I thought about the physical challenges she faced, the emotional and mental anguish she must have endured, perhaps the occasional sense of despair, the hopes and dreams she shared with no one, the doubts that surely surfaced, and the questions that remained unanswered to the very end. I am not superstitious. I tend to discount the metaphysical. I could never embrace the faith that was central to O’Connor’s understanding of the universe. And yet, there were moments when I genuinely sensed her presence in that place, not as a spirit or a ghost as so many visitors to Andalusia were ever hopeful to encounter. For me, the presence was a memory of someone I had never met. It was the manifestation of a courageous woman with an unusual name whose fictional characters were so bizarre, yet I recognized them immediately. It was the reflection of a living, breathing person, with all the flaws and imperfections inherent in our species, but one with a remarkable gift that is rarely exhibited or nurtured. For so many of us who have trouble hearing and seeing clearly, what she left behind is extraordinary.
Note: Andalusia is now one of several historic properties of Georgia College, which is responsible for its preservation and interpretation. Learn more at https://www.gcsu.edu/andalusia
Georgia College is also host to the Andalusia Institute, a public arts and humanities center that supports Flannery O’Connor scholarship, nourishes writing and the creative arts, and engages community members with the arts and humanities. Learn more at https://www.gcsu.edu/andalusiainstitute
“He’s a born politician.” “She’s a born actress.” “He’s a born preacher.” “She’s a born lawyer.” These are examples of an expression I heard often when I was a young man describing someone who seems to possess an innate talent or skill for a profession or avocation. People who excel in this fashion often exhibited certain predispositions at an early age that their family and friends recall and associate with their success. I am not qualified to comment on the influences of DNA over environment in determining aptitude, but most of us can remember that one child who seemed almost obsessed with a certain activity, pursuit, or area of interest and eventually grew up to turn that fixation into a lifelong career.
The librarian who as a child organized into collections and sub-collections every single book, DVD, and CD in the house
The biology teacher who as a child captured and studied every living creature within a one-mile radius of home and could spout off a half dozen facts about almost any major species
The information technologist and software architect who as a child voraciously read encyclopedias and was fascinated by computers and programming (think young Bill Gates)
When I served as the director of the Flannery O’Connor-Andalusia Foundation in Milledgeville, Georgia, I frequently gave presentations about O’Connor, which included a brief overview of her life that was cut short at the age of 39 from the effects of lupus. Along with many others who have studied her life and work, I perceived that Flannery O’Connor was indeed a born writer. I’m sure the same case could be made for any number of writers, but I know much more about the childhood of Flannery O’Connor than any other author.
Mary Flannery O’Connor (her full name) was born in 1925 in Savannah, Georgia, and was the only child of Edward and Regina O’Connor. She was raised by a Catholic family that sometimes viewed children much like small versions of adults, a perspective largely abandoned by the 19th century. Young Mary Flannery thrived in this atmosphere. She was a bold, precocious little girl who took herself quite seriously. She referred to her parents by their first names, not “Daddy” or “Momma.” When he was away from home, her father wrote her affectionate letters that he playfully addressed to “Lord Flannery,” and she would sign her correspondence to him with the same title, addressing them to “King of Siam.”
Young Mary Flannery was encouraged to read, and perhaps the most recognizable photograph from her childhood shows her in profile sitting with a large book in her lap, staring down at the page with a look of determined concentration. She would later use that same fierce gaze to observe the world around her and depict it through a grotesque and outrageous filter. As a young reader she collected a small library of familiar children’s titles and took the liberty of writing brief reviews on the flyleaf or title page of the books. Always assertively opinionated, the young critic praised some books as “First rate,” while others, such as Georgina Finds Herself, she dismissed as “the worst book I have read next to Pinnochio.” It is worth noting that, at the height of her career, Flannery O’Connor wrote more than a hundred book reviews for two Catholic diocesan newspapers in Georgia. Also, she carried to adulthood her sharp words in assessing the value of books, as is illustrated in her acidic comments about the works of other southern writers such as Carson McCullers, Truman Capote, and Tennessee Williams. To put it in today’s vernacular, she was savage.
Not unlike many bright children, Mary Flannery wrote stories from her own imagination. Some of them were about animals with human characteristics, which is a typical theme explored by aspiring young writers. However, she went a few steps further than most children. Not only did she write clever and often hilarious stories, she also illustrated them, bound them with yarn, and made multiple copies of them to distribute to friends and family. She was absolutely fascinated by the whole process of both writing and publishing, which later translated to a keen understanding of writing as a profession. The volume of her published letters, The Habit of Being, includes correspondence to her agent, editors, publishers, and other professionals in the book industry where O’Connor demonstrated shrewd business acumen.
As a high school and undergraduate college student, Mary Flannery turned her artistic energy to cartoons, which she created through sketching and drawing but more elaborately through printing with linoleum blocks. Although she ended up in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop under the direction of Paul Engle, she initially entered graduate school at Iowa thanks to a scholarship in journalism — she intended to pursue a career as a cartoonist. O’Connor’s biting satire and wicked humor were clearly developing even as a cartoonist, not just in the illustrations, but perhaps even more so in the captions. Some critics have argued that, as a mature fiction writer, Flannery O’Connor continued to exhibit the eye of a cartoonist in the creation of her most exaggerated characters. Little wonder that, when asked why her stories were so shocking, O’Connor explained “for the almost blind, you draw large and starling figures.”
In the private journals Flannery O’Connor kept as a college student, she undoubtedly believed that being an artist was so much more than a career choice. It was a vocation. As she focused her attention toward writing, O’Connor yearned for her work to be used by God. She wanted to craft stories that would miraculously reveal God’s grace. As she matured into one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, she became less sentimental, but she never lost her appreciation for the mystery of art as it is interpreted by the Church, to which she remained devoted for the rest of her life. Perhaps she returned to the intensity of her younger years. She certainly became much more confident. When repeatedly asked why she decided to become a writer, without hesitation O’Connor always replied, “Because I’m good at it.”
Most of us get some level of education and eventually find a job that, with any luck, will get us out of our parents’ hair and their bank accounts. We will end up with about five different full-time jobs before we finally clock out for the last time, and our career paths will largely be determined by factors such as education, employment opportunities, salary, family obligations, and just plain old simple fate. But for a select few, a seed will be planted at a very early age that will germinate into a thriving métier that brings with it fulfillment and a deep sense of purpose. The term from my Southern Baptist heritage was “a calling.” The vocation of writing for Flannery O’Connor required serious devotion, discipline, sacrifice, and a form of genius that appears only a few times in each generation of artists. She was born with an incredible gift, which she carefully and skillfully nurtured, and her readers are the fortunate beneficiaries.
My wife and I were invited to a ceremony on August 9, 2017 making official the transfer of ownership and stewardship of Andalusia, the home of Flannery O’Connor, to her alma mater, Georgia College, in Milledgeville. The great American novelist and short story writer lived on this farm with her mother, Regina, for the last thirteen years of her life. In her first-floor bedroom, O’Connor worked faithfully every morning for several hours, struggling on her manual typewriter to construct sentences and paragraphs that would not only entertain her readers but help them envision the action of grace on characters who were often violently resistant to it.
Andalusia transfer ceremony 8-9-17
We were invited to this special occasion because I served for thirteen years as the founding director of the Flannery O’Connor-Andalusia Foundation, the nonprofit organization that gifted the 544-acre site to the College. The current chair of the Foundation, Donna Barwick, explained to the people gathered that rainy August morning how she and her fellow board members arrived at this decision. “We would never, as a small organization, be able to raise the amount of money that it will take to maintain this place in the way it should be for Flannery’s legacy,” she said. “So we’re confident that this place will be treated properly.” Sadly, she is absolutely correct. Private entities that are responsible for the care and preservation of historic homes have an extremely difficult time raising the capital to do the job — in many cases, it is an insurmountable task. Andalusia is no exception. With a sizable two-story Plantation Plain house and a dozen outbuildings, this literary landmark will require millions of dollars to completely restore it and then a respectable annual budget to maintain it and keep it open to the public.
When I first began as the director of the Foundation, I had unrealistic expectations of how much money we could raise to restore the farm. I was sure that wealthy benefactors would be eager to drop thousands, if not millions, of dollars into our lap in honor of such a great writer. After all, she has friends in high places, at least financially. Celebrities like Bruce Springsteen, Tommy Lee Jones, Bono, Jerry Bruckheimer, and the Coen Brothers have all publicly paid verbal tribute to the author. We made overtures to all of these people, but they either never responded or indicated that they were focusing their charitable giving on other causes, like world hunger. It’s hard to trump world hunger.
Toward the end of my tenure at Andalusia, I had a meeting with the incoming President of Georgia College, Dr. Steve Dorman, and we spent considerable time then and later discussing the ways in which our Foundation and the College could collaborate. We even toyed with the idea of the College taking over the operation of the site, although we never truly talked about any specific plans or what such an arrangement might look like. Now that the mantle has officially been passed, I am giving some thoughtful consideration to this next chapter for Andalusia. I feel a certain allegiance to Georgia College because it is the place where I earned my BA in English and my MA in History. Naturally, I will always have an emotional attachment to Andalusia, the home of the author whose work I so admire and the place that I devoted so many years to preserving.
I believe that Georgia College is the most logical beneficiary for this remarkable treasure. The College has the staff, resources, and state-wide support needed to protect and preserve Andalusia. I would imagine that Flannery O’Connor and her mother considered other colleges for the future writer to attend, but they decided on Georgia State College for Women, which is now Georgia College. As the state’s designated liberal arts college for the University System of Georgia, this institution is also home to the world’s preeminent Flannery O’Connor studies program, which was cultivated for many years by Dr. Sarah Gordon and is now directed by Dr. Marshal Bruce Gentry. The College publishes the Flannery O’Connor Review, edited by Dr. Gentry, which is the longest running journal devoted to a female author in the world. I am convinced that the administration understands the value of this donation, which was expressed by President Dorman at the signing ceremony: “We are grateful to the Andalusia Foundation for entrusting us with its future and look forward to continuing to share this piece of American history with the world.”
I had the pleasure of spending an afternoon with a good friend of Flannery O’Connor, Marion Montgomery, who taught English at the University of Georgia for thirty years. He shared with me a conversation he had with Regina O’Connor not long after after her talented daughter had died. She may not have completely comprehended what Flannery was doing in her fiction, but Mrs. O’Connor understood the importance of the work and that Flannery’s professional papers needed to be preserved for scholars who were already exploring her genius and many more that would follow. Mrs. O’Connor confided to Professor Montgomery that she was struggling with the decision about where the papers should be reposited. Colleges and universities in various locations around the country were expressing deep interest in acquiring the archive, including Georgia College. Professor Montgomery asked her where she thought the material belonged. “At the College here in Milledgeville,” Mrs. O’Connor replied. Mr. Montgomery said, “I agree.” Since that time, hundreds and hundreds of scholars have spent countless hours poring over the O’Connor Collection at Georgia College, the place where a young woman’s talents as a cartoonist began to evolve into drawing startling figures with words instead of pictures. And now, some fifty years later, the care of the landscape that sparked a brilliant artist’s imagination is exactly with whom it belongs.
Lillian Smith was a highly-acclaimed writer, successful business woman, a creative educator, an early civil rights advocate, and one of the most effective champions of social justice in the 20th century. She is probably best known for her controversial psychological memoir, Killers of the Dream, a 1949 publication that is still in print and occasionally excerpted in anthologies of women’s studies, southern literature, and civil rights history. Her best-selling first novel, Strange Fruit, was published in 1944 and told the story of an inter-racial love affair in a rural Georgia town shortly after World War I. Although she lived most of her life in Georgia, Smith was born in 1897 about 90 miles east of Tallahassee in the small town of Jasper, in Hamilton County, Florida. She was the seventh of the nine children of Calvin Warren Smith and Anne Simpson Smith. The town of Jasper was founded in the 1830s, but it really didn’t begin to grow until shortly before Lillian was born with a rich trade in turpentine, tobacco, cotton, and pine lumber. Calvin Smith was one of the entrepreneurs in the area who capitalized on that trade with his business ventures in lumber and naval stores.
Lillian Smith (left) and Marjorie White
Lillian Smith spent all her childhood and the better part of her teenage years in this town. On many occasions throughout her life, she introduced herself with a story from her childhood years in Jasper, a story she later titled “Trembling Earth.” She said the land in North Florida is strange. She described it as “a thin little island that is hung on to the Okefenokee Swamp and hung on to the Georgia Islands and hung on to Alabama.” It felt like the ground was floating. Much later, as a seasoned writer, Lillian Smith used this image to describe the human experience: “I wonder if the whole, everything that happens to a human being is just like trembling earth? Is it all floating on something that we’ll never know, something unknown and mysterious?”
There’s little doubt that her years in Jasper shaped Lillian’s worldview for the rest of her life. As she put it, “No one could read my books without finding these early signs of my childhood,” which included telling stories to her friends, like Marjorie White. For a story to become vividly real, it needs a listener, and Marjorie played that role very well. As Lillian put it, “Her heart was lonely for what my heart was lonely for.” Near the end of her life, Lillian confided in a friend that when her family moved from Jasper when she was 17, the whole town was all frozen for her – she could go back in her mind and see all of it, and in a sense, she never left it.
When his Florida businesses failed in 1915, Calvin Smith moved the family to the small town of Clayton, in northeast Georgia, where he had recently acquired property on Old Screamer Mountain in his wife’s name and where the Smiths soon opened a summer camp for girls. During the 1915-16 academic year, Lillian Smith attended a small college thirty miles south of Clayton in Demorest, Georgia, called Piedmont College. Many years later, Smith wrote about her short tenure at the institution and expressed her gratitude for the fine instructors she had, some of whom were trained at prestigious universities such as Harvard, Oberlin, Smith, and Cornell. Although she was offered a scholarship to continue at Piedmont for the next year, family obligations prevented her from returning.
In her early twenties, Smith studied music at Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, and in her mid-twenties she served as the head of the music department in a Methodist mission school for girls in China. She witnessed terrible cruelty and repeated examples of discrimination and injustice. In her letters, essays, and articles, Lillian Smith would return over and over to these painful memories of China. With the demands of the growing summer camp operated by her family, Lillian Smith was obligated to leave China and return to Georgia in 1925 to help with the operation. She had different ideas from her father on how the camp should be structured, and with her parents’ blessing, she soon became the owner and director of the family-run business: Laurel Falls Camp for Girls. Moving far beyond the traditional hallmarks of summer camps, such as swimming, horseback riding, archery, arts, and crafts, Lillian Smith created a female community at Laurel Falls that challenged Southern conventions of gender, sexuality, religion, and race.
Through writing, drama, music, visual arts, and in-depth discussions, she instilled within her campers the importance of independent thinking, compassion, and confidence. Very few camp directors in the South were as bold as Lillian Smith in confronting the issues of segregation and racial inequality. Laurel Falls Camp continued through the late 1940s and developed quite a reputation. Lillian Smith did not manage the camp alone. A woman named Paula Snelling came to work for the Smith family for the summer of 1921 as an athletic director for the camp. The two women formed a close friendship after Smith returned home and took over the camp, an intimate and loving relationship that developed and grew into a life-long partnership.
Lillian Smith (right) and Paula Snelling
Lillian Smith was diagnosed with breast cancer in the spring of 1953. Later that year, her third book, titled The Journey, was published. The book expresses the author’s hope for humanity and her belief in our infinite possibilities. The final paragraph of the book begins with this sentence that exemplifies this optimistic vision: “To believe in something not yet proved and to underwrite it with our lives: it is the only way we can leave the future open.” Smith would go on to publish several more books, fiction and nonfiction, and numerous articles and essays on social justice and racial equality, all of which were written from her home on Screamer Mountain. She died on September 28, 1966 and was buried there. Paula Snelling suffered a stroke in 1979 that left her partially paralyzed. She died in 1985.
Lillian Smith
Lillian Smith boldly spoke out against the injustices of her day, even those occurring in other countries. The most obvious abuse and that which was closest to home for her as a southerner was racial discrimination. She combined her talents as a creative writer and her keen sense of observation to publish persuasive and powerful books and articles about the growing civil rights movement in the mid-twentieth century. So many of the words we read from her works are just as relevant today as they were sixty years ago.
During the thirteen years that I served as the director of Andalusia, the home of Flannery O’Connor in Milledgeville, Georgia, I had the privilege of meeting thousands of fans of this gifted writer. They came from every state in the country and from almost every continent around the globe. O’Connor is one of those rare authors whose work attracts an amazingly diverse audience. On any given day at Andalusia farm, we might have welcomed a busload of World War II generation grandparents in the morning followed in the afternoon by college students dressed all in black with spiked hair, black fingernail polish and lipstick, tattoos on all visible surfaces, and metal piercings decorating their faces who would walk in the door and say, “Flannery O’Connor is so kick-ass!” Her fan base covers almost every segment of society: straight, LGBTQ, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, agnostic, atheist (one of our largest donors was an atheist biology professor), Democrat, Republican, alt left and right, blue and white collar, and readers representing all income levels. Her books have been translated into at least twenty different foreign languages, indicating the cultural diversity of her following too.
What draws readers to O’Connor’s work, and why do they travel great distances to visit Andalusia, the place where she finished all of her published books? From my standpoint, there are only a few definitive answers but plenty of speculation. When we welcomed visitors to the farm, the first question we asked them was, “How did you find out about Andalusia?” Their answer would usually give us some clues of how to structure their tour to give them the best experience possible. If their response was, “We just saw the sign on the road and wondered what was back here,” then we would give them plenty of biographical information to introduce them to O’Connor’s life and the significance of her contributions to American literature. If on the other hand they told us that they had been teaching O’Connor’s work for 25 years and had always wanted to see the place that inspired her fiction, we would go in a different direction, encouraging them to ask questions that would satisfy their curiosity about O’Connor’s environs.
Andalusia, Home of Flannery O’Connor
Anyone who has read O’Connor’s fiction even once immediately recognizes that her characters are particularly odd and not altogether admirable, which is probably the most polarizing point for her readers. Consequently, there are few lukewarm reactions to O’Connor’s stories; people either hate them or absolutely adore them. The haters walk away puzzled at why the lovers become nearly obsessed. Many of the die-hard fans who visited Andalusia had a mission to locate every place on the property that supposedly appears in the stories: the hayloft where Hulga lost her wooden leg; the milking parlor where Asbury drank the unpasteurized milk; the equipment shed with its tractor that ran over Mr. Guizac; and the white water tower in “A Circle in the Fire.” Other admirers weren’t as fascinated with such direct physical connections but were nevertheless impressed with how the farm clearly served as an inspiration for the fiction. O’Connor is revered by so many writers, some of whom made the pilgrimage to Andalusia while I was there: Allan Gurganus, Padgett Powell, and Salman Rushdie were among them.
Who else visited Andalusia and why? Here is where the story becomes more intriguing and just a tad O’Connoresque. A few examples may shed some light on how wide the spectrum was and render a snapshot of the author’s devotees. The true pilgrims were the visitors who regarded O’Connor and her home with a certain sense of reverence, like the woman who stepped up to the front porch and asked me if she should remove her shoes before entering the house, as if she were about to tread on holy ground. I assured her that I always kept my shoes on in and outside the house. Those who were specifically drawn to O’Connor’s use of grace bestowed, if not slammed, on her characters truly considered Andalusia to be a place of religious significance. This was especially the perspective of practicing Catholics and most notably clergy, like the two priests who requested to hold a prayer vigil in the guest bedroom on the second floor where they would be less likely disturbed by, or be disturbing to, other visitors. They were up there for an hour. I was impressed with their stamina — the room was hotter than three hells in the summer, which was the time they elected to visit, in full black vestments.
A common observation shared by so many Andalusia visitors was a sense of the author’s spirit being present in the main house and on the property. For some this was merely a recognition that the authenticity of the place — buildings, furniture, and furnishings original to O’Connor’s time at the farm — helped them somehow feel closer to its famous occupant. Of course, we also had our fair share of ghost hunters and paranormal investigators who, for reasons that defy understanding, believe that the departed with celebrity status are more easily detected than your run-of-the-mill homeowner. I have never understood why ghost hunters don’t spend more time at hospitals, the very place where so many people pass on to the “next plane of existence.” I could usually tell if a visitor had high hopes for a Poltergeist encounter by the familiar question, “So, did she die in the house?” She did not. She died in the hospital.
Some of our guests went the extra mile to make their visit to Andalusia a truly memorable experience. A couple of folk singers recorded an original song on the front porch. Artists painted landscapes and farm buildings. Writers drafted stories while sitting in the iris gardens. Photographers snapped shots everywhere their eyes pulled them. One young woman was so taken by the beauty of the place while she was attending the college in town, O’Connor’s undergraduate alma mater, that she decided to have her wedding on the front lawn under the enormous oak trees, complete with peacock feathers in her hair. (O’Connor raised many different breeds of domestic birds, but peacocks are the species so identified with her life at Andalusia.)
O’Connor fans have found inventive ways to demonstrate their devotion to the author, from naming their daughters “Flannery” to having elaborate tattoos of peacock feathers permanently decorating their bodies. It was a pleasure to meet them all and to hear them share their admiration for this comic genius. Some made great sacrifices to pay homage to O’Connor at Andalusia, like the four scholars from Japan who spent most of a Saturday at the farm. When I asked what brought them to the states, the only one who could speak any English at all looked at me with a surprised expression and then smiled warmly and said, “Flannery O’Connor. This place.” I was moved.
Flannery O’Connor’s bed
The impact that O’Connor’s work had on some visitors’ lives was immediately apparent when they walked in the front door of the main house. Their countenance, their excitement, and their strong emotions spoke volumes. Several claimed that O’Connor had drawn them to the Catholic Church. Others credited O’Connor for launching their vocations as writers, artists, teachers, or ministers. It is rather ironic that a writer who has brought great joy to so many readers also endured great suffering for the last third of her 39 years as lupus slowly took away her life. This is an inescapable part of her story that no sensitive visitor to Andalusia would ever miss. I watched big, burly men apologize to me as they wept standing at the doorway of O’Connor’s first-floor bedroom where she slept and worked. No need to be sorry — I cried too, more than once.
One of the most gifted short story writers of the 20th century has a name that is rather unusual, although as a tribute to her talent, it is not as uncommon as it was during her lifetime. There is a growing population of women, most under the age of thirty I would imagine, with the first name Flannery. Those who are familiar with the life of the famous Georgia writer know that “Flannery” was a family surname and her middle name. Her full name was Mary Flannery O’Connor. However, when she went away to graduate school and eventually enrolled in the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, she decided to drop her first name and began signing all her work simply as “Flannery.” Further, she requested that friends, relatives, and even her own mother refrain from calling her Mary Flannery, the double-name style that was so typical of women in the early to mid-20th century in the American South. From that point on, she would be Flannery O’Connor.
It is impossible to know how much thought or even strategy went into Flannery O’Connor’s decision to abandon her first name. Considering that she was raised a devout Roman Catholic and was a dutiful daughter of the Church, it would not have been a choice made lightly or carelessly. Indeed, someone so committed to the faith would need a very good reason to drop the name of the mother of Christ, especially considering that she was adopting a much more masculine forename or Christian name — the irony is obvious. Her mother, Regina Cline O’Connor, resisted for a while but finally gave in to her daughter’s demands. Years later, O’Connor claimed that she made the name change primarily for the sake of her career as a writer. She explained to friends that no one would want to read anything written by someone named Mary O’Connor, which to her sounded like the name of an Irish wash woman.
On second thought, readers of O’Connor know that she was incredibly deliberate in her craft as a writer. By the time O’Connor hands us a story, there is not a single word or mark of punctuation left on the page that doesn’t need to be there. Those steel blue eyes served as windows into a brilliant mind with a razor-sharp wit. Flannery O’Connor had wanted to be a writer from a very early age. As a child, she wrote stories, illustrated them, bound them with yarn, and made multiple copies of them to distribute to friends and family. She was absolutely fascinated by the whole process of both writing and publishing, which later translated to a keen understanding of writing as a profession.
I am convinced that when O’Connor began writing in Iowa in the mid-1940s, she also started to envision herself as a successful author. Knowing that she would soon be sending manuscripts off to prospective agents and publishers, she no doubt understood her disadvantage of being a female who wanted to be taken seriously in a male-dominated profession. To avoid having her manuscripts ignored or trashed immediately, she needed for editors to think they were reading the work of a man, and a name like Flannery gave her that edge. Certainly the content of her fiction would not have given her gender away! The strategy worked. Letters she received from editors in response to her early submissions were addressed “Dear Mr. O’Connor.” One early editor, upon learning O’Connor’s identity, still doubted that the stories were written by a woman at all.
Beyond the androgyny factor, a name like Flannery O’Connor gave the writer another distinct advantage, one that is often fabricated now by entertainers from a multitude of genres. Having an unusual name goes a long way toward establishing memorable identity. After all, how many writers do you know named Twain? Poe? Steinbeck? Faulkner? Of course, those are last names, and isn’t it amazing how often readers don’t refer to O’Connor by her more common last name, but by her iconic first name? Fast forward to the age of pop culture. It isn’t difficult to remember names like Cher, Sting, Madonna, Eminem, T-Pain, or Beyonce. Who needs a last name? Atypical works, and it works well.
Flannery O’Connor died at the young age of 39 from complications of lupus, the disease that had taken her father’s life when she was only 15. Her mother outlived her by about 30 years. I don’t know if O’Connor chose the wording for her tombstone or not. Perhaps Regina O’Connor had the last word with her only child this time. Maybe the inscription was dictated by the custom of the Church, the community, or family tradition. Whatever the case may be, O’Connor is laid to rest with her full name restored as a memorial to a literary genius. Those of us who admire her work will always respect her wishes and remember her as Flannery O’Connor. A writer by any other name is, well, someone else entirely.
The Georgia Writers’ Association held its 1955 annual meeting in Atlanta in early December. On this occasion the Association honored Lillian Smith (social justice advocate and author of the controversial works Strange Fruit, Killers of the Dream, and The Journey) as the winner of the Georgia Writers’ Award for the best book of nonfiction with the most literary value written by a Georgian in 1954. She felt the award was overdue but was proud at any rate that the Association exhibited the courage to recognize her importance as an artist. Smith was terribly amused by the annual meeting – a sentiment I can almost imagine would have been shared by another Georgia writer named Flannery O’Connor who was also in attendance.
Lillian Smith
Lillian Smith was not invited to speak at the award ceremony; however, after meeting her and talking with her, the organizers decided to ask her to give an impromptu speech the next day, which she did. Afterwards, an elderly woman in the audience came up to compliment the writer on how sweet and well-bred she was, exclaiming that Lillian Smith must have had the best intentions in the world, regardless of what she may have written in her books. On the previous day, Flannery O’Connor delivered a luncheon address to this convention titled “Some Problems of the Southern Writer.” Lillian Smith was at the luncheon, and this is what she had to say about O’Connor’s presentation:
Flannery’s talk was one of the funniest things I ever listened to. Do you know – I don’t believe she had the vaguest notion how she shocked the crowd. She told em off; told Georgia off; told the South off; told would-be writers off. . . . The stuffed shirts and the would-be writers (the place was full of them) began listening smilingly because they had heard she was “literary” and “talented” and nothing she wrote threatened anybody, certainly not on the conscious levels of their life. But after about two paragraphs they realized that a nice little snake was sinking her fangs deep into their complacency and they began to look at each other and shake their coiffured heads and whisper, “Well . . . .what do you know . . .”
(all quotations from How Am I To Be Heard: Letters of Lillian Smith, edited by Margaret Rose Gladney; The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1993)
Smith mentioned O’Connor’s presentation in a letter to her editor at Viking Press, Denver Lindley, who also served as an editor for Flannery O’Connor. There was a tone of bitterness, if not irritation, when Smith wrote that “these young writers can now say things out loud without any realization, actually, of how one or two of us down in the South opened the way for them.”
As far as I know, this was the only time that Lillian Smith and Flannery O’Connor were in the same room together, although they lived only 150 miles apart. O’Connor confided to her friend Cecil Dawkins that, although she considered Lillian Smith to be a nice person, O’Connor was not impressed with Smith’s writing. In a letter dated December 2, 1955, to Lon and Fanny Cheney, Flannery O’Connor stated that, at the Association meeting, Lillian Smith invited her for a visit to her home, but O’Connor declined. In her essay titled “Flannery O’Connor and Lillian Smith: A Missed Opportunity,” published in the 2007 issue of the Flannery O’Connor Review, Virginia Wray observes that O’Connor’s brief remarks about her fellow Georgia writer in this letter carry with them a tone of sarcastic dismissal. I know those who have studied O’Connor’s life are shocked by this revelation! It’s no secret that O’Connor reserved some of her most acidic comments for other writers, especially those close to home. O’Connor’s comments about Smith were rather tame by comparison.
Lillian Smith would go on to publish several more books, fiction and nonfiction, and numerous articles and essays on social justice and racial equality. The last book published before her death came out in 1964, the year that Flannery O’Connor died; however, she continued to contribute to periodicals and newspapers until her own death on September 28, 1966. One of the pieces Lillian Smith wrote for publication the year before she died was a book review for the Chicago Tribune. The title of the review was “With a Wry Smile Hovering Over All.” As fate would have it, Lillian Smith would get the proverbial last word in this evaluation of Flannery O’Connor’s second collection of short stories, Everything That Rises Must Converge. It is worth noting that Smith and O’Connor had both developed an admiration for Teilhard de Chardin, although Smith claimed that, in the title story of the collection, O’Connor had twisted the Jesuit priest’s “profound and poetic vision into something small enough for her to smile at wryly.” With regard to the other stories in the collection, Smith perceived that the author’s point of view lacked compassion and empathy, which should make us all wonder if she read O’Connor’s first collection of short stories. Still, Lillian Smith considered O’Connor to be a highly gifted writer and described the title story as a masterpiece, where every line counts, every word. No fan of O’Connor’s work could disagree with that assessment.
If You Want My Opinion 