Flannery O'Connor's Hometown
On our way to Florida, we made a side jaunt to Milledgeville, Georgia. It was a pilgrimage of sorts to the shrine of St Flannery. That’s Flannery O’Connor, author of two collections of short stories, two novels and a couple of other books, one a collection of essays on the craft of fiction and one a collection of her letters, both assembled posthumously. O’Connor died of lupus at the age of 39.
Both Jeri and I have taught the short fiction of O’Connor for years and have come to admire it more and more the longer we taught it. Her stories are often violent and shocking, yet funny and unflinching in their portrayal of evil and breathtaking in their depiction of grace. Although most evangelical Christians would probably find her fiction disturbing—and even disgusting in some cases—it has been a force to be reckoned with in the largely secular world of modern American literature. “To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the blind you draw large and startling figures” is O’Connor’s epigrammatic answer to critics who protest the violence and craziness of some of her characters. Which is to say, in a world unable to recognize the basic realities of life and death, sin and grace, readers have to be shocked into recognition by the outrageous and violent actions of some of her characters. And so The Misfit in her story shoots and elderly grandmother and says, “She’d have been a good woman if there had been somebody there to shoot her every day of her life.” And Hazel Motes so Christ-haunted that he puts out his eyes in a desperate attempt to show his commitment to his Church without Christ.
Flannery O’Connor is as good a writer as America has produced in the last seventy-five years.
And so we drove into Milledgeville on a cloudy evening in January coming into town on Highway 441, as typical and ugly as every other American city’s outskirt business drive, with fast food places, motels, car dealers, and big box stores. After getting a motel, we went to the college, Georgia College and State University, which was Georgia Women’s College when O’Connor attended it in the forties. It’s a beautiful old campus with high columned buildings everywhere. In fact, Milledgeville bills itself as the city of columns and it’s not just because of the college buildings. All around the college and fanning out in every direction are grand old mansions—many of them fronted by two and three story columns. And a couple of blocks from the college campus is a lovely old business district with shops and pubs and restaurants, as modest and ordinary as the Highway 441 buildings are garish.
The ugliness of Highway 441 stretches right up to Andalusia Farm, where O’Connor lived for many years. It used to be four miles out of town but now there’s a Wal-Mart right across the street. I suspect O’Connor would have been amused and saddened and cynical about all the changes.
We visited the farm which served as a sort of setting for many of her stories set on farms run by strong women like her mother Regina. Most of the buildings are in bad repair, but there were a couple of peafowl penned up near the house reminiscent not only of the fowl that O’Connor herself so cherished but also of the pathetic little roadside zoos that pop up in several of her stories. and the house itself looked good on the outside but needed a lot of work on the inside.
As we strolled around the farm on a beautiful, sunny day, I was struck by the transience of most physical things. The garage (called the nail house) was falling down as was the house where the couple that helped with the farm work lived. The quaint town of Milledgeville itself had been changed for the worse by the modern convenience businesses pasted across its face. O’Connor’s brief life examined from one perspective, seems terribly sad. From the time she became ill with lupus until she died15 years later, she set her face steadfastly toward her art—sacrificing most other personal pleasures to that one goal. She was editing in her bed until the day she died.
So brief a life—and narrow by some standards. Yet what she left—her small body of literary works—will be here, I believe, until Christ returns.
Before we left, we stopped for gas at one of those stations on 441. As I was pumping gas, a young man in a beat up pickup (he could have been O. E. Parker) pulled around in front of me and shouted something to me. I couldn’t understand him so I walked up to his pickup and said, “What?” He said, ”This ’ere station is owned by Muslims so folks from the community don’t buy their gasoline here.”
We were in O’Connor country.
Both Jeri and I have taught the short fiction of O’Connor for years and have come to admire it more and more the longer we taught it. Her stories are often violent and shocking, yet funny and unflinching in their portrayal of evil and breathtaking in their depiction of grace. Although most evangelical Christians would probably find her fiction disturbing—and even disgusting in some cases—it has been a force to be reckoned with in the largely secular world of modern American literature. “To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the blind you draw large and startling figures” is O’Connor’s epigrammatic answer to critics who protest the violence and craziness of some of her characters. Which is to say, in a world unable to recognize the basic realities of life and death, sin and grace, readers have to be shocked into recognition by the outrageous and violent actions of some of her characters. And so The Misfit in her story shoots and elderly grandmother and says, “She’d have been a good woman if there had been somebody there to shoot her every day of her life.” And Hazel Motes so Christ-haunted that he puts out his eyes in a desperate attempt to show his commitment to his Church without Christ.
Flannery O’Connor is as good a writer as America has produced in the last seventy-five years.
And so we drove into Milledgeville on a cloudy evening in January coming into town on Highway 441, as typical and ugly as every other American city’s outskirt business drive, with fast food places, motels, car dealers, and big box stores. After getting a motel, we went to the college, Georgia College and State University, which was Georgia Women’s College when O’Connor attended it in the forties. It’s a beautiful old campus with high columned buildings everywhere. In fact, Milledgeville bills itself as the city of columns and it’s not just because of the college buildings. All around the college and fanning out in every direction are grand old mansions—many of them fronted by two and three story columns. And a couple of blocks from the college campus is a lovely old business district with shops and pubs and restaurants, as modest and ordinary as the Highway 441 buildings are garish.
The ugliness of Highway 441 stretches right up to Andalusia Farm, where O’Connor lived for many years. It used to be four miles out of town but now there’s a Wal-Mart right across the street. I suspect O’Connor would have been amused and saddened and cynical about all the changes.
We visited the farm which served as a sort of setting for many of her stories set on farms run by strong women like her mother Regina. Most of the buildings are in bad repair, but there were a couple of peafowl penned up near the house reminiscent not only of the fowl that O’Connor herself so cherished but also of the pathetic little roadside zoos that pop up in several of her stories. and the house itself looked good on the outside but needed a lot of work on the inside.
As we strolled around the farm on a beautiful, sunny day, I was struck by the transience of most physical things. The garage (called the nail house) was falling down as was the house where the couple that helped with the farm work lived. The quaint town of Milledgeville itself had been changed for the worse by the modern convenience businesses pasted across its face. O’Connor’s brief life examined from one perspective, seems terribly sad. From the time she became ill with lupus until she died15 years later, she set her face steadfastly toward her art—sacrificing most other personal pleasures to that one goal. She was editing in her bed until the day she died.
So brief a life—and narrow by some standards. Yet what she left—her small body of literary works—will be here, I believe, until Christ returns.
Before we left, we stopped for gas at one of those stations on 441. As I was pumping gas, a young man in a beat up pickup (he could have been O. E. Parker) pulled around in front of me and shouted something to me. I couldn’t understand him so I walked up to his pickup and said, “What?” He said, ”This ’ere station is owned by Muslims so folks from the community don’t buy their gasoline here.”
We were in O’Connor country.
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