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Quote of the Day: Flannery O’Connor
In addition to being a great writer, Flannery O’Connor had a sense of humor.
Published in Group WritingEverywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.
I think she would have loved the Babylon Bee
Wonderful. O’Connor channeling her inner Florence King. When asked “What is a woman (?)” I’d point to both.
Is the world that much worse just because people can read Stephen King? I never did except for Danse Macabre, but who am I to judge other’s guilty pleasures?
Or Lee Child? Or C.J. Box? But one can single out individual “guilty pleasures” and still not be assured that those without any talent have not invaded the lists. I suspect O’Connor was referring to the latter.
Without any talent? They have a talent I wish I had had: Making millions of $$$.
*Cough* Wolf Hall *Cough*
How did I miss reading Flannery O’Connor over the years? Yesterday I read “A Good Man” for the first time, and this morning I’ve put a hold on “The Complete Stories” at our local library.
I highly recommend the collection of O’Connor’s letters, The Habit of Being. So much wit and wisdom, and really reveals her character. I have two copies — and one is loaded up with bookmarks.
Somehow that reminds me of this quote from a P.G. Wodehouse novel:
“It was one of the dullest speeches I ever heard. The Agee woman told us for three quarters of an hour how she came to write her beastly book, when a simple apology was all that was required.”
She is just such a great writer. Too bad we lost her young. We could have had so much more. That’s a great quote my favorite Flannery O’Connor quote is about one of her characters who she described “She knew she could never be a saint…but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.”
A recent trip to Barnes & Noble provides plenty of evidence for the truth of this quote.
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The June 2023 Quote of the Day Signup Sheet still has room for more contributors!
“The problem of the novelist who wishes to write about a man’s encounter with this God is how he shall make the experience, which is both natural and supernatural, understandable and credible to his reader. In any age, this would be a problem, but in our own it is a well-nigh insurmountable one. Today’s audience is one in which religious feeling has become if not atrophied at least vaporous and sentimental. When Emerson decided in 1832 that he could no longer celebrate the Lord’s supper, unless the bread and wine were removed, an important step in the vaporization of religion in America was taken and the spirit of that step has continued apace. When the physical fact is separated from the spiritual reality, the dissolution of disbelief is inevitable.” – Mary Flannery O’ Conner
Huh.
This is a rerun.
And here’s my contribution from three years ago:
Quote of the Day: “A God you understood . . .”
That happens. Sometimes even by the same person. (But you don’t want to go looking up my May Day quotations of the day.)
Someone could have pointed out to MFO’C that anyone looking to Ralph Waldo Emerson for spiritual guidance was not only already lost, he was going to remain lost until he cut it out.
(Not a RWE fan.)