Flannery
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275 “I have just had the doubtful”: FOC to John Lynch, February 19, 1956, HB, 138.
276 “The competition is at least”: FOC to Betty Hester, May 19, 1956, Emory.
276 “When forced to a program”: Ibid., February 25, 1956.
276 “without pause, break, breath”: Ibid., May 19, 1956.
276 “I was basically treated as”: William Sessions, GCSU, March 30, 2006.
277 “conversation is limited”: FOC to Betty Hester, June 16, 1956, Emory.
277 “I always take people”: FOC to Betty Hester, June 28, 1956, CW, 997.
278 “I seem to attract”: FOC to Robie Macauley, May 18, 1955, CW, 935.
278 “Some Very Peculiar Types”: FOC to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, May 8, 1955, CW, 933.
278 “Mary Flannery is a sweet”: James H. McCown, “Remembering Flannery O’Connor,” America (September 8, 1979): 86.
278 “a white Packard”: FOC to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, January 22, 1956, HB, 133.
278 “Proud you did”: McCown, “Remembering Flannery O’Connor,” 86.
279 “turkey-dog”: FOC to Betty Hester, February 11, 1956, CW, 986.
279 “of the scope and seriousness”: McCown, “Remembering Flannery O’Connor,” 88.
279 “Never let it be said”: FOC to Erik Langkjaer, April 29, 1956, private collection.
279 “a great mother-saver”: FOC to Betty Hester, August 11, 1956, HB, 169.
279 “very oriented towards making”: Rosa Lee Walston, quoted in Jean Cash, Flannery O’Connor: A Life (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002), 161.
280 “A View of the Woods”: The story was published in Partisan Review 24 (Fall 1957), reprinted in Prize Stories 1959: The O. Henry Awards, edited by Paul Engle and Constance Urdang, and in The Best American Short Stories 1958, edited by Martha Foley. It is the third story in Everything That Rises Must Converge.
280 “breathless”: FOC to Betty Hester, October 20, 1956, Emory.
280–281 “While they make hash”: FOC to Betty Hester, September 8, 1956, CW, 1004.
281 “history of horror”: FOC to Betty Hester, October 31, 1956, Emory.
281 “men and men’s ideas”: Bo Emerson, “The Secret Life of Betty Hester,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 28, 1999.
281 “confirmed”: Allan Berube, Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War Two (New York: Free Press, 1990), 263.
281 “unbearably guilty”: FOC to Betty Hester, October 31, 1956, Emory.
281 “I can’t write you fast enough”: Ibid.
282 “I wish you could come”: FOC to Betty Hester, November 18, 1956, CW, 1007.
282 “Simone Weil but even more”: Ibid., December 28, 1956, CW, 1017.
282 “in some odd ways”: Betty Hester to Greg Johnson, November 20, 1996, private collection.
283 “Strike the Tent!”: “GSCW President Is Speaker for R. E. Lee Program,” Union-Recorder, January 24, 1957.
283 “The people who burned the cross”: FOC to Maryat Lee, January 9, 1957, CW, 1019.
283 “the institution of higher”: FOC to Betty Boyd Love, [n.d., postmarked September 20, 1952], HB, 44.
284 “Maryat was the ultimate bohemian”: Mary Dean Lee, in discussion with the author, January 18, 2005.
285 “I remember that I was feeling”: Maryat Lee, “Flannery, 1957,” Flannery O’Connor Bulletin 5 (1976): 39.
285 “My, aren’t you smaht”: Maryat Lee, unpublished memoir, private collection.
285 “Just as I opened”: Lee, “Flannery, 1957,” 40.
285 “the soft long swinging”: Lee, unpublished memoir, private collection.
285 “She was so awkward”: Ibid.
286 “the croupy cry”: Lee, “Flannery, 1957,” 41.
286 “The parental presence”: FOC to Maryat Lee, January 9, 1957, CW, 1020.
286 “Her words had theological”: Lee, “Flannery, 1957,” 43.
286 “I was excited”: Ibid., 44.
286 “In Care of the Henhouse”: Georgia A. Newman, “A ‘Contrary Kinship’: The Correspondence of Flannery O’Connor and Maryat Lee — Early Years, 1957–1959 (PhD dissertation, University of South Florida, 1999), 35; Lee never sent the letter so addressed.
287 “kinship between us”: FOC to Maryat Lee, May 24, 1960, HB, 398.
287 “I thought now this is a mighty”: Ibid., January 31, 1957, HB, 200.
287 “on and off”: FOC to Maryat Lee, February 24, 1957, CW, 1022.
287 “the reek of Baldwin County”: FOC, unpublished version of “The Fiction Writer and His Country,” delivered at GSCW, “FOC Collection,” GCSU; included in file of correspondence with Mrs. Rebekah Poller, daughter of the GSCW social science professor Herbert Massey; Poller attended the lecture, and recommended the talk to her friend Granville Hicks.
287 “a real morality play”: FOC to Maryat Lee, January 31, 1957, HB, 200.
287 “If the writer is successful”: FOC, unpublished version of “The Fiction Writer and His Country,” GCSU.
288 “by Ronald Re-gan”: FOC to Betty Hester, September 8, 1956, CW, 1004.
288 “a tap-dancer”: FOC to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, December 10, 1956, CW, 1009.
288 “disliking it heartily”: FOC to Denver Lindley, March 6, 1957, HB, 206.
288 “Children now point”: FOC to Maryat Lee, March 10, 1957, CW, 1027.
288 “better judgment”: FOC to Granville Hicks, March 3, 1957, HB, 205.
288 “I begin to feel”: Ibid., 206.
288 “designed for a student audience”: Ibid., February 24, 1957, HB, 202.
288 “Cathlick”: FOC to Brainard and Frances Neel Cheney, March 5, 1957, CC, 52.
288–289 “She seemed frail”: Robert Fitzgerald, “Introduction,” Everything That Rises Must Converge, xxiii.
289 “inordinate affection”: FOC to Betty Hester, May 5, 1962, CW, 1162.
289 “had wonderful things to say”: Robert Fitzgerald, “Introduction,” Everything That Rises, xxiii.
289 “25% Bumbling Boys”: FOC to Maryat Lee, April 17, 1957, HB, 215.
289 “intent upon it”: Robert Fitzgerald, “Introduction,” Everything That Rises, xxiii.
289 “unhappy combinations”: FOC, “The Fiction Writer and His Country,” CW, 802.
289 “To the hard of hearing”: Ibid., 806.
289 “score”: Robert Fitzgerald, “Introduction,” Everything That Rises, xxiii.
290 “Quite soon”: Elizabeth Bishop, “Flannery O’Connor, 1925–1964,” New York Review of Books 3, no. 4 (October 8, 1964): 21.
290 “I sat down with a six pack”: Cash, Flannery O’Connor, 240.
290 “I tried reading them aloud”: Louise H. Abbot, “Remembering Flannery,” Flannery O’Connor Bulletin 23 (1994–95): 61.
290 “I am very glad”: FOC to Louise Abbot, February 27, 1957, HB, 205.
291 “we would have a few beers”: Louise Abbot to Maryat Lee, January 19, 1977, private collection.
291 “very expressive”: Abbot, “Remembering Flannery,” 63.
291 “You stay here”: Ibid., 65.
291 “famous writer”: Ibid., 63.
292 “where your treasure”: Ibid., 65.
292 “What in the wurld-d”: Ibid., 66.
292 “The following is good”: FOC to Maryat Lee, March 10, 1957, CW, 1027.
293 “intense manner”: Donald Richie, letter to the author, October 15, 2007.
293 “bisexual”: Robert E. Lee, in discussion with the author, May 2, 2004; Fran Belin, in discussion with the author, November 12, 2004.
293 “Oh Flannery”: Maryat Lee to FOC [n.d., late May 1957], copies in FOC Collection, GCSU.
293 “Everything has to be diluted”: FOC to Maryat Lee, June 9, 1957, HB, 225.
293 “I am not to be got rid of”: FOC to Maryat Lee, October 8, 1957, CW, 1045.
293 “The Enduring Chill”: The story was published in Harper’s Bazaar 91, July 1958, and was the fourth story in Everything That
Rises Must Converge.
294 “a closet with a toilet”: FOC, “The Enduring Chill,” CW, 552.
294 “a play about Negroes”: Ibid., 551.
294 “suffered my remarks”: Lee, “Flannery, 1957,” 43.
294 “the orthodoxy”: FOC to Maryat Lee, January 9, 1957, CW, 1020.
294 “But — the last paragraph”: Maryat Lee to FOC, July 9, 1958, GCSU.
294 “reminds me of my character”: FOC to Maryat Lee, May 6, 1959, HB, 331.
294 “Wishing for an icicle”: Maryat Lee to FOC, August 22, 1958, GCSU.
294 “the pseudo-literary&theological”: FOC to Betty Hester, March 7, 1958, HB, 271.
295 “theology in modern literature”: FOC to Father James H. McCown, Decem-ber 29, 1957, CW, 1057.
295 “She really bore down”: Jean Cash, “Milledgeville 1957–1960: O’Connor’s ‘Pseudo-Literary & Theological Gatherings,” Flannery O’Connor Bulletin 18 (1989): 25.
295 “not particularly scintillating”: Cash, “Milledgeville 1957–1960,” 20–21.
295 “Maryat read us a play”: Mary Barbara Tate, in discussion with the author, June 3, 2004.
295 “was doing anything”: Ted R. Spivey, Flannery O’Connor: The Woman, the Thinker, the Visionary (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1955), 84.
295 “to show his little boy”: FOC to John Hawkes, July 27, 1958, CW, 1075.
296 “My father tempted me”: Christopher Dickey, e-mail to the author, January 17, 2005.
296 “a black halter”: FOC to Cecil Dawkins, April 14, 1958, CW, 1069.
296 “plowed all over the yard”: Ibid., 1068.
296 “gracious”: Katherine Anne Porter, “Gracious Greatness,” Esprit: Journal of Thought and Opinion 8, no. 1 (University of Scranton, Scranton, Pa., Winter 1964): 50.
CHAPTER NINE: EVERYTHING THAT RISES
297 “holy exhaustion”: FOC to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, November 4, 1957, CW, 1048.
297 “will of iron”: Ibid., February 26, 1958, CW, 1064.
298 “I bet that’ll be real”: Ibid., November 4, 1957, CW, 1048.
298 “7 into 17”: FOC to Betty Hester, December 14, 1957, CW, 1056.
298 “Baloney Castle”: FOC to Ashley Brown, April 14, 1958, HB, 277.
298 “Left for two minutes”: FOC to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, February 26, 1958, CW, 1064.
298 “where we were going”: FOC to Betty Hester, April 4, 1958, CW, 1067.
298 “my cousin is certainly”: FOC to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, November 4, 1957, CW, 1048.
299 “Last Will”: “Last Will and Testament of Mary Flannery O’Connor,” April 18, 1958, GCSU.
299 “She is reading the Lourds”: FOC to Betty Hester, November 16, 1957, CW, 1049–50.
299 “like Mr. Head and Nelson”: FOC to Maryat Lee, November 10, 1957, GCSU.
299 “I am properly back”: FOC to Robert Giroux, April 17, 1958, HB, 278.
300 “our new important”: Roger Straus to Silvio Senigallia, April 22, 1958, FSG.
300 On spring days: The description of the Fitzgerald villa is taken from W. A. Sessions, “Sally Fitzgerald 1916–2000: The Gratitude Is Ours,” Cheers! 8,no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2000).
300 “wonderful”: FOC to Ashley Brown, May 26, 1958, CW, 1072.
300–301 “Instead of seeing”: Ibid.
301 “almost unreadable”: Gabrielle Rolin, letter to author, September 26, 2007.
301 “She said to me”: Sally Fitzgerald, “The Invisible Father,” Christianity and Literature 47, no. 1 (Autumn 1997): 7.
302 “clip-joint”: FOC to William Sessions, May 15, 1958, CW, 1071.
302 “Aquéro”: Ruth Harris, Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age (New York: Viking, 1999), 5.
302 “a hemorrhage of bad taste”: Ibid., 173.
302 “the religious goods stores”: FOC to Ashley Brown, May 26, 1958, CW, 1072.
302 “nowhere have I seen”: Harris, Lourdes, 339.
302 “heart that never stops”: The Official Guide of the Sanctuary, Sanctuaires Notre-Dame de Lourdes, 18.
302 “The heavy hand of the prelate”: FOC to Ashley Brown, May 26, 1958, CW, 1072.
303 “The sight of Faith”: Katherine Anne Porter, “Gracious Greatness,” Esprit 8, no. 1 (University of Scranton, Scranton, Pa., Winter 1964): 56.
303 “I joined them for lunch”: W. A. Sessions, “Sally Fitzgerald 1916–2000,” 4.
304 as “a pilgrim”: FOC to Betty Hester, December 14, 1957, CW, 1056.
304 “hyper-thyroid”: FOC to Betty Hester, May 17, 1958, HB, 282.
304les piscines: The seventeen marble baths and stone portico were built in 1955.
304 “At least there are no societal”: FOC to Elizabeth Bishop, June 1, 1958, CW, 1073.
304 “Nobody I am sure”: FOC to Betty Hester, May 17, 1958, HB, 282.
305 “After lunch we left Barcelona”: “Diary of Eleanor and Marie Bennett,” Archives, Diocese of Savannah.
305 “There is a wonderful radiance”: FOC to Betty Hester, “Monday” [May 5, 1958], HB, 280.
306 “Shrines to the Virgin”: FOC to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, May 11, 1958, CW, 1069.
306 “4 old ladies”: FOC to Betty Hester, April 19, 1958, HB, 280.
306 “write up”: FOC to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, February 26, 1958, CW, 1064.
306 “revived as soon as”: Ibid., May 11, 1958, CW, 1069.
306 “The Freak in Modern Fiction”: A draft of the lecture intended for May 1958 is kept in the “FOC Collection,” GCSU, along with a draft of the variant lecture she gave on “The Freak in Southern Fiction” at Birmingham-Southern College on Novem-ber 25, 1958.
306 “My capacity for staying home”: FOC to Ashley Brown, May 16, 1958, CW, 1071.
306 “Ah, seeing the Pope”: FOC to Brainard and Frances Neel Cheney, December 2, 1958, CC, 81.
306 “experience is the greatest”: FOC to Maryat Lee, May 20, 1958, HB, 284.
307 “a beautiful child”: Sally Fitzgerald, “Chronology,” CW, 1251.
307 “I prayed there for the novel”: FOC to Janet McKane, February 25, 1963, CW, 1179.
307 “much better contract”: FOC to Betty Hester, April 19, 1958, HB, 280.
307 “The little vacation”: FOC to Cecil Dawkins, May 22, 1958, HB, 284.
307 “Unfortunately not any 50”: FOC to Betty Hester, June 14, 1958, HB, 288.
308 “You have to push”: Ibid., July 12, 1957, HB, 229.
308 “Love is a struggle”: Flannery O’Connor’s Library: Resources of Being, edited by Arthur F. Kinney (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985), 19.
308 “I am the dense kind”: Maryat Lee to FOC, February 20, 1959, GCSU.
308 “colors”: FOC to Maryat Lee, March 15, 1959, GCSU.
308 “We don’t have that one”: FOC to John Hawkes, November 28, 1961, CW, 1157.
308 “I keep clear of Faulkner”: FOC to Betty Hester, March 20, 1958, HB, 273.
308 “That’s good stuff”: Sally Fitzgerald, “Flannery O’Connor: Patterns of Friendship, Patterns of Love,” Georgia Review 52, no. 3 (Fall 1998): 419.
309 “one-and-a-half”: Louise H. Abbot, “Remembering Flannery,” Flannery O’Connor Bulletin 23 (1994–95), 77.
309 “with yellow hair”: FOC to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, April 20, 1959, HB, 329.
309 “Tarwater’s final vision”: FOC, “On Her Own Work,” MM, 117.
310 “stumbling block”: FOC to John Hawkes, October 6, 1959, CW, 1109.
310 “gotten right”: Richard Gilman, “On Flannery O’Connor,” New York Review of Books 13, no. 3 (August 21, 1969): 26.
310 “RUIN MY EYES”: FOC to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, [n.d., “Saturday,” 1951], CW, 892.
310 “thousands of little kids”: J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (New York: Little, Brown, 1951), 173.
310 “can drive me nuts”: FOC to Betty Hester, April 4, 1958, CW, 1066.
311 “Younglady”: FOC to Rebekah Poller, June 2
7, 1958, Flannery O’Connor Bulletin 12 (1983): 70.
311 “swan of old cars”: Robert Lowell to FOC, [n.d., December 1953], The Letters of Robert Lowell, edited by Saskia Hamilton (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), 203.
311 “hearse-like”: FOC to Betty Hester, August 30, 1958, HB, 294.
311 “my Jung friend”: Ibid., April 30, 1960, HB, 394.
311 “She certainly found him”: Louise Abbot, in discussion with the author, June 2, 2004.
311 “When I knocked”: Ted R. Spivey, Flannery O’Connor: The Woman, the Thinker, the Visionary (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1955), 15.
312 “could sense certain deep”: Ibid., 16.
312 “I have just finished”: FOC to Dr. T. R. Spivey, September 9, 1958, HB, 294.
312 “Now on a first-name basis”: Spivey, Flannery O’Connor, 24.
312 “dialogic”: FOC to Dr. T. R. Spivey, November 16, 1958, CW, 1079.
313 “He has a very fine mind”: FOC to Betty Hester, November 8, 1958, CW, 1078.
313 “I only have to bear”: FOC to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, January 1, 1959, HB, 315.
313 “I must say I attribute”: FOC to Betty Hester, January 3, 1959, CW, 1088.
313 “had her say”: FOC to Betty Hester, January 31, 1959, HB, 317.
313 “persuadeth me”: FOC to Brainard Cheney, [n.d., “Friday,” February 1959], CC, 82.
313 “Miss Mary”: FOC to Betty Hester, February 15, 1959, Emory.
313 “I met her at two a.m.”: Richard Stern, “Flannery O’Connor: A Remembrance and Some Letters,” Shenandoah 16, no. 2 (Winter 1965): 6.
314 “confer with the young ladies”: FOC to Cecil Dawkins, January 14, 1959, HB, 316.
314 “Miss O’Connor, what are”: FOC to Elizabeth Bishop, April 9, 1959, CW, 1093.
314 “Do they think”: Stern, “Flannery O’Connor,” 6.
314 “all bad but two”: FOC to Louise Abbot, March 30, 1959, CW, 1091.
314 “full of wry strength”: Stern, “Flannery O’Connor,” 6.
314 “I hope you are accustoming”: FOC to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, March 24, 1959, CW, 1090.
314 “The house is subject to termite”: FOC to Thomas Stritch, March 28, 1959, CW, 1091.
314 “doodles, exclamation points”: FOC to Betty Hester, February 28, 1959, CW, 1088.
315 “enthusiastic”: FOC to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, February 15, 1959, HB, 318.