T h e F l a n n e r y O ’ C o n n o r S o c i e t y N e w s l e t t e r

Volume 21, No. 5 A PUBLICATION OF TAY LOR UNIVERSITY Spring 2018

Cheers! Society President Monica Miller Middle Georgia State U. COAS 207 100 University Pkwy Macon, GA 31206 From the President’s Desk [email protected] setting. Cheers! Editor Teaching O’Connor in middle Georgia is Colleen Warren especially enjoyable. For many of my students Department of English Taylor University here, there is much in her fiction that is 236 W. Reade Ave. recognizable: the landscape, the manners, the Upland, IN 46989 language, and even the character types of the (765) 998-5250 self-righteous grandmother and the roadside [email protected] barbecue proprietor. Especially for students who think they know all of the stories about such characters, the punchlines and surprise endings of O’Connor’s work as exemplified by “Good Man” draw them into their reading Greetings from middle Georgia! As we round in ways that few other authors do. Inside this issue: the corner toward the end of another Generally, such surprise is one of the joys of academic year, the cherry blossoms are teaching her work for me. In teaching President’s Column 1 blooming and the pine trees are covering literature, we so often have to direct student Mark Graybill’s 2 Georgia in a heavy layer of yellow dust. attention to the assessable elements of Farewell Presidential My survey of American literature class read “A literature—historical context, literary Column Good Man is Hard to Find” this week, as we movements, literary devices, allusions, made our way into the postwar section of the themes, characterization—that it’s sometimes Original Poem: 3 “Flannery O’Connor” syllabus. I always enjoy student reactions to easy to overlook what I try to make the first By Father Gerald reading O’Connor for the first time, which question in each class period: “What was your Garrigan generally register a wide range of surprised experience of reading this?” responses. In this class, one of my more Perhaps this is one reason why O’Connor’s Conference Reports 4 talkative students admitted that about a third work—particularly this story—continues to be Flannery in the News 5 of the way through reading “Good Man,” he so consistently anthologized and taught: it’s decided he was not going to like the story. He difficult not to have a response to it. As Upcoming Conferences 6 expected that the conflicts between family scholars, we often talk about O’Connor’s and CFPs members would reach some sort of resolution “punctual moments” of grace; I also Selected Recent 7 that involved their facing danger together and appreciate the ways in which her fiction Publications ultimately putting aside their differences. And provides “punctual moments” in reading—and while I suppose that ultimately, they did put in particular, punctual moments of surprise aside their differences, I enjoyed the student for my students. I can generally depend on talking through his surprise at the story’s lack O’Connor days in the classroom to be ones in of what he characterized as a “Hallmark which it’s not difficult to get students talking. ending,” which opened up into a larger class And at this point in the semester, I am discussion about why many of them shared especially grateful for that. his expectation of a happy ending in this Cheers! Page 2 Dr. Mark Graybill’s Presidential Farewell Column will be stepping away from any official role, but will be leaving the organization in much more capable hands than my own. Monica Miller, an assistant professor of English at Middle Georgia State University, has graciously agreed to lend her intelligence, creativity, and energy to the Society as its new president, effective this summer. In fact, she’s already involved, having arranged on the Society’s behalf at the University of Louisville’s annual Conference on Literature and Culture Since 1900 last month.

Also joining the Society in the newly created position of Coordinator of Outreach is Matt Bryan Cheney, a recently minted assistant professor of English at Carson-Newman University and director of that institution’s Bonner Center

for Service Learning and Civic Engagement. [Photo of Matt These are flush times for Flannery fans. A film adaptation below] Collaborating with Colleen Warren, who has already of “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is in the works: been doing yeoman’s work to improve Cheers! and the Society’s website, Matt will continue to refine our new https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2016/12/ Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/search/top/? flannery-oconnors-a-gentleman-is-hard-to-find-to-b.html), q=the%20flannery%20o%27connor%20society], with Benedict Fitzgerald—son of Robert and Sally Fitzgerald, whom Flannery used to babysit and who wrote John Based on what I’ve seen as the organizer of two sessions at Huston’s version of —serving as the screenwriter. this year’s meeting of the American Literature Association, Michael Rooker, of Walking Dead and Guardians of the that new generation of O’Connor lovers is out there, and Galaxy fame, will reportedly portray the Misfit. (link: ready to participate in the promotion and study of her https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/05/michael work. Of the seven presenters, several are emerging scholars -rooker-joins-a-good-man-is-hard-to-find.html) This is just the forging what I expect will be compelling new paths in latest evidence of O’Connor’s increasing stature in popular O’Connor studies. culture—a phenomenon about which she probably would have had mixed feelings, but about which those who love And other opportunities for folks to share their work on her work can feel considerable joy. O’Connor are just over the horizon, including a panel at MLA 2019 [the CFP is on page 6] and an ALA/Flannery Jessica Hooten Wilson, assistant professor of English at O’Connor Society co-sponsored conference during Spring John Brown University, is preparing the manuscript of 2021. Watch this space for details. With scholarly Flannery’s would-be third novel, Why Do The Heathen Rage?, publication on O’Connor continuing apace—see the for publication—a development sure to alter significantly the selected list at the end of this issue of Cheers! for some course of scholarship on O’Connor. And Flannery’s alma specifics—plenty of people are thinking, talking, and writing mater, Georgia College and State University, has assumed about O’Connor these days, setting the Society up, I ownership of Andalusia, raising hopes for future the believe, for a vibrant near-future. I’ve found my official enhancement, maintenance, and promotion of this association with this community of scholars edifying in important literary landmark. (link: https:// more ways than I can count, and I look forward to seeing frontpage.gcsu.edu/announcement/andalusia-foundation- what happens, from the position of a rank-and-file member, gifts-flannery-o%E2%80%99connor%E2%80%99s-home- as a new group of leaders takes the reins. gcsu-foundation) It’s also an exciting time for the Society. After three years as president, and before that three years as vice president, I

Volume 21, No. 5 Page 3

FLANNERY O’CONNOR By Father Gerald Garrigan

Born in Savannah with truly wise, wise blood Blood you knew had been redeemed By the blood of Him Who was your all in all That wise blood which not even the violent could bear away You knew that grace was working everywhere Even, especially among the grotesque, the brusque, the broken, crude misfit You had your eyes fixed on the eyes of Christ Just as the eyes of Christ of that tattoo icon on Parker’s back Had His always trained on you You saw Him everywhere in those dark, unlikely, sorry, Southern places Which those though having eyes did not see At the heart of your heart - The Eucharist where you knew your Lord to be really present “If it’s just a symbol, I say, the hell with it” And in Milledgeville, then Andalusia, It was your habit of being to steep your soul in the Angelic Doctor While working your way, slow and hard, to render that world you wrought, That world those Yankee critics never, ever got Who’d never breached the Mason-Dixon Line That world in which there could be found, As Elizabeth Bishop saw, More poetry than in myriad books of poems And when it was your time to rise and to converge, When He called you who called yourself “A structure with flying buttresses” You left your props behind and flew into His arms Finally, fully, completely free When you passed, Merton compared you to Sophocles, your Maker to no one For in His wisdom when the time had come to make you, He had made you Like none He’d made before or like He would again And so, for all eternity you see Him face-to-face beyond all time, all space Luxuriating in that beatific vision, see Him more clearly than you could With a million, billion of your beloved peacocks’ feathers’ eyes And here below in this fallen world whose many foibles you saw so well Your genius is shining still Yes, your genius, it shines here still

Volume 21, No. 5 Page 4

Cont. from p. 3 REPORTS ON CONFERENCES

SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF SOUTHERN LITERATURE, February 15-18, 2018, UT at Austin

Reconsidering Flannery O’Connor Co-Chairs: Alison Arant, Wagner College, and Jordan Cofer, Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College • Alison Arant, Wagner College • Jordan Cofer, Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College • Monica Carol Miller, Middle Georgia State University • Alison Staudinger, University of Wisconsin - Green Bay • Rachel Watson, Howard University

Flannery O’Connor and the Making of a Mentor Moderator: Christine Flanagan, University of the Sciences • “Lessons from : Traces of Flannery O’Connor in the Drama of Horton Foote” by Rob- ert Donahoo, Sam Houston State University • “Unearthing the Master Class of Flannery O’Connor: Caroline Gordon’s Most Essential—and Most Lim- ited—Instruction” by Christine Flanagan, University of the Sciences • “Who is this Evalin Wow?” Flannery O’Connor and Evelyn Waugh’s Joint Response to Modern Horizons” by Alex Taylor, University of Dallas • “Incarnational Affinities in the Art of Caroline Gordon and Flannery O’Connor” by Adam Cooper, Univer- sity of Dallas

CONFERENCE ON LITERATURE AND CULTURE SINCE 1900, University of Louisville, February 22- 24, 2018

Contemporary Connections to Flannery O'Connor Chair: Monica Carol Miller, Middle Georgia State University  Elizabeth Glass, University of Louisville, “Flannery O'Connor: Her Body and Body of Work”  Mark Graybill, Widener University, “Nostalgia, Race, and Authoritarianism in O'Connor's Fiction and Trump's America”  Monica Carol Miller, Middle Georgia State University, “Maternity and Ambivalence in 'A Stroke of Good Fortune”

AMERICAN LITERATURE ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE, San Francisco, May 23-27, 2018

Race, Disability, and the Body (Politic) in O’Connor’s Fiction Chair: Robert Donahoo, Sam Houston State University  Benjamin Sammons, Wingate University, “What Would Flannery Do?: Confederate Monuments, South- ern Memory, and the History Behind History,”  Connie Chen, Wellesley College, “The Deaths of Bishop Rayber: Drowning Normalcy in ”  Andrea Ivanov-Craig, Azusa Pacific University, “The Thing That Matters: Representing Disability in ‘’”

O’Connor, Catholicism, and Creativity: New Connections/Considerations Chair: Andrea Ivanov-Craig, Azusa Pacific University  Robert Donahoo, Sam Houston State University, “Coffey with O’Connor: The Importance of Georges Rouault”  Laura Henning, Daytona State College, “Two Enochs: Regional Grotesquerie in the Works of Sherwood Anderson and Flannery O’Connor”  William Gonch, University of Maryland, “Subjective Correlatives: Flannery O’Connor, Walter Benjamin, and Translational Fiction”  Benjamin Batzer, University of Iowa, “Flannery O’Connor’s Absent Fathers: The Working (Through) of Grief in Program Era Fiction” Volume 21, No. 5 Page 5

FLANNERY IN THE NEWS

FORDHAM UNIVERSITY RECEIVES GRANT FROM ANDALUSIA UNDERGOING RENOVATIONS FLANNERY O’CONNOR TRUST

Fordham University, a Jesuit university in New York, has In August 2017, the Andalusia Foundation gifted Andalu- received a $450,000 grant, distributed in $50,000 install- sia, the home of Flannery O’Connor, to Georgia College ments over nine years, from the Flannery O’Connor Trust. and State University Foundation. According to Susan Stew- Fordham’s Francis and Ann Curren Center for American art GCSU Foundation board of trustees chair, “Accepting Catholic Studies was one of several applicants for the en- this gift allows us to support the university as it becomes a dowment; they were chosen as the recipients of the endow- hub for the study and promotion of southern literature and ment at least in part because of their active interest in pro- honors the enduring works of my fellow alumna, Flannery moting Catholic writers through their 2017 and 2012 con- O’Connor.” ferences that celebrated important Catholic writers, includ- Since that time, GCSU has been hard at work renovating ing O’Connor. Their application was accepted in Decem- Andalusia; the site has been closed to the public during ber, and final papers were signed this month. renovation, but a photo documentary of the stages of the renovation has been regularly posted on Andalusia’s Face- According to Alaimo O’Donnell, director of the Curren book page, which can be accessed at https:// Center, the Center is planning to use the money to host www.facebook.com/Andalusiafarmpage/ additional conferences and events that encourage further research on O’Connor’s works, as well as other Catholic A key addition to the renovations is the return of O’Con- writers. Some of the money will be kept intact in order to nor’s writing desk to Andalusia; the desk is on loan from build the endowment. An article by Tom Stoelker on Ford- Georgia College Special Collections. O’Connor’s bookcases ham’s website quoted O’Donnell as saying, “We are delight- will also be displayed at Andalusia. ed to be afforded this opportunity to serve as stewards of the endowment and to promote the work of America’s Steve Dorman, president of Georgia College, expressed his most distinguished Catholic writer and to help shape the gratitude for the gift by saying, “This is a great opportunity future of Catholic literary studies.” for Georgia College and the GCSU Foundation to help preserve, protect and enhance the memory of one of our Adapted from Stoelker, Tom, “Curren Center to Steward most influential alumni, Flannery O’Connor. We are grate- Flannery O’Connor Trust” Arts and Culture, University ful to the Andalusia Foundation for entrusting us with its future and look forward to continuing to share this piece of News, Fordham University, May 15, 2018. American history with the world.”

Adapted from Johnson, Britiny. “Andalusia Foundation Gifts Flannery O’Connor’s Home to the GCSU Founda- tion” Front Page, Georgia College, August 2017.

Cheers! Page 6

Upcoming Conferences, Projects, and CFPs

SAMLA IN BIRMINGTON, AL, NOV. 2-4, 2018. ted by 1 June 2018. The proposed publication date for this The Flannery O’Connor Society will host two sessions at the Special Section is the August 2019 issue of the Review. Please SAMLA conference: direct inquiries about this call to Bruce Henderson, Depart- Session 1: Flannery O'Connor and Social Activism ment of Communication Studies, Ithaca College, Ithaca, Session 2: Flannery O'Connor - Open Topic NY 14850. [email protected] Bruce Gentry is still accepting last minute 300 word abstracts. Please submit to him as soon as possible at FLANNERY O’CONNOR SOCIETY AS MLA AFFILIATED [email protected] ORGANIZATION Monica Miller is attempting to establish the Flannery O’Con- CFP: "NEVER BEEN ANYWHERE BUT SICK": nor Society as an official MLA affiliated organization. One of DISABILITY STUDIES AND FLANNERY O'CONNOR the requirements is that the Society has sponsored two panels CFP for Special Feature of the Flannery O’Connor Review at past MLA events (this excludes regional conferences). If any- We invite a wide range of possible submissions, from those one can confirm that the Society has met this requirement, applying “discrit” perspectives to O’Connor (such as the kinds please contact Monica at [email protected] of criticism pioneered by theorists such as Garland-Thomson, Lennard Davis, Sander Gilman, Michael Berube, and Robert AND REALLY LOOKING AHEAD... McRuer) to biographical and cultural/historical examinations Bruce Gentry is planning an O'Connor conference for March of O’Connor’s work, life, and times, to studies that probe inter- 2021 in Savannah. This will be in conjunction with the Ameri- sectionalities between “crip” identity and other axes, such as can Literature Association. Anyone who wants to be kept in- “queer,” critical race studies, popular culture, religious studies formed about that conference may email Bruce. and theology, and performance studies (among oth- ers). Manuscripts should be under 10,000 words and submit-

FLANNERY O’CONNOR REVIEW

VOLUME 16, 2018

Harris, Carole. “Grace Lee Unveiled: The ‘Pleasant Lady” in Flannery O’Connor’s ‘.’

Donahoo, Robert. “Making Moonshine: O’Connor’s Use of Regional Culture in ‘The Violent Bear It Away.’”

Shumaker, Peggy. “On Taking Our Time with Flannery O’Connor.”

Michaels, Ramsey. “The Same Kind of Horns?: Flannery O’Connor and J.F. Powers.”

Michaels Kerr, Carolyn. “Survival of a Favorite.”

Poems by Angela Alaimo O’Donnell

Forum contribution by Margaret Earley Whitt

Special Feature: “Bombs, Satellites, Excavators, and Tractors: Exploring the Technological Relics of the New South in O’Connor’s Fiction” guest edited and introduced by Doug Davis

Grant, Virginia. “Fellow Travelers: Flannery O’Connor and Science in Cold War America.”

Owens, James. “Allis-Chalmers, 1853: A Photo Essay.”

Piggford, George. “Flannery O’Connor’s Excavator and Dante’s Lucifer in ‘A View of the Woods.’”

Reviews by Rhonda Armstrong, David Davis, Marshall Bruce Gentry, Norman McMillan, Tara Powell, Alison Staudinger, Virginia Wray

Volume 21, No. 5 Page 7

Selected Recent Publications

Articles and Books: 2018

Achilles, Jochen. “Environmental Liminalities: Nego- Kállay, Katalin G. “Judgement Day, Limited”: Trans- tiating Metaphysics and Materialism in Nathaniel gression of Regional and Racial Boundaries Hawthorne's, Sherwood Anderson's, in Flannery O'Connor's “Judgement Day” Space, and Flannery O'Connor's Short Fiction.” Isle: In- Gender, and the Gaze in Literature and Art. Ágnes terdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Zsófia Kovacs, Laszlo B. Sari, eds. Newcastle upon Summer 2017, vol. 24, no. 3, pp. 482-495. Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars, 2017, pp. Bosco, Mark, SJ. “Higher Mathematics” Image: Art, 163-172. Faith, Mystery, Fall 2017, vol. 94, pp. 64-77. Lefler, Nathan. “A Threefold Preparation for Death: Approaching the Heart of Flannery O'Connor's Bosco, Mark, ed. and introd., and Brent Little, ed. Anagogical Vision.” Logos: A Journal of Catholic Revelation and Convergence: Flannery O'Connor and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition. Catholic U of Thought and Culture, Winter 2017, vol. 20, no. 1, America P, 2017. pp. 76-99.  Bosco, Mark. “O'Connor's “Pied Beauty”: Gerard Liénard-Yeterian, Marie. “Flannery O'Connor: Speak- Manley Hopkins and the Aesthetics of Difference” ing/Writing from the Margin(s)” Southern Expo-  Bruner, Michael.“The Baron Is in Milledgeville”: sure: Essays Presented to Jan Nordby Gretlund. Thom- Friedrich von Hugel's̈ Influence on O'Connor” as Ærvold Bjerre, Clara Juncker, David Nye, eds. Odense, Denmark: Syddansk Universitetsforlag,  Garavel, Andrew J. “The “All-Demanding Eyes”: 2017, pp. 211-226. St. Augustine and the Restless Seeker” Luttrull, Daniel. “Mammon and God: Map-  Lewis, Stephen E. “Mysterious Heart: Maritain, ping Flannery O'Connor's Atlanta”Christianity and Mauriac, Chrétien, and O'Connor on the Fiction- Literature, Sept 2017, vol. 66, no. 4, pp. 675-690. al Knowledge of Others” Piggford, George. “Flannery O'Connor's Excavator in  Murphy, Michael P. “Breaking Bod- 'A View of the Woods'” Explicator, Oct-Dec 2017, ies: O'Connor and the Aesthetics of Consecra- vol. 75, no. 4, pp. 225-229. tion” Rutledge, Adam C. Turning toward the World: Aes-  Piggford, George. “Mrs. May's Dark Night theticism, Christianity, and the Ends of Art in in O'Connor's '’” Modernist Literature 2018 Jan, vol. 78, no. 7,  Schloesser, Stephen. “Revelation in History: Dis- Brandeis U, 2017. placed Persons, Léon Bloy, and Exegesis of the Tucker-Abramson, Myka. “States of Salvation: Wise Commonplace” Blood and the Rise of the Neoliberal Right”  Wilson, Jessica Hooten. “O'Connor's Unfinished PMLA: Publications of the Modern Language Associa- Novel: The Beginning of a Modern Saint's Life” tion of America, Oct 2017, vol. 132, no. 5, pp. Evans, Robert C. The Critical Reception of Flannery 1166-1180, 1296. O'Connor, 1952-2017 (Studies in American Litera- ture and Culture)