This is not to defend the book, of course since it either stands or falls with the reading, but only to explain my position.
I am asking Miss Otis to return the manuscript to me for a short-term rumination and for whatever changes come to mind. If, after that, you would like another quick look, I’ll gladly send it to you. I am still obliged to you for an indispensable energy-charge at a critical point—as well as for $250.00. But truthfully I doubt if there is much use in resubmitting it to you, for even if you decided then to accept it, I hardly see how you all could take it on with the enthusiasm and unanimity without which I’d rather you didn’t take it on at all.
Again my thanks to you personally and best wishes to Knopf, a fine house (you all published the greatest book of our time, Camus’ The Stranger.) Are you and the Stanley Kauffmann, astute critic and inveterate moviegoer of The New Republic, one and the same?
Yours sincerely,
WALKER PERCY TO ROBERT DANIEL
Percy outlines the fortuitous events that led to The Moviegoer winning the National Book Award, the firing of Percy’s editor, who supervised the successful revisions, and the recognition of the novel by the president of the United States. The influence of Percy’s novel on U.S. presidents extends to President Obama. In David Maraniss’s biography Barack Obama: The Story, the chapter “The Moviegoer” presents the young, pre-political Obama as a rootless searcher similar to Binx Bolling in Percy’s novel. The characteristic followed Obama into his presidency, where he was often seen as polished and elegant but aloof.
MAR 19, 1962
Rob:
Your Ohio agents are a hell of a lot better than mine. I didn’t learn till today what the real story was, and you are substantially correct.
Somebody sent me a clipping from Thursday’s NY Times which out-and-out told the story which I had only inklings of during the three days in New York. If you’re really curious and want to read a curious tale look up a story headlined “Critics Hear Tale of Novel’s Prize” in Thursday March 15 Times. NY
It all sounds like a typical back-of-scenes publishing hassle—the only difference being that in this case I was the only one who didn’t know what was going on.
The facts are simple. Alfred Knopf actively disliked the novel and it was shot down from the beginning—as far as promotion goes. It was bought apparently on the say so of Stanley Kauffmann who was shortly after fired (for another reason)—leaving The Moviegoer a sort of lame duck. I had heard many stories that such was the case, but laid it to the usual comforting of author. Well—along comes the National Awards and the three judges, Stafford, Gold and Gannett. Nobody ever heard of The Moviegoer. But A.J. Liebling happens to pick it up because Time said something about New Orleans. And what with Liebling’s interest in Louisiana, he went out and bought it. Liked it and gave it to Jean. She liked it and sold Gold and Gannett. I guess.
What it comes to is that Ole Earl Long is responsible for my small success.
Hope I soon have a chance to tell you of my adventures with Alfred and Blanche in the company of Shelby and Gwynn.
The only thing tangible that has come out of it so far (besides the $1,000 and the telegram from Kennedy) is a sale to paperbacks (I don’t even know which).
Either Oberlin or Swarthmore would be great, but I keep hearing good things about Swarthmore.
A Juhan is offering you a house. The last time I heard a Juhan talking about you…
Best Wak
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO FATHER JAMES McCOWN
Precarious health, travel, marriage, theological reading, and the prospect of sudden death comprise the uncertainties of faith. Father McCown had also encouraged O’Connor to read another O’Connor, Edwin, author of The Last Hurrah and The Edge of Sadness (winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 1962).
MILLEDGEVILLE
2 AUGUST 61
I sure was sorry to hear about Fr. Moody. He was probably over-worked. I guess he is now in a better position to pray for the rest of us. I will have a Mass said for him.
Thank you for the Jone [Heribert, Moral Theology]. This looks formidable. If I pick up any sins in it, you will hear from me.
The doctor said I couldn’t have the operation, too dangerous for my state of health. So now I can forget about it. What you know you can’t get rid of don’t worry you as much as what you think you might get rid of.
We had a card from Billy [Sessions] the other day and he declared he is going to be married August 3 in Athens [Greece], so Spring Hill [College, Mobile, Alabama] is going to have something new in faculty wives.
I want to see your brother’s article when it comes out. The enclosed appeared in Renascence [Robert O. Bowen, “Hope vs. Despair in the New Gothic Novel”]. You see why I am anxious to see something decent written about it. The worthy who wrote this does not know what the Church teaches about predestination or free will.
I haven’t read the Edwin O’Connor yet. I wait for the paperbacks.
We are going to Boston on the 25th to visit aunt, then to New York for two days for me to go to a Ford Foundation conference and then home again all in less than a week. It could be shorter and I’d like it better. No kind of a traveler now.
Cheers and thanks,
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO THOMAS GOSSETT
O’Connor, in a feat of her metaphysical imagination, links the purchase of swans and transport of birds to her literary reactions to works by her peers.
MILLEDGEVILLE
22 AUGUST 61
We wouldn’t mind getting rid of a pair of peafowl but the difficulty is in shipping them. For shipping they have to be crated up by somebody who knows how to do it right. However I know where you can get some and cheap and they will crate them properly. I enclose a price list of the Miami Rare Bird Farm. These people are going out of business and so everything is half-price. I have this list because I am negotiating with them about a pair of white swans. They have one pair left and they are selling it for $65 because the hen is blind in one eye. All I need to make life complete is a one-eyed swan around here.
The man you write to is Mr. Alton V. Freeman at the address on the top of the price list. $30 a pair is very cheap for peafowl. I paid $65 for my first pair. When you get through with the price list, I’d be obliged to have it back. If I wasn’t a po writer, I would buy a couple of everything he’s got here in the bird line.
I also enclose that cheering letter from the professor at Rice, which I told you I’d send you. When you have been sufficiently depressed by it, send it back.
I have just read Malamud’s new book, A NEW LIFE, which will be published some time soon. It is a terrible disappointment, poor and plodding. I hope he recovers. I have also read Carson McCullars, CLOCK WITHOUT HANDS, shortly to be published. It is the worst book I have ever read in my life. Complete disintegration.
Cheers to you all and we wish you would return to Texas by way of Georgia. If there’s any possibility let us know.
P.S. I have seen peafowl in Michigan so I presume they would do all right in West Virginia. However, they need a barn or outhouse or garage or something where they can retire when it is too inclement.
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO FATHER JAMES McCOWN
O’Connor reports cheerfully about interesting happenings. A friend continues to entertain with reports about his marriage ceremonies, rituals that interested O’Connor. Several of her stories, such as “The Life You Save May Be Your Own” and “A Stroke of Good Fortune,” deal with unusual marriages.
MILLEDGEVILLE
5 SEPTEMBER 61
Did you see my article about peacocks in the September Holiday [“Living with a Peacock”]? A very fine picture went along with it. I have just bought a pair of swans so maybe after I have had them ten years I can write another a
rticle for Holiday. The Gossetts bought some peafowl from the same place I bought my swans. They said they were going to call you up when they went through Dallas.
We have had several cards from Billy [Sessions] about his marriages—one in the Greek Orthodox and one in the Catholic. The Catholic one was first but the Greek Orthodox obviously impressed him the most as he got to wear a laurel wreath on his head and there was somewhere in the ceremony that they had bon bons in a silver dish. We expect them to come through here and spend the night with us and we will hear it all in detail.
The Sisters’ book [A Memoir of Mary Ann] has been accepted by the Catholic Digest Book Club (whatever that is), has been bought by Good Housekeeping for their Christmas issue, and has been bought in England by Burns & Oates [Death of a Child]. They have kept the prayers burning underneath it and brought it to a boil.
It looks like we are going to be integrated by the atom, don’t it?
* * *
Tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States escalate and threaten nuclear annihilation. O’Connor displays consistent good humor. She mentions a lecture she would soon deliver. Phrasing from a famous Jesuit has also given her an apocalyptic title for a story.
MILLEDGEVILLE
13 OCTOBER 61
Thanks generally for the religious information and advice for the magazine with the article about the fall-out ethics and your brother’s [Robert McCown, S.J.] piece in it. I sure did like your brother’s piece and as for the other I am prepared to shoot any scoundrel that uses air intended for the family. First of course I will have to learn to shoot and then we will have to build the shelter. We keep talking about it but we haven’t started digging.
Some time I would like probably to go to a retreat. Right now, I am struggling to go to St. Louis to talk to the Sisters at Marillac College. I was supposed to go last spring, but the old lady that is president had to have her ear operated on. At least now presumably she can hear what I have to say. I have a story in the current issue of New World Writing #19 called “Everything That Rises Must Converge.” I would send you one but I haven’t got one.
Cheers and many thanks,
Did you know Bishop Hyland [Francis A., Atlanta Archdiocese] has resigned on account of poor health? I hope the Lord will send us a good one.
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO LOUISE AND THOMAS GOSSETT
O’Connor notes that Tom Gossett’s legacy endures at Wesleyan College, Macon, Georgia, in the appointment of a new professor in Southern literature. The academic field of Southern literature was becoming popular with professors from the outside. Institutions in the South increasingly hired academics with little to no regional roots to teach Southern literature and history. Their perspective often entailed “reconstructing” native Southerners by disabusing them of regional attitudes, practices, and speech.16 O’Connor is often bemused by such efforts that appear in the deracinated attitudes of academic characters in her stories such as Joy/Hulga, Asbury Fox, and Rayber.
MILLEDGEVILLE
8 DECEMBER 61
Maybe I had better just write a book called The Bear That Ran Away With It. That sounds to me like a title that could go places. If you see New World Writing, I have one in it called “Everything That Rises Must Converge.” That one will probably get called “Every Rabbit That Rises Will Engage.”
The Carson McCullars is the worst book [Clock Without Hands] I have ever read in my life. I haven’t read the Warren [Robert Penn] as I avoid the historiky [The Legacy of the Civil War].
Our staff has already started celebrating the season with unstamped whiskey. I don’t know whether they are still celebrating Thanksgiving or started celebrating Christmas but the effect is the same.
The lady who is teaching Southern Literature at Wesleyan these days is from Connecticut.
Merry Christmas,
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO FATHER JAMES McCOWN
O’Connor once again cites Robert McCown’s illuminating commentary about The Violent Bear It Away and mentions a sound review by a professor.
MILLEDGEVILLE
16 DEC 61
I hope you are back from being refreshed by the Mexicans and will have a cheery Christmas. I certainly did like your brother’s piece—at least there is somebody besides Bowen [Robert O.]. Bowen incidentally is at the University of Dallas. Some body wrote me he was a big man on some right-wing indignation committee. I should think he would be good at that.
Did you see the Gossetts? I sent your mama one of the sisters’ books. They’re all going around in circles at being authors. They’re getting stacks of letters and donations.
We are expecting Billy Sessions and his Greek wife this afternoon for to spend the weekend. Every body who has met her says Billy really did himself proud.
Cheers to you and please remember something I am trying to write in your prayers.
* * *
O’Connor is editing a narrative about Mexico that Father McCown was writing. In an earlier letter (March 4, 1962) she called the narrative a “travelogue,” praises the sequence of episodes, and hopes the narrative will be published.
MILLEDGEVILLE
11 MAR 62
The second installment was enjoyed as much as the first and we await the third [With McCown in Mexico]. I have just read a book called American Catholic Dilemma by Thos. F. O’Dea in a new paperback edition and if you read that you would probably decide you were needed more in the U.S. than in Mexico. If you haven’t read it, I’ll send it. Right now we are the lump that needs leavening. Our Lady of Guadaloupe will take care of Mexico. I hope the Gossetts get to read this account and I still wish you would make something out of it to publish.
* * *
O’Connor mentions commentary about her writing. She also notes the publication of Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter. As other letters reveal, Porter helped O’Connor achieve greater international recognition.
MILLEDGEVILLE
28 APRIL 62
Maybe I have arrived in conservative circles and just don’t know it. I take it you copped this issue from somebody. Do you want it back? This Robert Drake is somebody who reviewed my book once in Modern Age—another conservative journal [“Miss O’Connor and the Scandal of Redemption,” Fall 1960, 428–30]. Well, says I, if it takes a conservative to appreciate my works, it takes one, that’s all. Thanks also for the other cheerful article. I mostly agree with the lady, at least that you can’t do anything about it.
I am fixing to take off Tuesday to lecture at Rosary College and Notre Dame. Last week when I was at Converse [College, South Carolina], after my talk a gentleman from Texas came up and asked me if I would come to their school. I forget the name of it but it was 60 miles from Dallas (East Texas State Teachers College???). I told him I might sometime.
I am glad your mother is learning to make the most of her wheelchair. Dividends can be gained from such if you know how to do it.
Ship of Fools hasn’t come my way yet so it doesn’t look like its going to. I think I can wait on the paperback. She started out as a Catholic and I think has more or less ended up one, though not exactly a ring-the-bell and slap-the-book one. She eloped at the age of 16 from her convent school window and has subsequently (according to Caroline Tate) enjoyed seven husbands. She’s very pleasant withal, has had dinner here twice and I was on a panel [Wesleyan College, Macon, Georgia, March 27–28, 1960].17
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO TOM AND LOUISE GOSSETT
St. Mary’s University in Notre Dame, Indiana, is conferring an honorary degree. O’Connor had become good friends with Thomas Stritch, a Tennessee native and revered professor at Notre Dame University. The nephew of Cardinal Stritch (Chicago), Thomas Stritch helped O’Connor achieve notoriety in the Notre Dame community. Stritch and O’Connor also were mutu
al friends of Mr. and Mrs. Lon Cheney, and both visited them in Tennessee. In another letter to Father McCown, O’Connor notes, “St. Mary’s College at Notre Dame is going to give me an honorary Doctor of Letters…Catholic colidge, note.”18
MILLEDGEVILLE
16 MAY 62
Dear T & L,
We will put out the flags for June 4. Let us know the hour. If we are too tired to feed you, will go to the Sanford House, so don’t hesitate to appear at any hour. Also spend the night if that would be convenient. Your cats will have to keep to their cage says my parent, so you can prepare them for a traumatic experience of one kind or another.
You mean you didn’t get a cock and a hen? Write them and say you been jipped. I don’t know if they are still in bidnis or not but they probably are. If you can’t get a hen, you may have to pen up those cocks until after the season. I will look in the Go. Market Bulletin.
I’m getting my HaHa Degree from St. Mary’s College. The question is will real doctors of Philosophy speak to me?
Good Things out of Nazareth Page 26