Wisdom from Flannery O’Connor

“There is a certain embarrassment about being a storyteller in these times when stories are considered not quite as satisfying as statements and statements not quite as satisfying as statistics; but in the long run, a people is known, not by its statements or its statistics, but by the stories it tells.”

FLANNERY O’CONNOR (1925-1964)

Illustration: Flannery O’Connor street art, Chicago, photo by Billy Craven, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Note: Who would have thought that you’d find a street art portrait of Flannery O’Connor? Shout out to my beloved hometown Chicago — as always, you are one classy place!  Above, I’ve noted Flannery O’Connor’s years of birth and passing. Yes, she only lived to age 39 — and many of those years she had to endure intense pain from lupus. Yet, she always found a way to write. As she put it to a friend, “I have enough energy to write with and as that is all I have any business doing anyhow, I can with one eye squinted take it all as a blessing.” 

Flannery O’Connor on Human Nature

“The serious writer has always taken the flaw in human nature for his starting point, usually the flaw in an otherwise admirable character. Drama usually bases itself on the bedrock of original sin, whether the writer thinks in theological terms or not. Then, too, any character in a serious novel is supposed to carry a burden of meaning larger than himself. The novelist doesn’t write about people in a vacuum; he writes about people in a world where something is obviously lacking, where there is the general mystery of incompleteness and the particular tragedy of our own times to be demonstrated, and the novelist tries to give you, within the form of the book, the total experience of human nature at any time. For this reason, the greatest dramas naturally involve the salvation or loss of the soul. Where there is no belief in the soul, there is very little drama. ”

FLANNERY O’CONNOR

The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor is available at Amazon.com.

Wit and Wisdom from Flannery O’Connor

“I come from a family where the only emotion respectable to show is irritation. In some this tendency produces hives, in others literature, in me both.”

FLANNERY O’CONNOR

The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor is available at Amazon.com

Pausing to Remember

As we remember Patricia Neal, who passed away on this day in 2010, I’d like to mention that Neal is included in Great American Catholic Eulogies, a wonderful, uplifting book that celebrates the lives of many renowned Americans. Writers and artists featured in the volume include: Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy, Andy Warhol, and Andre Dubus. Award-winning journalist Carol DeChant selected and introduced the eulogies and celebrated author Thomas Lynch wrote the foreword. Find out more about Great American Catholic Eulogies here.