Flannery O'Connor's Good Things

• Published in: American conservative (Arlington, Va.) Vol. 19; no. 1; pp. 49 - 52
• Main Author: Wilson, James Matthew
• Format: Magazine Article
• Language: English
• Published: Arlington The American Conservative LLC 01.01.2020; American Conservative LLC
• Subjects: Age; American literature; Book awards; Gordon, Caroline; Modern American literature; Morality; Novels; O Connor, Flannery (1925-1964); O'Connor, Flannery; Philosophy; Protestantism; Pulitzer prizes; Reception (Artistic works); Religious conversion; Roman Catholicism
• ISSN: 1540-966X

Flannery O'Connor's Good Things Good Things Out of Nazareth: The Uncollected Letters of Flannery O'Connor and Friends, edited by Benjamin B. Alexander, Convergent Books, 416pages Good Things Out of Nazareth-a volume of Flannery O'Connor's previously uncollected letters to friends-tells us an important American literary tale, interesting in itself, that also sets the record straight on Catholicism's influence on modern American literature. In the second part of this volume, the subject-matter turns from Gordon's astonishment at the new age in which she has emerged, a bit sun-blind like Lazarus, to O'Connor's efforts to clarify and protect the vocation of her art in a Catholic culture ready to capitalize on her success but confused by the grotesquery of the "freaks" about whom she writes. In letters to the Jesuit priest, James H. McCown-most of which are published here for the first time and are, in fact, the explicit justification for the volume as a whole-we find O'Connor invited to bend her art to the service of the Church and nimbly and sharply replying that she can do so only insofar as she respects the vocation of the artist. The events of the '60s, including the Second Vatican Council and the radicalized domestic politics fueled by the Vietnam war, tore asunder the short-lived synthesis of Thomism, artistic discipline, and Catholic cultural confidence.