This makes me want to start collecting stamps.

The U.S. Postal Service is issuing a stamp in honour (or perhaps I'd better say "honor") of Flannery O'Connor. Good on ya, USA! Just lovely.

Very much thanks to Mrs. S. for alerting me to this on Facebook.

I am soooo getting one of these

Or else my legions of fans can chip together and buy* one. Let's see, there should be at least nine of you out there, at a couple of bucks a pop... But oh, what colour???!!!! (1-Hot pink 2-Turquoise blue 3-Red 4-Purple 5-Bright Green 6-Black) I want them all. I note that bright orange is available only in the men's style. I should order one of those just in case... ("She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick." I never thought I'd live to see the day when those words might actually come true, but we live in frightening times.)

Mrs. Beazly, what colour do you want? (Your belated birthday present is still not in the mail.)

And oh my, it also comes in a coffee mug. I wonder if these items are customizable, insofar as you can have a favourite Flannery quotation printed on the back. That would be the icing on the cake.

A big hat tip to Mrs. Sockey for alerting me to this item on Facebook.

(*just kidding)
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I want this book

Nay, I need it, which is saying something more. Looking forward to November 12.

Many thanks to Deborah G, who posted a link about it on Facebook; otherwise I would not have heard of its existence.
UPDATE: Many more thanks to Mrs. Beazly, who wrote to me about this book a full FOUR months ago. Ye gods, it's a depressing thing when your memory starts to go...
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"Those who can write, those who can’t critque."

More fun for grammar geeks, by way of Dan Brown. Mrs. Beazly sent me this comment, pursuant to the post below, and it is also quite amusing. (She's still not convinced it wasn't planted there by Michael Deacon under a pseudonym, to make sport of the Renowned Mr. Brown's fans.)

Dan Brown has stated recently, and which I wholeheartedly agree, that he blends fact and fiction in a modern and efficient style to tell a story. Some people understand that and they’re his fans. Some people don’t and they’re his critics. Perhaps the lesson to be learned by Brown and aspiring authors is one of humility and not pride, (one of the seven deadly sins mentioned in Inferno.) Brown’s claim that the Da Vinci code was 99-percent fact branded him as a “heretic” in the eyes of the Vatican, alienated him to most literary critics, and potential readers, unfamiliar with Dan Brown. Perhaps INFERNO is Brown’s attempt at redemption. Those who can write, those who can’t critque. Inferno is a good book. Not up to his usual high standards found in The Lost Symbol, Angels and Demons, or The Da Vinci Code but I encourage all readers who love to read, who love good writing, who love thrillers, to read INFERNO and not listen to the critics, those who create, produce nothing.

"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher."
— Flannery O'Connor

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Happy Flannery Day!

"In Her Own Words" (and voice).

Those writers who speak for and with their age are able to do so with a great deal more ease and grace than those who speak counter to prevailing attitudes. I once received a letter from an old lady in California who informed me that when the tired reader comes home at night, he wishes to read something that will lift up his heart. And it seems her heart had not been lifted up by anything of mine she had read. I think that if her heart had been in the right place, it would have been lifted up.

You may say that the serious writer doesn't have to bother about the tired reader, but he does, because they are all tired. One old lady who wants her heart lifted up wouldn't be so bad, but you multiply her two hundred and fifty thousand times and what you get is a book club. I used to think it should be possible to write for some supposed elite, for the people who attend universities and sometimes know how to read, but I have since found that though you may publish your stories in Botteghe Oscure, they are any good at all, you are eventually going to get a letter from some old lady in California, or some inmate of the Federal Penitentiary or the state insane asylum or the local poorhouse, telling you where you have failed to meet his needs.

And his need, of course, is to be lifted up. There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his senses tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence.

Flannery, as usual, has proven prophetic

Even when she's only making up titles.

You can't have free speech if it makes some people really, really mad.

The very right that laid the foundation for Western civilization is increasingly viewed as a nuisance, if not a threat. Whether speech is deemed imflammatory or hateful or discriminatory or simply false, society is denying speech rights in the name of tolerance, enforcing mutual respect through categorical censorship.

Coercing people into 'respecting' one another: good luck with that. 
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It is the 48th anniversary

of Flannery's death.

Not as I pictured her, enthroned
on high, fiercely Promethean
with eagles, say, or lions on the headstone --
but the square, unlandscaped family plot
sans even a drooping willow seems right.
Aligned with her father, three great-aunts opposite,
space for the mother who outlives her yet,
Flannery lies unadorned except by name
who breathed in fire and fed us on the flame.

Maxine Kumin 

Excerpt, ON VISITING FLANNERYO'CONNOR'S GRAVE

Milledgeville, Ga., 1988

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Like a kid in a candy store

is how I feel when I get to read about Pope Benedict XVI and Flannery O'Connor in the same article.

Damian J. Ference, at the wonderful site, Dappled Things. Enjoy.

[B]oth O’Connor and Benedict write for a similar audience, an audience that for the most part, thinks that Christian belief is absurd.

Being an admirer of both writers, it has struck me that there is a deep connection between them, that as Catholic Christians, Flannery O’Connor and Benedict XVI both ground not only their work, but their very lives, in belief in the Incarnation, and that both O’Connor and Benedict are unapologetic in working to bring their readers to a fuller understanding of and appreciation for the specifi city of the person of Jesus Christ.

But Damian, you need not be "struck" by this. That is how Catholicism works.




Mybad: Mrs. B sent me the link for this article, and I was remiss in not mentioning that.
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Is this life really real?

Or am I in the middle of a Flannery O'Connor story?

"All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it." 


--Letter to Elizabeth Hester, April 4, 1958

I have begun to read this book, and even though I'm not yet beyond the introduction, I can tell I'm in for a joyride.

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One of my top ten preferred email subject headings

"Your Amazon order has shipped!" 

Just a few more sleeps until I get to read this: 

and this!

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If some ladies wanted to know what to get some other ladies for some birthdays ending in round numbers which are coming up in the next couple of years

they might think about something like this:

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Happy Birthday, Flannery!

 Foreshadowings of fame.

To mark an even dozen

Follwers, that is. One of my collection of what I like to term Flannery's Killer Metaphors. Gosh, but that lady could write!

(background: the protagonist has just taken a swig of moonshine)

“A burning arm slid down Tarwater’s throat as if the devil were already reaching inside him to finger his soul.”

Short story "You Can’t Be Any Poorer Than Dead"

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Eleven followers!

Welcome Lou! In your honour, a Flannery quotation:


"Only if we are secure in our beliefs can we see the comical side of 
the universe."


Source unknown (for now), but I found the quotation at the motherlode, If Flannery Had a Blog.
It looks as though it's not being updated (last post, 2010) but there are archives going back to 2004. So that'll keep me busy for a while...
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Creeping up on Shea

And without ONCE using the word "lickspittle". We have another follower! This calls, of course, for a Flannery quotation: 


“He was going to Bible school now and when he finished he was going to start him a church. He had a strong sweet voice for hymns and could sell anything.”

Short story: "The Displaced Person"

Sarah, you are exactly in the right place. Wecome. 

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woohoo

We have six followers. Count them, six! It can't be long now, Shea...

Of course this calls for a Flannery quotation. (Which, does not, by the way describe our sixth follower--in fact, it sounds more like yours truly-- but I just know she'll appreciate it.) Most people know of this quotation (the last part), but I like the longer version, because it gives more context.

She did not steal or murder but she was a born liar and slothful and she sassed her mother and was deliberately ugly to almost everybody. She was eaten up also with the sin of Pride, the worst one. She made fun of the Baptist preacher who came to the school at commencement and gave the devotional. She would pull down her mouth and hold her forehead as if she were in agony and groan, “Fawther, we thank Thee,” exactly the way he did and she had been told many times not to do it. She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.

"A Temple of the Holy Ghost" (short story)

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How did I miss this?

Somewhere in the last wee while, we picked up our fifth follower! This calls for a Flannery quotation.


When in Rome, do as you done in Milledgeville.
             
--Source unkown (for now...)

It's a Flannery kind of evening

It's considered an absolute necessity these days for writers to have compassion. Compassion is a word that sounds good in anybody's mouth and which no book jacket can do without. It is a quality which no one can put his finger on in any exact critical sense, so it is always safe for anybody to use. Usually I think what is meant by it is that the writer excuses all human weakness because human weakness is human. The kind of hazy compassion demanded of the writer now makes it difficult to be anti-anything.

 Mystery and Manners
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In honour of our Fourth Follower

I think Daria (as a homeschool mom) will appreciate this one. Flannery, of course. But I'm not sure which non-fiction work this came from. Must find out. 

"The high-school English teacher will be fulfilling his responsibility if he furnishes the student a guided opportunity, through the best writing of the past, to come, in time, to an understanding of the best writing of the present. He will teach literature, not social studies or little lessons in democracy or the customs of many lands. And if the student finds that this is not to his taste? Well, that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed." — Flannery O'Connor

I chuckled when I read this on Daria's blog, in a post where she lamented her lack of followers (--hey, we can relate!): "And I promise I'll never call you as "minions".
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As I said, deluge

Don't look now, but we have a THIRD follower. And I'm pretty sure we're not even related to this person. Welcome, Cookie!

And so, the requisite Flannery quotation to celebrate the event:

“Living had got to be such a habit with him that he couldn’t conceive of any other condition.”

A Late Encounter with the Enemy (short story)

Except that in DOH's case, it's blogging. Furthermore, unlike some bloggers, we will never call our followers "shuffling lickspittles."
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