Good Things out of Nazareth

by Flannery O'Connor

  God bless you.

  Mac

  [J. H. McCown, S.J.]

  Dear Mac [Father McCown]: P.C.

  You’re not the only one who doesn’t like the Index. But you have no faculties to give permission to read forbidden books. However, there’s a principle that even this law ceases to bind when the keeping of it would result in harm to the Cath. faith. If what the lady says in her last sentence is true, then it looks as if she could apply this principle to the reading of Gide.

  God bless you,

  CAROLINE GORDON TO FLANNERY O’CONNOR

  Caroline Gordon copyedited “The Enduring Chill.” She notes its originality; with revisions, it can surpass stories of canonical authors such as Hemingway. Gordon prophetically continues to locate her student in the mainstream of modernist fiction. O’Connor’s A Prayer Journal reinforces Gordon’s insight. O’Connor observes that “if I ever do get to be a fine writer” it will be “because God has given me credit for a few of the things He kindly wrote for me.”12 Gordon also links grammar and colloquial language to theological revelation.

  COMMENT AND ANALYSIS 3RD REVISION, 1-26-58.

  What facility you have! I’m amazed at the way you’ve taken my suggestion and built it up into a convincing scene. I think that bringing people of this kind into the action does a lot for the story structurally. Association with people who are not like the people at home helps to explain his horror of dying at home.

  The priest seems fine, too—a splendid contrast for Fr. Finn, just what Fr. Finn needed to bring him out in all his full bloom!

  And now I come up with another admonishment, being, as you know, never satisfied. This is, really, a comment on your prose style in general but I will try to show what I mean by using some sentences from this story as examples.

  I suppose that in common with everybody of your generation, you were brought up to feel that any concern you might have with grammar took place long ago and is now no concern of yours. But I think reflection on the parts of speech and their function is helpful for any of us at any time.

  Do you, for instances, ever reflect on the respective nature of the “loose” and the “periodic” sentences and the differences in their functions?

  In a strong prose style the periodic sentence—the sentence which saves its punch for the end—predominates. There is a psychological basis for this. You put the thing you want the reader to remember last…

  “While Goetz had listened enthralled…strictly reserved interest” is a “loose” sentence—it trails off. The important thing, the fact that Asbury’s gaze had rested on a priest, is buried in the middle of the sentence. The reader’s the laziest and stupidest of God’s creatures, is not going to dig it out but will carry a blurred impression away from the reading. If I were writing this sentence I’d automatically end it on the word “priest.”

  You make this mistake several times in the story, and make another mistake which is allied to it. Anything that is important ought to have a sentence all to itself. Asbury’s approaching death is the most important thing in this story: You introduce it in a subordinate clause. It ought to have a sentence all to itself…

  Ernest Hemingway has won a good deal of fame and fortune by a complete mastery of the principle I have been setting forth. His style is founded on it. He cannot write the long complicated sentence which is the glory of Joyce’s style, but he never has two ideas fighting each other in one sentence. The structure of his style is relatively simple. When he needs a complicated sentence he forms it by joining two of his short periodic sentences together. It works—for him. He doesn’t tackle any very complicated or elevated theme. His style is suited to his subject matter.

  I suspect that you are unconsciously following his example of late. You have got to the point where the flatfooted simple sentence won’t always serve. Instead of writing another kind of sentence you take several of your flatfooted sentences and link them up. You do that quite often in this story.

  But you are after bigger game than Ernest, the biggest game there is in this particular story. There ought, in this story, to be some sentences, indeed, passages, which show forth the grandeur of your theme and the height of your aspirations. The structure of your story ought to be antiphonal. We ought to have throughout a contrast between Asbury’s present situation and his imminent fate—a fate which is pretty grand, for all his horror of it. To have the H[oly] G[host] descend upon you in any form makes a hero of you. Asbury is just a boy from Georgia, but he is made in the image of God and will shortly confront eternity. If the HG is to descend upon him—in whatever form—in the end that fact ought to be foreshadowed in the beginning. We will sympathize with his sufferings more keenly if his heroism is foreshadowed from the start.

  In the first version, as I recall, you foreshadowed the fact that his spirit had a wider horizon than his mother’s or his sister’s by one grudging sentence about a red sun. One sentence! You can’t turn around on a dime. One sentence like that won’t create the effect that is needed here. You have improved the story enormously in your revisions. Enormously.

  What I have to say further is about your style in general. This takes me back to first principles—principles which I can name outright to you but which I have to approach cautiously with my secular pupils. There is only one plot, The Scheme of Redemption. All other plots, if they are any good, are splinters off this basic plot. There is only one author: The HG. If He condescends to speak at times through a well-constructed detective story, which I think he does, he certainly will condescend to speak often through FO’C. Your chief weakness as a writer seems to be a failure to admit the august nature of your inspiration. You speak almost always like FO’C. That is fine. You have the best ear of anybody in the trade for the rhythms of colloquial speech. In this particular story what the negroes say in their last conversation with Asbury is exquisitely rendered. I don’t know anybody else who could have brought that off. Red Warren [Penn Warren] couldn’t. Andrew Lytle [teacher, novelist, and editor of The Sewanee Review] couldn’t. Their ears are not delicately enough attuned and they are always forcing things, too. But you have this enormous advantage: of what Yeats called the primitive ear. He had it, too and got a lot out of it.

  But you have another kind of ear, one that is attuned to—shall we say the music of the spheres? It is attuned to that music or you would not choose the subjects you choose. The nature of your subject—its immensity, its infinity ought to be reflected in your style—antiphonally. Asbury, conversing with his mother, his sister, the negro hands, ought to speak down to earth, flat sentences. But he ought to take a more elevated tone when communing with his soul—in which presumably God may dwell. If he did you would have a wonderful contrast in tones—an antiphonal effect—which would reinforce our dramatic effects.

  Muir [Edwin], who is himself a considerable stylist, gives an illustration of what I am trying to say in his translation of Kafka’s “Hunter Gracchus.” The action of the story is recounted in flat down to earth narrative. The denouement is, however, foreshadowed in the first paragraph which is like a painting by a primitive painter…a window seems to open into the blue distance of infinity. The heroism of which the human soul is capable is implied by the fact that a hero is flourishing a sword on high on a monument—still flourishing it even if a man uses the monument only to rest in its shadow while he reads a newspaper. Everything is kept keyed down to the concrete till the last sentence which carries the notion of infinity in its very cadence: “My ship has no rudder, and is driven by the wind that blows in the undermost regions of death.”

  Every time I read your last sentence in your story I balk. I balk on the phrase “with ice, instead of fire.” It is vague, inexact. This magnificent climax to which you have built up so well is not the place for careless inexact phrasing. You cannot say that the HG is coming with ice instead of fire. The phr
ase is colloquial. If I am having a party and don’t have enough ice cubes I can say properly “The Johnsons are coming, with ice” but you are talking about the HG and your diction and the construction of your sentences ought to reflect, as far as is humanly possible, the enormity of his presence. Couldn’t you say, “enveloped in ice instead of flames”? And couldn’t you give Asbury and the HG each a sentence to himself? “He blanched in recognition. But HG, enveloped in ice instead of fire, continued, implacable, to descend.”…

  In my day we diagrammed sentences. This is what we call a compound sentence: a sentence made up of two or more equal and coordinate clauses. The sun rose with power and the fog dispersed is what Nesfield gives as an example of a compound sentence. I don’t think that a compound sentence is what you need here. Asbury’s blanching and the HG’s descending are not ideas of equal importance. Asbury’s blanching in recognition of the presence is our chief concern in this story but the descent of the HG is what Balzac called the “constation,” the summing up, the appeal from the particular to the general. Each ought to have a sentence to itself.

  If you were less stout-hearted and less talented I wouldn’t dare to say the things I am saying to you but I expect you to do not only better than any of your compeers but better than has been done heretofore. In this martial spirit I shall comment on your last paragraph even further…

  Have you ever read a story of mine about Andre Gide called “Emmanuelle! Emmanuelle!”? In the climax of this story a young man looks into eyes that are, in turn, contemplating an eternity of torment. The action of the whole story is sunk in those eyes.

  Anyhow, suppose you made his eyes mirrors of infinity or about to become mirrors of infinity. He shudders, naturally, and rather than contemplate his own soul, looks out of the window. What does he see? You don’t feel like putting your extraordinary imagination to work on this passage so you write—carelessly and inexactly— “…over the treeline.” An awkward phrase to begin with. If you are going to use those trees give them a chance. Really put them in there. The trees that lined the whatever it was or surrounded the so and so were so and so. The sun that heralds the descent of the HG ought to have a sentence to itself. The next sentence, which ought to be one of the strongest, is weak and poorly constructed. “Like some magnificent herald” and “as if it were preparing for the descent of an unspeakable presence” are really repetitious of the same idea. Similes are dangerous, anyhow. It is usually better to show how something looked and then say that it was like something else rather than try to convey the notion of what it is by telling us what it is like. You ought to make us really see this sun and in order to do that you’ve got to create it. I’d leave out the word “aghast.” The fact that the boy fell back on his pillow and stared at the ceiling conveys the fact that he was aghast.

  I think that you are going to have to elevate the tone a little here. You keep on being flatfooted till the end, but it won’t do. The tone should be gradually rising all the way to the denouement.

  Here I can only say what I’d do or try to do in this case. I think that after he falls back on his pillow and stares at the ceiling that I’d have a passage about his body, a passage which would do two things at once, prepare for the enduring chill and also engage the reader’s sympathies by reminding him that this is the frail body of a young doomed creature. Oh, something like “His limbs, which in the past weeks had been racked alternately by fever and by chill now seemed to have no feeling in them. It was then that he felt…” Oh hell, it would take me days, perhaps weeks to do it. I see that going the way I’m going I’d get into “chill” too fast. What I’m saying so poorly is that this passage must be elevated in tone, but so gradually that the reader doesn’t know what’s happening. You can’t go straight into the Presence talking Georgia. There must be a moment in which Asbury—being a hero—must stand for all mankind, as Liharev does in Chekhov’s “On the Road,” as Gabriel Conroy does in “The Dead.” Words, indeed, phrases, consonant with the hero’s high calling must be used in your denouement…

  Your concluding passage ought to reflect Asbury’s status as a hero by a gradual elevation of the style. This can be done partly by identifying Asbury with all mankind, partly by using words that may not even be in his vocabulary, words and phrases such as a really omniscient and hence all-compassionate observer might use. And I come up with another objection: the phrase “The fierce bird with the icicle in its beak” worries me the same way “with ice instead of fire” worries me. If I were doing it I’d say something like “The fierce bird that during the long nights had seemed to his feverish fancy to hold an icicle in its beak now appeared to be in motion.”

  That’s corny. I’d have to revise it a dozen times, but still I’d start out working in that direction. The bird, with an icicle in its beak, is an awkward construction. Do get rid of it.

  FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO FATHER JAMES McCOWN

  Through Father McCown’s efforts, O’Connor is becoming more well known among Catholic institutions. An effort to categorize her elicits a typical demurral.

  MILLEDGEVILLE

  20 JANUARY 58

  I don’t actually know that cousin well enough to write him and tell him to go to see you but you might run into him some time by accident as he doctors at that hospital there. I think the name of it is Confederate Memorial.

  They sent me one of the Anderson lecture reprints and I thought it was fine. Also, I’m pleased to announce that I got a letter from one John J. Quinn, S.J., of Scranton University, saying he admired my works and wanted me to judge a short story contest that he is in charge of at his school. The which I will do. I also had a letter from a Rev. Gerard Nolen from a St. Norbert’s College in Wisconsin. This one said that the promise of my work reminded him of the prediction in Whitman’s poem “Old Ireland.” Never heard of the poem so I looked it up. It was a long rigamarole about how old Mother Ireland, wo’ out and bedraggled, had laid down her harp. BUT it would be picked up again in America. I guess the point was I am Old Mother Irelands descendent, picking at the old girl’s harp in America. I consider this a doubtful compliment but I thanked him for it.

  “A View of the Woods” is not the O’Henry thing. That one was Greenleaf. I have just answered 15 questions on writing for The Motley.

  FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO THOMAS GOSSETT

  O’Connor praises and quotes from a poem by her friend. O’Connor also enumerates interesting people who had visited or were planning to call on her.

  MILLEDGEVILLE

  23 JANUARY 58

  Louise has obviously missed her calling and is wasting her time at Mercer [University]; she had better set up as a poet at once. I won’t mind the competition as long as it’s poetry she writes but if she ever sets her hand to stories, I’ll shake in my shoes.

  We enjoyed Miss McEntee [Maire] no end and having supper with you all. We met her the next day at the bus and gave her a copy of my book and if we have a day or two in Dublin, I’ll call her up.

  By all means bring Miss Katherine Anne [Porter] over if Miss Katherine Anne chooses to come. I’d love to meet her.

  My mother is very happy today as she has three jack-leg carpenters at hand and is supervising the construction of a carport in the back yard. I think the peachickens are going to enjoy sitting both over and under it.

  Regards from another “marble in the mud.”13

  FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO FATHER JAMES H. McCOWN

  Aware of Father McCown’s interest in civil rights, O’Connor shares with him discussions of a reading group. She also shares with him theological inconsistencies of a friend’s letter.

  [FEBRUARY 1958]

  MILLEDGEVILLE

  GROUND HOG DAY

  Well I am certainly much obliged to you for asking that foremost theologian about my Monday night clashes with the Index. They
seem to have forgotten about Gide for the present and I am keeping their attention directed to 35¢ editions. Ostensibly this group is discussing theology in modern literature but none of us knows anything about theology, not excluding the Episky minister. Last week they started talking about a Presbyterian preacher that had talked at the college for Religious Emphasis Week (big thing with them). This preacher was talking about why Catholics had made more progress with race relations etc than Protestants and he said the reason was because the Protestant emphasis in the church was on family and the Catholic on community. I thought this was pretty good as far as it went.

  As for yr. spiritual advice, I will follow it to the letter. And it relieves my mind of a burden that was keeping me off and on from doing my work. When you can’t resolve these things it is a great relief to be told what to do.

  I have got several postcards from Billy [William Sessions] from Spain. He is supposed to be studying philosophy but that I can see he isn’t doing anything but travelling, from which I guess he will get more in the long run.

  I still ain’t looking forward to my visits to the shrines. I will send you a post card from the Baloney Castle or whatever it is we are going to be forced to view in Ireland. My lapsed Catholic friend in Missouri wrote me about The Stumbling Block. I think it affected her however she said that a lie within the truth was still a lie. I mean to tell her that Mauriac sees that too, but that what he means is that the direction of the Church is not changed. She allowed that her trouble was that she couldn’t believe in the divinity of Christ. In the same paragraph she announced that she believed in Lourdes. I am not going to tell her that that don’t make sense. I have been invited to the University of Missouri in May so I expect to meet this girl.