One author I continue to return to is Flannery O'Connor. She belonged to the Southern Gothic tradition and her work deftly weaves the comic, the tragic, and the brutal. O'Connor is considered a master of the short story. While her stories are not overtly Catholic, one can nevertheless discern her faith through her work. The morally challenged characters, the unlikely heros, and the ironic endings create stories that I adore. She battled Lupus and died at thirty-nine years old. More information on her and her stories can be found here.
Her letters reveal a complex, thoughtful, and sometimes shockingly forthright persona.
From All Things Considered May 12, 2007 · "Emory University made public Saturday a previously sealed collection of letters from the Southern writer Flannery O'Connor. The letters contained correspondence with a seemingly unremarkable file clerk named Betty Hester. She was, in fact, a passionate, private intellectual who enjoyed a deep friendship with O'Connor.
Steve Enniss of Emory University speaks with Jacki Lyden about the letters." Transcribed from this interview:
Her letters reveal a complex, thoughtful, and sometimes shockingly forthright persona.
From All Things Considered May 12, 2007 · "Emory University made public Saturday a previously sealed collection of letters from the Southern writer Flannery O'Connor. The letters contained correspondence with a seemingly unremarkable file clerk named Betty Hester. She was, in fact, a passionate, private intellectual who enjoyed a deep friendship with O'Connor.
Steve Enniss of Emory University speaks with Jacki Lyden about the letters." Transcribed from this interview:
"Letter to Elizabeth Hester...
Compared to what you have experienced in the way of radical misery, I have never had anything to bear in my life but minor irritations — but there are times when the worst suffering is not to suffer, and the worst affliction, not to be afflicted. Job’s comforters were worse off than he was, though they did not know it. If in any sense my knowing your burden can make your burden lighter, then I am doubly glad I know it. You were right to tell me, but I’m glad you didn’t tell me until I knew you well. Where you are wrong is in saying that you are the history of horror. The meaning of the redemption is precisely that we do not have to be our history, and nothing is plainer to me than that you are not your history. "
Compared to what you have experienced in the way of radical misery, I have never had anything to bear in my life but minor irritations — but there are times when the worst suffering is not to suffer, and the worst affliction, not to be afflicted. Job’s comforters were worse off than he was, though they did not know it. If in any sense my knowing your burden can make your burden lighter, then I am doubly glad I know it. You were right to tell me, but I’m glad you didn’t tell me until I knew you well. Where you are wrong is in saying that you are the history of horror. The meaning of the redemption is precisely that we do not have to be our history, and nothing is plainer to me than that you are not your history. "
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