The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor, Selected and Edited by Sally Fitzgerald
In recent years considerable attention has been drawn to the life and work of Flannery O’Connor (1925—1964). On PBS there was an American Masters documentary about the author, and Ethan Hawke directed a 2023 film called Wildcat in which his daughter, Maya Hawke, plays Flannery. The Hawke film is a rather hit-and-miss product but Maya Hawke does a great job playing O’Connor. Based on that performance alone, Wildcat is well worth watching.
But if you really want to know the author of Wise Blood, “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” The Violent Bear It Away, etc., there is no substitute for the Letters. Sally Fitzgerald, the book’s editor and a close friend of Flannery, says in the Introduction: “I have come to think that the true likeness of Flannery O’Connor will be painted by herself, a self-portrait in words, to be found in her letters…”
Published in 1979, The Habit of Being begins where O’Connor’s writing career began (she was in her early twenties at the time); it ends with a brief letter to a friend written just days before the author died at the age of thirty-nine. In between is a rich array of correspondences addressed to a wide variety of people. The topics she writes about include her own works of fiction but also literature in general. Catholicism, the foundation of her life, is also a prominent point of discussion. She had an eye for the comical, and could describe it with remarkable ease. The personality that emerges is highly intelligent but nonintellectual, often ironic but not sarcastic, humorous without being bitter, religious but never sanctimonious. She could be snobby at times but also sincerely self-deprecating. For example, she knew that she was a good writer but she also knew that her gifts were strictly limited.
Woven throughout are biographical details written by Sally Fitzgerald, who was herself a skillful and sharp writer. These supplementary materials help to complete the picture in a crucial way.
Ethan Hawke, while sincerely admiring O’Connor, referred to her as “a racist in recovery.” Other prominent voices have leveled more damning charges along the same lines. But was O’Connor a racist? In response to those who say she was, there are at least three counterpoints to consider. First, in spite of widespread segregationist views in the South where she lived, she was an integrationist. Second, she fully approved of the John F. Kennedy presidency—which included a strong push for civil rights. Finally, O’Connor had this to say about Martin Luther King:
“I don’t think [he] is the age’s great saint but he’s at least doing what he can do & has to do.”
But even if these concerns are disregarded altogether, Flannery O’Connor is not for everyone. For those who do derive satisfaction or pleasure from reading her fiction, especially if such readers want to produce fiction themselves, The Habit of Being is a book to read and stay close to.
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