Flannery O’Connor’s Mystery and Manners

A blog is a place of such good intention.

I was thinking about this blog the other day, reflecting on the fact that I have this one entry that just kind of sits, and in the meantime, months have gone by and I haven’t added a thing. The only thing that gives me any consolation is the fact that I look at my friends’ blogs, and most of them do one entry every three or so months. It helps me to feel right on track.

As part of my class, I have been reading some selections out of Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners, which has been delightful and insightful. To this point, the point that continues to return to me is from the article “The Fiction Writer and His Country” (published originally as a Life editorial), in which O’Connor is challenging the critique that American novelists are not speaking for America. O’Connor refutes the argument that Southern writing, a category that encompasses her own work, is too grotesque and does not genuinely reflect the prosperity and joy of life in American.

Not only does she question this categorization of the American life (“[The writer] may at least be permitted to ask if these screams for joy would be quite so piercing if joy were really more abundant in our prosperous society”) and that writers “write about rot because they love it” (“…some write about rot because they see it and recognize it for what it is”), she also makes an important point that a Christian writer often has the sharpest eyes to see the grotesque and perverse, and when she writes about such things, it is from the very perspective that recognizes it as such.

“Redemption is meaningless unless there is a cause for it in the actual life we live,” she declares.

This particular line has come to me again and again as a reminder and inspiration. More thoughts on this to come.