O’Connor, as Wise Blood proves, was no run-of-the-mill religious novelist. In addition to having a deeply philosophical turn of mind, she was a thoroughgoing modernist who adhered no less devoutly to the Jamesian precept to “dramatize, dramatize!” Moreover, her youthful reading of Jacques Maritain, the Catholic philosopher who argued in Art and Scholasticism (1930) that “the pure artist considered in the abstract as such . . . is something completely unmoral,” had persuaded her that the serious Catholic fiction writer had no moral obligation to be preachy.
As good as Brad Gooch's biography is, it proves Flannery O'Connor's assertion that she would be immune from (i.e., poor material for a) biography. To know O'Connor, therefore, the wise reader should simply immerse himself or herself in O'Connor's own words (including her fiction and nonfiction). Only there will a reader discover the real Mary Flannery O'Connor of Savannah and Milledgeville. To rely upon Gooch's biography but then rely upon O'Connor herself is to be a bit like Hazel Motes who struggles to avoid but ultimately realizes the absolute truth.
ReplyDeleteAs a "footnote" to my previous comment about Flannery O'Connor and the Brad Gooch biography, let me offer you this link to my review of Gooch's book:http://www.bookloons.com/cgi-bin/Review.asp?bookid=10743
ReplyDeleteMost of her life was lived in her imagination, because she was too sick to live it elsewhere. But her letters (collected in "The Habit of Being") really do give us her life. When I wrote the first bio. of her (way back in '94, and for young adults, hence it's never being credited), that is what i based it on. Her own copious correspondence.
ReplyDeleteBut Brad is an old classmate from Columbia and a friend and he is also a fine biographer ("City Poet"). I think he did a good job.