Review of The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor, edited by Sally Fitzgerald
Title: Interesting read for fans, not so much for casual readers
I'm a fan of Flannery O'Connor's from way back. She was one of my first and major influences. Having said that, I can also say that, with my own two nonfiction books and two novels done (and a third novel in its final edits), her style does not impress me as much as it did when I first started writing seriously 30 years ago. I am still impressed with her, though, and learn from her every time I read her fiction, both what to do and what not to do. I tell you that to tell you this:
This volume of her letters is likely to be of interest only to Flannery O'Connor fans. Cursory readers can let this pass.
These letters provide some insight into her writing, but just some. More is filler on her daily life, her visits and letter exchanges with various literary and non-literary people, her limited travels outside Georgia, and her life raising birds of many kinds. A few of the gems I've picked out on her thoughts on writing and God:
You write what you can.
God rescues us from ourselves if we want Him to.
The mind serves best when it's anchored in the word of God.
The novel is an art form and when you use it for anything other than art, you pervert it.
Fiction doesn't lie, but it can't tell the whole truth.
If [James] Baldwin were white nobody would stand him a minute.
Trigger Warning: Ms. O'Connor is free with the N-word when she likes to be throughout, and, that last one--boy, I'd like to know what she would have written had she lived to see the early 2000s. Probably it's best she didn't, because she would have had some things to say about certain women and black writers. She is ardent--almost militant--in her Catholicism, which is a real shame, because it binds her to certain religious doctrines, which aren't necessarily spiritual truths.
And truth is hard enough to bear. And certain truths are never born at all.
I liked it
3/5 Goodreads
4/5 Amazon
I'm a fan of Flannery O'Connor's from way back. She was one of my first and major influences. Having said that, I can also say that, with my own two nonfiction books and two novels done (and a third novel in its final edits), her style does not impress me as much as it did when I first started writing seriously 30 years ago. I am still impressed with her, though, and learn from her every time I read her fiction, both what to do and what not to do. I tell you that to tell you this:
This volume of her letters is likely to be of interest only to Flannery O'Connor fans. Cursory readers can let this pass.
These letters provide some insight into her writing, but just some. More is filler on her daily life, her visits and letter exchanges with various literary and non-literary people, her limited travels outside Georgia, and her life raising birds of many kinds. A few of the gems I've picked out on her thoughts on writing and God:
You write what you can.
God rescues us from ourselves if we want Him to.
The mind serves best when it's anchored in the word of God.
The novel is an art form and when you use it for anything other than art, you pervert it.
Fiction doesn't lie, but it can't tell the whole truth.
If [James] Baldwin were white nobody would stand him a minute.
Trigger Warning: Ms. O'Connor is free with the N-word when she likes to be throughout, and, that last one--boy, I'd like to know what she would have written had she lived to see the early 2000s. Probably it's best she didn't, because she would have had some things to say about certain women and black writers. She is ardent--almost militant--in her Catholicism, which is a real shame, because it binds her to certain religious doctrines, which aren't necessarily spiritual truths.
And truth is hard enough to bear. And certain truths are never born at all.
I liked it
3/5 Goodreads
4/5 Amazon
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