Pathographies: Voices of Illness

This section features original work on pathographies—i.e., (auto)

biographical accounts of disease, illness, and disability—that https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963180117000494 . . provide narrative inquiry relating to the personal, existential, psychological, social, cultural, spiritual, political, and moral meanings of individual experience. Editors are: Nathan Carlin and Therese Jones. For submissions, contact Nathan Carlin at: [email protected].

Pedaling Toward Revelation https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms My Summer with Flannery O’Connor

BEN SAXTON

In July 2014, at the Old Governor’s I treasure my prize and enjoyed eating Mansion Education Building in its contents, the Crackerjack Award Milledgeville, Georgia, Flannery Camp isn’t why, over a year later, this evening was in full swing. Bruce Gentry and stands out. What I remember most is an Robert Donahoo, the codirectors of the offhand remark, a wisecrack in the back Flannery O’Connor National Endow­ of the room, from a guy whose knowl­ , subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at at available use, of terms Core Cambridge the to subject , ment for the Humanities (NEH) edge of literature is rivaled only by his Summer Institute, were there. Twenty- badass grooves on the guitar. Perched four NEH Summer Scholars, mostly by the refreshment stand, James Potts of English professors, were there. And Mississippi College cackled and cried I was there—barely. A few days earlier out: “So have you had your revelation?”

05 Jan 2018 at 16:28:21 at 2018 Jan 05 I had tumbled from my bike, snapped It was well-timed comment, delivered

, on on , my elbow like a wishbone, and traveled to the right crowd. After all, you couldn’t by ambulance to Macon’s Medical slip a Flannery O’Connor reference past Center, where surgeons repaired a com­ this group. We could spot the structure

64.145.67.233 pound fracture of my right arm. Upon of her stories: that familiar movement my return, just in time for the month’s of ignorance, violence, and epiphany first evening lecture, fellow NEHers that her protagonists often endure.

. IP address: address: IP . greeted me with cheers and tears and We could recite the characters who had delicate hugs. been maimed, gored, whipped, trampled, Before one of the plenary speakers beaten, and shotgun-blasted to redemp­ discussed Wise Blood and literary tion. And we could cite O’Connor’s own Darwinism,1 Bob Donahoo presented views of her fiction, how she believed me with the coveted Crackerjack Award, that “violence is strangely capable of which I earned not for any groundbreak­ returning my characters to reality and ing scholarship, but simply for making it preparing them to accept their moment https://www.cambridge.org/core through the weekend alive. Although of grace.”2

Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics (2018), 27, 175–178. © Cambridge University Press 2017.

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After the lecture, as I hobbled to the car and says, “Mister, you got a bone dorms at Georgia College, I chuckled to stickin out your arm.”3 myself. Yes, that’s it, I’m a character in No, I wasn’t going to walk this a Flannery O’Connor story. Maybe she one off.

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963180117000494 really haunted these streets, pen in . . *** hand, like some literary ghoul from Central State Hospital, the old asylum There was the strange irony of my schol­ that looms on Milledgeville’s margins. arly focus. I tend to study O’Connor from But if this were somehow true—if a medical humanities perspective. For I were really one of O’Connor’s 14 years, until her death at 39, O’Connor grotesques—then I could expect to learn suffered from systemic lupus erythe­ something. Couldn’t I? The accident matosus—also called “the Red Wolf” had meaning. Didn’t it? Collapsing into because of its vicious nature—that bed, I guzzled pain pills and reconsid­ caused thinning hair, fatigue, nausea, https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms ered those words: Have you had your rashes, joint pain, insomnia, and weight revelation? loss. During my first week at the Institute, which I spent in the archives *** of the Flannery O’Connor Collection, What strikes me most is the summer’s my research was driven by one ques­ remarkable strangeness. First of all, tion: How did O’Connor’s illness there was the strange tumble from inform her fiction? my bike. I had pedaled onto Mcintosh O’Connor usually downplayed the Street, a quiet road near campus, significance of her lupus. “The dis­ enjoying the warm breeze and the ease,” she wrote, “is of no consequence calmness that graces Southern sum­ to my writing since for that I use my mer afternoons. Something hap­ head and not my feet.”4 This, as you pened. I lurched headlong over the might guess, isn’t true. Every morning

, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at at available use, of terms Core Cambridge the to subject , handlebars and fell—hard—on my around six, when she woke in bed on right arm. the first floor of Andalusia, O’Connor No screeching car or flailing child, no read from her Benedictine prayer book. pebble or pothole: just my bike, a gentle Then she rose and, with the aid of metal hill, and a spectacular wipeout. crutches, carried herself to the bath­ My first thought, as I writhed on the room. After selecting a protective outfit 05 Jan 2018 at 16:28:21 at 2018 Jan 05 ground, was inspired by years of unfail­ so that her lupus wouldn’t be inflamed , on on , ing health. by the sun, she met her mother Regina Maybe I can walk it off. in the kitchen and listened to the local I tried to move. No luck. My right weather report on the radio. Perhaps

64.145.67.233 biceps felt hot and tight, like it was the weather would be mild. Pulling a squeezed inside a blood pressure cuff. black wool tam-o’-shanter over her head, Its sudden heaviness glued me to the O’Connor stepped into the Georgia

. IP address: address: IP . ground. My stuff had scattered like sunlight and drove with Regina to mass shrapnel—a helmet, headphones, sun­ at Sacred Heart Church. When she glasses, a vintage teal road bike with returned home around nine, she was one bent wheel. already tired. But there was work to do. A man jogged toward me with his O’Connor entered her bedroom, tucked phone out. His horrified expression her shriveled body beside a small resembled that boy’s at the end of No wooden desk, and began to write. On Country for Old Men, the one who spots good days, she worked for 3 hours. https://www.cambridge.org/core Anton Chigurh staggering from a ruined On bad days, when the Red Wolf

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devoured every ounce of energy, her I could almost see her hunched in arms were too weak to lift to the type­ the corner: thinning hair, frail frame, writer. I’m not sure what’s more incred­ crooked lips, face puffy from years ible: that O’Connor wrote so well, or of exposure to steroids. She looked

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963180117000494 that she wrote at all. weary and indomitable, like someone . . In a 1960 letter, O’Connor made a whose suffering has been instructive. rare admission. “I have never been Carrying herself closer, leaning over anywhere but sick,” she confessed. “In my bed, she placed those crooked lips a sense sickness is a place more instruc­ next to my bandaged ear and whis­ tive than a long trip to Europe, and pered, Well. Did you find what you were it’s always a place where there’s no looking for? company, where nobody can follow.”5 During this harrowing weekend, Sickness and its neighbor, loneliness, NEHers expressed their concern in housed O’Connor for most of her life. ways small and signficant. The subject https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms They were everywhere. line of one email said “We’ll Take Care of I had always studied O’Connor from You.” A friend and colleague who drove another country, from a place where the to Macon the day after my accident—and mind thinks and the body responds. many days after that—sat by the bed and Things changed last July when I dis­ held my hand. Others visited me one covered not sickness, but incapacity. afternoon and said, “You’re doing so I had visited Milledgeville to learn well!” I felt better and better. about O’Connor’s failing health; the Later that day, one late arrival burst strange irony was that I was forced to through the door like an NFL fullback. learn about my own. Catching sight of me, he stopped short and said, “Dude. You look terrible. What *** did you do to yourself?” EMS responders loaded me into an That was when I knew things would

, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at at available use, of terms Core Cambridge the to subject , ambulance that sped to Macon. be okay. Suddenly it stopped. My arm was *** bleeding uncontrollably and needed to be stabilized manually. A burly After the ambulance and the surgery medic apologized and clasped his arms and the Crackerjack Award, there was around my slippery biceps. “Hang tight, my strange conversation with University 05 Jan 2018 at 16:28:21 at 2018 Jan 05 son,” he told me. “This trip’s liable to get of South Carolina professor Robert , on on , bumpy.” Brinkmeyer. Like me, Bob was fasci­ An hour later I reached the hospital. nated by O’Connor’s illness. “One of Nurses and attendants wheeled me to the best ways to think of O’Connor’s

64.145.67.233 one room, then another, then another. illness,” he said in his evening lecture, Doctors requested consent. Tests were “is to think about lupus as a gun held to taken. Surgery was completed. A catheter her head. Lupus is a very painful dis­

. IP address: address: IP . was administered. Eventually, 12 hours ease. It’s not one that you can forget. So after hitting the ground on Mcintosh O’Connor is always facing death every Street, I rested in the trauma unit, where time she feels a twinge in her joints. a hissing machine drained fluid from Which gives, I think, some insight into my arm. why her fiction is so stark and demand­ During that lonely night at the hospi­ ing: because that’s the way she was tal, when I could barely limp to the living. She is living in perpetual crisis bathroom, when my only company was so that ultimate matters are always https://www.cambridge.org/core the persistent hissing of that machine, there.”6 After the lecture, Bob gave me a

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lefty handshake and said that, also like words that say nothing and mean me, he had broken his right arm in everything. a bike crash. “It happened in 1993 or *** 1994,” he told me, “on a ride through

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963180117000494 lovely neighborhoods one beautiful My arm is better these days. Sometimes, . . morning in Evanston, Illinois. I hit a I’ll admit, I still feel like Ruby Turpin in pothole, or so I think, and flipped over O’Connor’s “Revelation.” Bruised and the handlebars, landing on my right humiliated by the end of the story, elbow.” Ruby trudges to her pig parlor, glares at Nice weather, a leisurely ride, confu­ the heavens, and roars: “Why do you sion, a fractured right elbow—our acci­ send me a message like that for? Why dents were identical! me? Who do you think you are?”7 Ruby wants answers. So do I. *** Usually, though, I’m not preoccupied https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms Finally, there was the strange reunion with death and God and “ultimate mat­ with my bike. The rest of July went ters.” If my summer in Milledgeville smoothly. My arm was healing. I spent has been instructive, then I’m learning time with new friends in seminars and how to love life more than its meaning. lectures and seats on the porch, where I’m grateful that I have two working James Potts cackled and played guitar. arms. On good days, I read Flannery NEHers signed my hard green cast, O’Connor and ride my bike. writing, “This is God’s Country, Don’t Drive Through it Like Hell” and Notes “Converge!” and “Hall and Oates 4EVA.” Flannery Camp was almost over. When 1. Bieber-Lake C. “What Exactly is ‘Wise Blood’?: Flannery O’Connor, Literary Darwinism, Jim Owens, an MFA student at Georgia and the Question of Human Universals. College, brought me to the campus Unpublished Conference Paper. NEH Summer Institute, Reconsidering Flannery O’Connor,

, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at at available use, of terms Core Cambridge the to subject , police station, I was already thinking about how I’d drive one-handed to Georgia College & State University, July 14, Houston. 2014. 2. O’Connor F. Mystery and Manners: Occasional My old friend leaned against the Prose. Fitzgerald S, Fitzgerald R., eds. wall with one bent wheel and a sturdy New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux; frame. We were in roughly the same 1969, at 122. 05 Jan 2018 at 16:28:21 at 2018 Jan 05 shape—damaged but salvageable. 3. O’Connor F. The Habit of Being: The Letters of , on on , An officer handed me my helmet. Flannery O’Connor. Fitzgerald S, ed. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux; 1979, at 163. Oh, that. I felt its hardness and saw, for 4. Coen J, Coen E, No Country for Old Men. the first time, a deep diagonal dent Paramount Pictures, 2007.

64.145.67.233 in its right side. Jim and I exchanged 5. Quoted in Montgomery M. Why Flannery looks, not wanting to say what we both O’Connor Stayed Home: Vol. 1 of The Prophetic understood: I had landed on my arm Poet and the Spirit of the Age. LaSalle, IL: Sherwood Sugden and Company; 1981, at 17. . IP address: address: IP . and my head. The helmet, snatched from 6. Brinkmeyer R: “Borne Away, Maybe, by the dorm on a whim, had saved me. Violence: Reading Flannery O’Connor Everything came rushing back. Alongside Eudora Welty.” Unpublished Suddenly I knew that, even after I left Conference Paper. NEH Summer Institute, town, even as bones healed and scars Reconsidering Flannery O’Connor, Georgia College & State University, July 16, 2014. faded, there would be no escaping ques­ 7. O’Connor F. Flannery O’Connor: Collected tions of life and death, fate and chance, Works. Fitzgerald S, ed. New York: Library of

redemption and revelation—absurd America; 1988, at 650–1. https://www.cambridge.org/core

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