Flannery
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121 “selling stories”: Bob Fawcell, “William Porter’s Writing Career — from Pulp to Post,” Daily Iowan, January 26, 1946.
122 “You can get an M.A. degree”: “Engle, Paul,” Current Biography 1942 (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1942), 249.
122 “was able to breathe”: FOC to Betty Hester, December 29, 1956, CW, 1017.
123 “a man’s realization”: FOC, State University of Iowa examination blue book, November 28, 1945, GCSU.
123 “It was a plain little room”: Jane Wilson, in discussion with the author, October 5, 2006. The original offices for the Writers’ Workshop were in Calvin Hall, just up the hill from the Iowa Memorial Union on Jefferson Street.
123 “Each meeting consists”: Paul Engle, “How Creative Writing Is Taught at the University of Iowa Workshop,” Des Moines Sunday Register, December 28, 1947.
123 “Her voice was quiet”: Mary Mudge Wiatt, in discussion with the author, October 1, 2006.
124 “dat coat”: FOC, “The Coat,” DoubleTake 2, no. 3 (Summer 1996): 39.
124 “What first stuns”: FOC, “The Writer and the Graduate School,” Alumnae Journal 13, no. 4 (Summer 1948): 4. She was more tart by the time she said in a later talk, “Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is they don’t stifle enough of them.” FOC, “The Nature and Aim of Fiction,” MM, 84.
124 “of the right sort”: James B. Hall, “Our Workshops Remembered: The Heroic Phase,” unpublished essay, 6, private collection.
124 “It did spoil”: Robie Macauley, Esprit: Journal of Thought and Opinion 8, no. 1 (University of Scranton, Scranton, Pa., Winter 1964): 34.
125 “Flannery was so cold”: Norma Hodges, in discussion with the author, May 6, 2005.
125 “I couldn’t though have written”: FOC to Maryat Lee, February 24, 1957, CW, 1023.
126 “pitched himself”: Norma Hodges, in discussion with the author, May 6, 2005.
126 “This scene of the attempted”: McCarthy, “Servant of Literature,” Washington Post, March 27, 1983.
126 “I was right young”: Sally Fitzgerald, “A Master Class: From the Correspondence of Caroline Gordon and Flannery O’Connor,” Georgia Review 33, no. 4. (Winter 1979): 845.
127 “When I went there”: Katherine Fugin, Faye Rivard, and Margaret Sieh, “An Interview with Flannery O’Connor, Censer (College of St. Teresa, Winona, Minn., Fall 1960): 59.
127 “discarded subject”: FOC, “The Crop,” The Complete Stories (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971), 34.
127 “Although I reckon”: Jean Wylder, “Flannery O’Connor, A Reminiscence and Some Letters,” North American Review 225, no. 1 (Spring 1970): 59.
127 “Then I began to write”: FOC interview with Harvey Breit, Galley Proof, WRCA-TV (NBC), New York, May 1955, Con, 6.
128 “When R. P. Warren”: Hall, “Our Workshops Remembered,” 6.
128 “Horgan never even knew”: FOC to Betty Hester, August 9, 1957, CW, 1042.
128 “a sort of waif of the art of writing”: Paul Horgan to Father Quinn, April 25, 1969, HB.
128 “I write only about two hours”: FOC to Cecil Dawkins, September 22, 1957, CW, 1042.
129 “in a rather uncertain”: Allen Maxwell to FOC, July 16, 1946, GCSU.
129 “an easier, freer childhood”: Sally Fitzgerald, “Flannery O’Connor, Patterns of Friendship, Patterns of Love,” Georgia Review 52, no. 3 (Fall 1998): 417.
129 “kindred spirits”: Barbara Tunnicliff Hamilton, “Flannery in Iowa City,” unpublished essay, 1, private collection.
129 “They would have house parties”: Barbara Tunnicliff Hamilton, in discussion with the author, October 2, 2005.
130 “business woman”: Hamilton, “Flannery in Iowa City,” 2.
130 “I didn’t bother her”: Barbara Tunnicliff Hamilton, in discussion with the author, October 2, 2005.
130 “had to”: Hamilton, “Flannery in Iowa City,” 1.
130 “She was very serious”: Barbara Tunnicliff Hamilton, in discussion with the author, October 2, 2005.
130 “With the door open”: Barbara Tunnicliff Hamilton, e-mail to the author, September 30, 2006.
131 “When more than half”: Doris Cone, “Writers’ Workshop at Iowa U. Draws New York Publisher,” Cedar Rapids Gazette, November 24, 1946.
131 “The Barber”: The story was first published in New Signatures: A Collection of College Writing, edited by Alan Swallow (Prairie City, Ill.: James A. Decker, 1948), 113–24. For a discussion of the story’s prob-able debt to Ring Lardner’s “The Haircut,” see Sarah Gordon, Flannery O’Connor: The Obedient Imagination (Atlanta: University of Georgia Press, 2000), 65.
131 “Flannery’s answer”: Jean Cash, “O’Connor in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop,” Flannery O’Connor Bulletin 24 (1995–96): 71.
132 “She once said to my wife”: James B. Hall, e-mail to the author, September 6, 2006.
132 “I see I should ride”: FOC to Betty Hester, November 16, 1957, CW, 1050.
132 black woman: Ralph C. Wood, Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2004), 102.
132 “Iowa Barber School”: FOC to Robie Macauley, October 13, 1953, CW, 914.
133 “like Billy Grahme”: Folder 17, GCSU.
133 “He thought of Bing Crosby”: Ibid. Actually O’Connor was confusing Boys Town, starring Spencer Tracy, with two films in which Bing Crosby played a priest — Going My Way (1944) and The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945).
133 “Now, Miss O’Connor”: Jean Cash, Flannery O’Connor: A Life (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002), 95.
133 “I didn’t really start”: FOC to Betty Hester, August 28, 1955, CW, 950–51.
134 “It started when”: Paul Levine, “The Soul of the Grotesque,” Minor American Novelists, edited by Charles Alva Hoyt (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), 107.
134 “a journey that never impressed”: FOC to Betty Hester, January 31, 1959, HB, 317.
134 Dixie Limited: In her talk “Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction,” O’Connor compared Faulkner to the Dixie Limited: “The presence alone of Faulkner in our midst makes a great difference in what the writer can and cannot permit himself to do. Nobody wants his mule and wagon stalled on the same track the Dixie Limited is roaring down,” CW, 818.
134 “the dilapidated station”: “1 p. working draft,” GCSU.
134 “I sat down next to”: FOC to Maryat Lee, April 28, 1960, HB, 392–93.
135 “the Oedipus complex”: “Look for Their Names on the Bindings,” Cedar Rapids Gazette, June 10, 1948.
135 “a thump of recognition”: FOC, “Wise Blood, working draft,” GCSU.
136 “pizen snake”: Andrew Nelson Lytle, “The Hind Tit,” I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition, by Twelve Southerners (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), 234.
136 “I was told later”: Andrew Lytle, Esprit: Journal of Thought and Opinion 8, no. 1 (University of Scranton, Pa., Winter 1964): 33.
136 “make a federal case”: Hall, “Our Workshops Remembered,” 11.
136 “She would put a man in bed”: Carl H. Griffin, “Andrew Lytle at DeKalb College, a Return Engagement,” Chattahoochee Review 8, no. 4 (Summer 1988): 98.
136 “sink the theme”: FOC to Betty Hester, January 28, 1957, Emory.
136 “a bale of cotton”: James B. Hall, e-mail to the author, September 6, 2006.
136 “She was a lovely girl”: Griffin, “Andrew Lytle,” 97–98.
136 “Why, she can just walk”: James B. Hall, e-mail to the author, July 14, 2005.
137 “People who were favored”: Eugene Brown, in discussion with the author, October 6, 2006.
137 “It comes to us all”: “Look for Their Names on the Bindings,” Cedar Rapids Gazette, June 10, 1948.
137 “She paid me for doing”: Hamilton, “Flannery in Iowa City,” 3.
137 “He
r magnified eyes”: Norma Hodges, “Flannery,” River King Poetry Supplement 2, no. 3 (Autumn 1996): 4.
137 T. S. Eliot’s: O’Connor’s adult library contained twelve of Eliot’s books. For a discussion of Eliot’s influence on O’Connor, see: Sally Fitzgerald, “The Owl and the Nightingale,” Flannery O’Connor Bulletin 13 (Autumn 1984): 44–58.
137 “His search for a physical home”: FOC, “SYNOPSIS: (after first four chapters),” GCSU.
138 “typed”: “Flannery O’Connor Wins Rinehart-Iowa Award for Novel,” Daily Iowan, May 29, 1947.
138 “We had dinner there”: Cash, Flannery O’Connor, 93.
139 “She was a loner”: Charles Embree, in discussion with the author, October 3, 2006.
139 “It was wholly typical”: Paul Engle to Robert Giroux, July 13, 1971, FSG.
139 “In spring, it was as though”: Hall, “Our Workshops Remembered,” 8.
139 “Andrew was talking”: James B. Hall, e-mail to the author, July 14, 2005.
139 “I was in Milledgeville”: Frances Florencourt, e-mail to the author, October 26, 2006.
140 Old Dental Building: In a letter to the author, dated October 29, 2006, Robert Yackshaw wrote, “I have spent time with her at the Student Union. And at the Library. And much more at The Old Dental Building next to University Hall: the place where graduate assistants had offices with lower members of the English faculty.”
140 “was most a hundred”: FOC to Roslyn Barnes, September 29, 1960, HB, 410.
140 “Mrs. Guzeman was not very fond”: FOC to Jean Williams Wylder, December 28, 1952, quoted in Wylder, “Flannery O’Connor,” 60.
140 “Flannery was sitting alone”: Ibid., 58.
141 “I doubt if Flannery”: Ibid., 59.
141 “He was a brilliant”: Bernie Halperin, in discussion with the author, June 25, 2005.
141 “entirely original”: Thomas E. Kennedy, “A Last Conversation with Robie Macauley,” Agni 45 (Boston College: 1997): 182.
141 “I used to date”: Robie Macauley to Steve Wilbers, April 16, 1976, UI.
142 “We ate in a big”: Cash, Flannery O’Connor, 100.
142 “Robie took care”: Ibid., 99.
142 “Flannery and I”: Ibid.
142 “party man . . . soul mate”: Ibid.
143 “So I reckon”: Wylder, “Flannery O’Connor,” 59.
143 “tame and friendly”: Robert Lowell to Allen Tate, March 15, 1950, Princeton.
143 “He was so sensitive”: James B. Hall, “Our Workshops Remembered,” 7.
143 “simple, austere”: FOC to Mary Virginia Harrison, “Tuesday,” GSCU.
143 “When it was gone”: Hank Messick to Stephen Wilbers, July 21, 1976, UI.
144 “right nice”: Wylder, “Flannery O’Connor,” 59.
144 “two black bears”: FOC, Complete Stories, 90; in “The Heart of the Park,” Hazel’s last name is Weaver.
144 “completely absorbed”: Wylder, “Flannery O’Connor,” 60.
144 “two indifferent bears”: FOC to Elizabeth Hardwick and Robert Lowell, March 17, 1953, CW. The two lions once in City Park had reportedly been brought back from Africa by Harry Bremer, who kept them in his carriage house before giving them to the zoo: Gerald Mansheim, Iowa City: An Illustrated History (Norfolk, Va.: Donning Company Publishers, 1989), 164.
144 “barbarous Georgia accent”: FOC to Carl Hartman, March 2, 1954, CW, 922.
145 “Flannery’s novel is sure”: Paul Griffiths to Paul Engle, February 16, 1948, “Papers of Paul Engle,” UI.
145 “Flannery, in spite of all”: Hansford Martin to Paul Engle, February 22, 1948, “Papers of Paul Engle,” UI.
145 “We would invite”: John Gruen, in discussion with the author, October 5, 2006.
145 “demon rewriter”: Kennedy, “A Last Conversation,” Agni, 182.
145 “Woman on the Stairs”: Tomorrow 8, no. 12 (August): 40–44. Tomorrow was published in New York by Garrett Publications between September 1941 and August 1951. Retitled “A Stroke of Good Fortune,” this story appeared in the Spring 1953 edition of Shenandoah,and as the fourth story in A Good Man Is Hard to Find.
145 “She read the story”: Jane Wilson, in discussion with the author, October 5, 2006.
146 “She had this air”: Norma Hodges, in discussion with the author, May 6, 2005.
146 “a personally shy”: Austin Warren to Elizabeth Ames, February 20, 1948, Yaddo.
146 “as much promise as anyone”: Andrew Lytle to Elizabeth Ames, February 24, 1948, Yaddo.
146 “one of the best young writers”: Paul Engle to Elizabeth Ames, April 2, 1949, Yaddo.
146 “Flannery seems happiest”: Hansford Martin to Paul Engle, April 24, 1948, “Papers of Paul Engle,” UI.
146 “I’d say the description”: Wylder, “Flannery O’Connor,” 58.
146 “flat, nasal drawl”: Gene Brzenk to Jean Wylder, December 26, 1972, UI.
147 “For once there was not”: Wylder, “Flannery O’Connor,” 62.
CHAPTER FIVE: UP NORTH
148 “It did not take Georgia”: FOC to Elizabeth Ames, August 17, 1948, Yaddo.
149 “shadow”: Marjorie Peabody Waite, Yaddo: Yesterday and Today (Albany, N.Y.: Argus Press, 1933), 21.
149 “creating, creating, creating”: Ibid., 26.
149 “more distinguished activity”: John Cheever, statement included in the minutes of the meeting of The Corporation of Yaddo at Yaddo, September 7, 1968, Yaddo.
150 “and Flannery O’Connor”: Clifford Wright, “Diary,” June 8, 1948, Yaddo.
150 “very quiet”: Patricia Highsmith to Ronald Blythe, September 3, 1967; quoted in Andrew Wilson, Beautiful Shadow (New York: Bloomsbury, 2003), 141.
150 “I really think”: FOC to Cecil Dawkins, December 10, 1959, HB, 362.
151 “She is like a well-meaning”: Robert Lowell to George Santayana, November 14, 1948, The Letters of Robert Lowell, edited by Saskia Hamilton (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), 115.
151 “There was the same laughter”: Frederick Morton, in discussion with the author, November 19, 2006.
151 “ALL the time”: FOC to Paul Engle, April 7, 1949, CW, 883.
151 “I would have been happier”: FOC to Cecil Dawkins, July 19, 1962, HB, 483.
151 Hillside Studio: Cecil Dawkins worked in Meadow Studio, in 1962; in a letter of August 1, 1962 (ibid.), O’Connor writes to Dawkins, of her own 1948 studio, “Might well have been the one you have now”; O’Connor’s description of her studio and her letter to Dawkins indicate that her studio was not on North Farm, used in 1948; of the three possible studios on the property, including Meadow, only Hillside had a “fireplace.”
152 “a long single room”: Ibid.
152 “greenpeaish”: FOC, “The Peeler,” unpublished manuscript, 6, Yaddo. In Wise Blood, Enoch’s tie is “the color of green peas,” CW, 23.
152 “In my whole time”: FOC to Betty Hester, September 21, 1957, HB, 241.
152 “arty”: FOC to Betty Hester, August 4, 1962, CW, 1171.
152 “At the breakfast table”: FOC to Cecil Dawkins, December 23, 1959, CW, 1115.
153 “Miss Highsmith”: Wright, “Diary,” March 28, 1948.
153 “between those two stools”: Patricia Highsmith to Ronald Blythe, September 3, 1967; quoted in Wilson, Beautiful Shadow, 141.
153 “in any collection”: FOC to Cecil Dawkins, December 23, 1959, CW, 1115.
153 “Dad had been a ragpicker”: Jim Shannon, in discussion with the author, May 25, 2005.
153 “all well over forty”: FOC to Cecil Dawkins, December 23, 1959, CW, 1114.
154 “I remember she was”: Frederick Morton, in discussion with the author, November 19, 2006.
154 “She lives by a kind”: FOC to Betty Hester, March 19, 1960, HB, 383–84.
154 “an accomplished pianist”: Elizabeth Ames, “Paul Moor file,” Yaddo.
154 “Elizabeth McKee was”: Robert Giroux, in discussion with the author, Novem-ber
13, 2003.
154 “in my vague”: FOC to Elizabeth McKee, June 19, 1948, HB, 5.
154 “Your work sounds very”: Elizabeth McKee to FOC, June 23, 1948, GCSU.
155 “I don’t have my novel”: FOC to Elizabeth McKee, July 13, 1948, HB, 5.
155 “after a few weeks”: FOC to Betty Hester, August 4, 1962, CW, 1171–72.
155 “a real Yaddo ringer”: Robert Lowell to Elizabeth Bishop, January 5, 1949, Letters, 122.
156 “By the way”: Edward Maisel to Elizabeth Ames, “O’Connor Guest File,” Yaddo.
156 “She was completely”: Robert Giroux, in discussion with the author, Novem-ber 13, 2003.
156 “Do not make the absurd”: Jacques Maritain, Art and Scholasticism: With Other Essays (Art et Scolastique), translated by J. F. Scanlan (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930), 54.
156 “Then you may count on”: Elizabeth Ames to FOC, July 26, 1948, “O’Connor Guest File,” Yaddo.
156 “I have worked with much”: FOC to Elizabeth Ames, July 27, 1948, “O’Connor Guest File,” Yaddo.
156 “Dear Flannery”: Wright, “Diary,” July 30, 1948.
156 “Dear Elizabeth”: FOC to Elizabeth Ames, August 17, 1948, “O’Connor Guest File,” Yaddo.
157 “I sleep in my coffin”: FOC to Paul Engle, August 25, 1948, “Papers of Paul Engle,” UI.
157 “It’s too hot”: FOC to Elizabeth Ames, August 17, 1948, “O’Connor Guest File,” Yaddo.
157 “ancient wealthy”: FOC to Clifford Wright, August 10, 1948, Wright, “Diary.”
157 “She was a brilliant”: Frederick Morton, in discussion with the author, Novem-ber 19, 2006.
157 “My love to you”: Elizabeth Ames to Elizabeth Hardwick, November 23, 1948, “Hardwick Guest File,” Yaddo.
157 “She seems to have”: Malcolm Cowley, “O’Connor Guest File,” Yaddo.
157 “hard to like”: Newton Arvin, ibid.
158On Native Grounds: Published by Harcourt, Brace in 1942.
158 “a thorny mysterious return”: Alfred Kazin, New York Jew (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 312.
158 “It is beautiful”: FOC to Cecil Dawkins, September 6, 1962, CW, 1174.
158 “I cannot really believe”: FOC to Elizabeth McKee, July 21, 1948, HB, 6.