‘Flannery O’Connor: Faith Fired by Fiction’ my book review

‘Flannery O’Connor: Faith Fired by Fiction’ my book review June 2, 2015

51rMpJpAgJL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_

 

“Flannery O’Connor: Fiction Fired by Faith”

By Angela Alaimo O’Donnell

Liturgical Press, 2015

Paperback, 138 pages

$12.95

 

My copy of “Flannery O’Connor: Fiction Fired by Faith” by Fordham University English professor Angela Alaimo O’Donnell arrived a few days ago and I just finished devouring it. It’s part of the “People of God” series published by Liturgical Press. After a read of the scholarly and analytical Introduction and Chapter One, the book takes flight and sails through the life and writings of the American Catholic Southern-Gothic novelist Flannery O’Connor (1925 – 1964). I didn’t want to put it down.

I have a shelf in my office dedicated to O’Connor’s writings and books about them as well as biographies about her and I am pleased to add O’Donnell’s to my collection for five reasons: 1) it actually has some details I did not find in other biographies; 2) I love the way O’Donnell integrates and analyzes Flannery’s novels, short stories, friendships and the realities of her physical limitations and spiritual life as a way to make everything O’Connor accessible to the reader – though I think it helps to be familiar with her stories ahead of time; 3) the book’s honesty about O’Connor’s seeming ambivalence regarding racism, whether O’Connor’s or that of her characters; 4) the way the author assesses Flannery’s soul-struggle with lupus, the disease her father died from and which led to her early death at the age of 39; 5) the author’s warm grasp of Flannery’s wry, comedic, Godly lens on her world of “folks and freaks” combining elements of the literary life of a Catholic: mystery, manners, Mass – and martinis.

I had the privilege of authoring “Martin Sheen: Pilgrim on the Way” for the “People of God” series, too. How different are the trajectory of the lives of Flannery O’Connor and Martin Sheen! Flannery was a shy, only child who never married, born to southern-born Irish-American Catholic parents, a writer, college educated and practicing Catholic her whole life, who taught a chicken to walk backwards as a child and raised peacocks as an adult on a farm in Georgia and died from lupus before the age of 40. Martin was one of ten children born to an Irish mother and Spanish father who left his Ohio home at 18 for New York to become an actor, stopped practicing his faith, became an alcoholic, married to the same woman for more than 50 years, and raised four children, returned to the Church, got sober, became a non-violent social activist and today, at age 75, is one of America’s most beloved actors.

Besides the time when the Pathe’ film company went to Georgia to film that chicken, these two Catholic artists don’t seem to have much in common except what is most important: the presence of Christ in the Mass, sacraments, and the Church, the action of grace in their lives and their inability to escape from what these mean in their art and craft.

The ongoing search for what it means to be a Christian artist can be found in Flannery O’Connor’s essays but here O’Donnell runs this theme throughout but highlights the theme in Chapter 3. We hear so much about “Christian” movies these days, for example, that are all about the message and not about art, and letting art fulfill its own function to tell stories that transcend human existence. If only those who cannot figure out how to be a Christian storyteller would read Flannery O’Connor! She took her inspiration for Thomas Aquinas and Jacques Maritain and wrote: “Yet what is good in itself glorifies God because it reflects God. The artist has his hands full and does his duty if he attends to his art. He can safely leave the evangelizing to the evangelists.” O’Donnell continues, interpreting Flannery for us: “The Catholic writer should not seek to testify to her faith in the pages of her books or to convert her reader; instead she should try to write the best fiction that she can.”

Christian filmmakers take note. Tell good, compelling stories and that will be enough.

I think that “Flannery O’Connor: Fiction Fired by Faith” would serve as an excellent introduction to her life and writings for anyone who has heard about Flannery O’Connor and wondered what all the fuss – and fervor – is about. O’Connor’s fiction, fired by her Catholic imagination and faith, may seem difficult or obscure to some, but understanding her life in letters is a key that can open it. My thanks to Angela A. O’Donnell for her homage to Flannery, an obvious labor of love.

Mary (Flannery) O’Connor teaches a chicken tow alk backwards:


Browse Our Archives