Good Things out of Nazareth
Page 29
Yesterday this piece came in the mails from Marcelle, and I was pleased to see it, and send it on. I have gone through here the same exhausting treadmill of reporters, camera men, translators, critics, writers, cocktail parties, teas, lunches, interviews, and have got away half-alive as usual. But coming back nicely in a little apartment over in the Lion de Belfort section, not stylish, just a good place to be, and have really disappeared, and am getting to work again.
At last I am getting out that long-delayed collection of short stories I prefer, and I chose your “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.” My I hope you will let me have it; it is a marvelous and terrible story, I want to try to say something about it in the preface I am writing for the book.
I never forget you standing among your peacocks and I remember well the speech you made at that writers’ conference [Wesleyan College, Macon, Georgia]—I hope you are well and merry and working just as you would like.
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO MAURICE-EDGAR COINDREAU
O’Connor continues to endure physical suffering without complaining. As several letters reveal, Regina O’Connor’s vigilant health care made possible the continued writing of O’Connor as her condition worsened.
MILLEDGEVILLE
12 MAY. 64
Dear M. Coindreau,
I am cheered to hear you’ve finished the translation [The Violent Bear It Away]. I wish my news were as good. I had to have an operation in February. It was a success but it set going my chronic trouble (disseminated lupus) and I have just got out of the hospital again and am supposed to stay in bed, no company; no work. My aunt Mary (the one in town) had herself a heart attack in April and she is now out here with us, recuperating along with me. All this being the case, I think September would be better. I had a blood transfusion yesterday which is why I have the energy to write you a letter. This is one of those diseases where you are allergic to your own protein or some such foolishness. Anyway I am doing what the doctors tell me to and writing my stories in my head. By September I hope to have thrown this off. My mother is fine so far and sends you her best. She’s running a hospital though, and without much in the way of help.
If you want to write me some of the points you want to talk about, I can be thinking of them and write you as I get to feeling stronger.
Maybe by September, Equinox [donkey] will have a brother or sister. He has just started to learn to bray and he practices a[t] six o’clock in the morning and all the peacocks try to drown him out as they apparently don’t think much of his voice.
I have a new story in the current Sewanee Review [“Revelation”] which you may like and can probably find in the Sweet Briar College library.
Again I wish we could make it June, but I guess Sept. will be better.
* * *
The following letter dates a few years back to the French translation of Wise Blood. O’Connor asks that her tutor’s explanatory introduction be removed from the French edition. O’Connor is amazed that Coindreau, having made Faulkner’s characters accessible to the French, also renders the atheist preacher of Wise Blood, Hazel Motes, understandable to foreign readers.
MILLEDGEVILLE
GEORGIA
4 DECEMBER 58
Dear M. Coindreau:
Caroline [Gordon] Tate has told me that you plan to come South in the spring and I write to ask if you may be coming through Milledgeville and if so if we may have the pleasure of a visit from you. We should love to have you stay overnight with us or any length of time you find convenient. Milledgeville is very much of the South and I should like to show it to you.
I also write about another matter: Mrs. Tate’s introduction to WISE BLOOD for the French edition. I have felt uneasy about an introduction for some time but my thoughts on the subject have only recently crystalized into a decision. I do not believe an introduction is advisable for this French edition.
The French are too intelligent to need telling what a book is about and I am sure an introduction would only irritate them and put any discussion of the book on a factional plane. I have written Caroline and explained that I think a living author should allow his book to stand on its own and that I prefer not to use an introduction. I think she will understand.
Should I write to Gallimard and request that there be no introduction or is it enough to have taken this up with you? I am anxious to have the matter settled.
I am very pleased that you are the one translating my book. It is hard to imagine. It is hard to imagine a M. Hazel Motes. My French is feeble but I look forward to attempting to read the translation, and I hope that we shall see you this spring.
Sincerely,
* * *
O’Connor once again praises Coindreau’s translating. He apparently was familiar with successful French editions of novels by Sinclair Lewis and Erskine Caldwell featuring rural preachers. Coindreau made the dialect of such characters accessible to the French.
MILLEDGEVILLE
GEORGIA
18 JANUARY 59
Dear M. Coindreau,
We are delighted that you will be able to come down in April. I expect to be here all during April except from the 22nd to the 25th. Milledgeville is not accessible by train but buses from Atlanta and Macon come in at various convenient times during the day, and if you will let me know when you will arrive, we shall be there to meet you.
It had not occurred to me that the French wouldn’t know about itinerant preachers; however I don’t think Caroline’s introduction would throw any light on that aspect of the matter. An article on the subject I would be very fine or perhaps a translator’s note describing the itinerant preacher as a Southern institution. Being a Catholic I have never heard an itinerant preacher myself but the atmosphere in the South is permeated with their effects. One doesn’t have to attend camp meetings to get the general idea.
I have never read either Elmer Gantry [Sinclair Lewis] or Journeyman [Erskine Caldwell], but I’ll try to rectify this lack before you come.
Thank you again for your letter and the prospect of a visit.
Sincerely,
Flannery O’Connor
MILLEDGEVILLE
GEORGIA
19 JULY 59
Dear M. Coindreau,
I don’t know whether this is address enough to reach you, but I hope so. I have been assiduously collecting clippings about evangelists for you and enclose three, one on horseback and two of the juvenile variety, one of these being female. I am wondering what the word is in French for lady-evangelist.
We were pleased to get your card from Spain. Our day in Barcelona was one of the most pleasant we had, made so I am afraid by the fact that there were geese in the courtyard of the Cathedral.
This summer I have done a good deal of rewriting on my novel [The Violent Bear It Away] but yesterday I sent it to the publisher for good. I think it’s a great deal improved from the time you saw it.
I haven’t heard much from Caroline [Gordon] except that she in engaged in the business of getting a divorce, a very doleful affair.
All my peacocks are shedding and are walking around in a very bedraggled condition. No one wants to take pictures of them now. My mother and I are both hoping that the next spring you will come down to see us again. Spring is much the best time to be in Georgia. The heat is terrific here now and will be well into September.
I do appreciate all you are doing to make Wise Blood palatable to the French, and I’ll hope to hear more about it later.
Our best to you,
Flannery
MILLEDGEVILLE
GEORGIA
1 NOVEMBER 59
Dear M. Coindreau,
Caroline [Gordon] finally visited us last weeken
d and we sent her back with an assortment of messages for you, chief of which was that we will most certainly expect you to spend Easter with us and we are already looking forward to it.
I enclose two very edifying clippings that I have been saving for your collection. They are a little weather-beaten by now.
Caroline seemed in pretty good spirits, all things considered. The divorce won’t affect her Catholicism unless she decides she wants to remarry which she couldn’t do and remain in the Church. After having done battle these many years, I shouldn’t think she’d be tempted to marry again, unless she lost the use of reason.
I am hoping my French will be sufficient for me to read your introduction on evangelism. It is too bad this couldn’t be an illustrated introduction, with photographs of the Methodist preacher on horseback, the boy carrying the ball for Christ, and Lord Joseph and Son. Perhaps you had better write a whole book on this subject.
All the best to you from my mother and me,
Yours,
Flannery
MILLEDGEVILLE
GEORGIA
5 JANUARY 60
Dear M. Coindreau,
The book [La sagesse dans le sang] arrived this morning and I am delighted with it. I can get the gist of the introduction on one reading but it will take me several to know what it is actually about. Do you think that if I perfect my French on LA SAGESSE DANS LE SANG I will speak French like Hazel Motes or Mrs. Watts [Leona] if I ever get to Paris? I might not then be received in the best society.
My editor at Farr[ar] Straus and Cudahy sent me the NFR bulletin. ES&C should be sending you THE VIOLENT BEAR IT AWAY in a week or two. I hope you like it as revised, and I certainly hope you will translate it. I notice, if my French does not deceive me, that in the introduction to Wise Blood, you mention the new book and indicate that the great-uncle in the new one bears some resemblance to Hazel Mote’s grandfather. He does; though he is a less puritanical figure, more the real prophet.
We appreciated your Christmas cards, my mother the farm and me the birds. It has been very warm here. With the result that the peacocks are ahead of the season and are strutting all over the yard. Usually this does not begin until late February.
You said once that I should send a picture to Gallimard. I don’t know if that is still necessary, but I enclose one which I have just gotten around to having taken, and you can send it if you like.
We are expecting to see you at the Easter vacation.
Again my very great thanks to you. I am going to read every word of LA SAGESSE DANS LE SANG!
Yours,
Flannery
GEORGIA
18 JULY 60
Dear M. Coindreau,
Well, here are the pictures that came out and as you can see they are very pale and anemic, which is the case with most pictures I take. However, I think the ones of you sitting on the porch are good if you don’t mind straining your eyesight to see them.
We certainly enjoyed your visit and next year when you come we will try not to present you with so many ladies who talk so much. Mrs. Freeman paid us a second visit a week later and I see she never runs down or out of conversation.
I am much relieved that you are going to look over that gentleman’s translation of my stories, as I was not very confident it would be a good translation.29 Now I won’t worry about it.
Who should call this morning from Princeton but Mrs. Gordon Tate Herself. She is going to visit an Aunt in Chattanooga and will come by here on the 26th, arriving on your bus. I hope that no stray dogs will show their faces during her visit and that we can keep down all animal incidents, etc.
The card you sent us from the station in Atlanta was edifying and we hope you’ll continue to keep good company, read good literature and keep us posted on your comings and goings. We’ll expect to see you next year moreover.
Our best,
Flannery
FLANNERY O’CONNOR TO KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
As O’Connor’s fame grows, she complains about unflattering pictures of her. She concurs with Porter’s praise of her most famous story which O’Connor enjoys reading at literary gatherings. She also finds a Bible verse applicable to journalists.
MILLEDGEVILLE
GEORGIA
17 AUGUST 63
Thanks so much for the clipping. My French is just bad enough for me to take great pleasure in it—I’m not able to disagree with him because I don’t know exactly what he’s saying except that I live on a vast estate among many beasts and I can agree with that. I’m glad you don’t remember me with the fretful expression of this picture. The fact is I think photographers are the lowest breed of men and just being in the presence of one brings out my worst face. I have just recently had a bad experience with those people at Jubilee. I let their photographer come here (which I should have had more sense than to do) and you should see the result. This is a beautiful place but in his pictures it looks like Oklahoma in the duststorm. I look like one of the Oakie women after years of wrath and semi-starvation. I asked them not to use the pictures but they informed it was too late and used them anyway.
I am glad to think of you in Paris writing, escaping the cocktail parties if not the revenuers. I guess on the latter score you just cain’t win. I don’t make any money to speak of, but I have to keep going to college festivals etc to pay my income tax every three months. I haven’t figured it out. Something must be wrong somewhere.
I’m sure Harcourt, Brace will be glad to have you use “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” in your collection. I certainly will but I don’t have any say-so in the matter. I’m going to Hollins and Notre Dame of Maryland and possibly Georgetown this fall and am going to read that story. It’s the only one of mine that I can read aloud without laughing and it’s about the right length—but after I read it I feel as if I’ve been shot five times.
I hope that when you come back you’ll be coming to Georgia again sometime and will come to see us on our vast estate and let me show you the many beasts. The other day I had a letter from a paper in Atlanta asking me to give them my favorite Bible verse. Wrote them I didn’t have one (the idea!) but later I decided that if the occasion ever came up again, my favorite verse would be from the end of Jonas: “And shall not I spare Ninive, that great city, where there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who don’t know their right hand from their left, and many beasts?”
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER TO FLANNERY O’CONNOR
Porter assumes a place in an international community of writers. Following up on Caroline Gordon’s predictions in chapter one, Porter places O’Connor in the canon of modern American literature. O’Connor’s position leads Porter to conclude prophetically that America’s national literature is largely chauvinistic and diminishes writing by women.
LAST WORD FROM VILLA ADRIENNA, PAVILLION POUSSIN, 19 AVENUE DU GENERAL LAOLERO,
PARIS, XIV LA FRANCE
20 OCTOBER 1963
Bits of common knowledge I have picked up lately….My avenue used to be Orleans, and they did not re-name it for the first husband of Pauline Bonaparte, as I thought vaguely, but for the French General who, according to French history, liberated Paris single-handed on that July Day in 1944. Well, they can have it—The French are not the only nation who are busy revising history. There is a legend afoot that Ernest Hemingway did it, with a jeepload of GI’S. (American version).30
That’s about all I’ve learned lately. Here is that news cutting I mentioned, and I see you are on the same page at least with Mary McCarthy, “whose place in contemporary American letters is so very particular one can compare her (reputation) to that of Madame Nathalie Sarraute [French novelist and critic] with us.”31 There is such a thing as fractured English, too. Well, anyway, it’s a
pretty good review of your now celebrated Brave Men Do Not Run in the Streets. Meaning, I am sure, that they are Hard To Find, or Do Not Grow On Bushes. This Kanters is the man who keeps writing about the “Jewish Renascence” in American literature, and seems to think the American short story began with Dorothy Parker. But just the same, he nearly knows what he is reading in your stories, he is limited but good as far as he goes: but a man who thinks of Sarraute and Parker, McCarthy and O’Connor in the same review is not to be trusted in the long run, and a nice long run you’re going to have, that’s certain.32 And you will for some time find yourself teamed with any number of unlikely running mates—I was for years upon years compared with Katherine Mansfield. My own view was, and is, that we were both women, both named Katherine, and both wrote short stories, and there the resemblance ends. Then it was Willa Cather. Then it was Hemingway and even Faulkner, now and then. And now I have graduated into the society of Flaubert, Melville, Stendhal, Henry James, and even to Tolstoy. Fast company, I call it, and it does me no earthly good, and it is the device of lazy-minded third-rate reviewers who can’t read them. They have heard these names or perhaps know certain persons who have read them but I daresay that is all.