The life you write may be your own
It's not who's reading, it's what you're becoming: lessons from Mary Flannery
“You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.”
—
The urge to give up on art and to sink into a pit of yuppie conformity, at this point in my life, is real. I am 37 going on . . . comfortable tennis shoe brands and insurance rates. I still feel young (question mark), but could see myself in some not too far off future succumbing to the ice cream parlor. I, like many others I know, do depressing things for money. I dedicate too few hours to my craft. Does Fox Business News wait for me behind the black glass of my television? You’ve heard about how your parents used to be. They followed Neil Young to California and went bare-footed most of the time. Now they are just paranoid.
How does modern life tame us so thoroughly? How do the forces of comfort and stability, over time, devour the natural passions and fortitudes of the human spirit? There are people who depend on me showing up each day. My work as a teacher, as I’ve discussed in earlier essays, has it’s rewarding aspects — one of those being weeks and months off. But when I am in the thick of the semester, it drains the energy not only from my body but from my complete being. Is this a necessary way to live? Does the meaningfulness of this profession come at a devastating cost? What else would that primal energetic force of my life produce if left alone more often?
I am at this juncture, so to speak, looking around, asking these questions. Life does indeed seem short. Barring reincarnation, what if this is the only shot I get? I have had many gurus, some of them on youtube, some I have been lucky enough to know in person. They all seem to provide similar answers to these kinds of questions. You cannot serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both [spirit] and money.
The spiritual life, the life of intention, the life or art and simplicity, and the material life, the life of locks and guns, of bigger walls and cars and houses, are placed on an equal-armed scale. You give to one what you take from the other. It is not that you cannot have a solid material grounding if you live for the will of your own spirit; oftentimes a spiritual life is rich in material blessings. But it is the case that if you live for security, your spirit will suffer, the truth of your heart and soul will whither to some degree.
The path of true spirituality leads us to nature, to the real rawness of the world, to duty, to confrontation, to clear deliberation, to the joyful terrible work of our art. It may lead to sadness, despair, and poverty. It may leave us misunderstood and alone. But if given the time it deserves, it always leads the artist to liberation. It always leads to meaning. The other path necessarily leads us to quiet desperation, to ignorance, to beliefs that are harsh and sick but to actions as soft as oatmeal. The other path leads to the deepest and darkest forms of regret, and ultimately, to a death before the death of our natural body.
I am not declaring that I will soon abandon practical life and endanger my family, not in this world. But this is my soul crying out for balance, and I detect a personal revolution coming on. The spiritual life for me is a writing life lived close to nature, one with much time for expression and much time for paying attention. I require time spent with my daughter and time spent in solitude, contemplating who I am, mulling over meaningful things. If I do not have time for these beautiful endeavors, if I feel like I’m running an endless race, I do not call that living.
~~~
Here I am complaining, and today is St. Patty’s Day, a day in which I choose to honor my patron saint. No, not the man who ran the snakes out of Ireland, but my favorite Irish Catholic, indeed my favorite dead or living fiction writer, Mary Flannery O’Connor, the mother of southern gothic style and perhaps the greatest short story writer who ever lived. I’ve been known to visit her grave on this day, a 30 mile trip from my house, to bring her flowers and bird feathers (iykyk) and to read her poems, some of my own, some of my favorites. Once, friends and I tried to have a seance in Milledgeville’s Memory Hill Cemetery. Long story short: there lie her bones but she done gone.
Flannery was an only child, born on March 25th, 1925 in Savannah, to a proud community of Irish immigrants. She spent most of her life, though, other than a few short years at the Iowa Writers Workshop and brief stints in New England, on her family’s farm in Milledgeville. Her father died of lupus when she was 15, and in 1952, she was diagnosed with the same disease, which forced her, amid a burgeoning writing career, to return south to a place she probably never intended to return, except to visit her mother. She ended up living with her mother, Regina Cline O’Connor, who lovingly cared for her daughter but who was much too conventional and passive-aggressive for Flannery’s tastes, for 32 of her 39 earthly years.
Today, Milledgeville is a funky little town with a thriving liberal arts college, but in the 1950s, it was a place of visceral racial and sexual divides. It was home to the state’s only mental hospital, which housed, “cared for,” and buried thousands of poor souls. Milledgeville is where Georgia seceded from the Union and was the first city built by white people (slaves) west of the Oconee River on lands ceded by indebted Creek Indians. What a legacy. It is safe to say that in Flannery’s day, it was a place generally bereft of intellectual stimulation.
Imagine being a young, genius writer, friends with people like Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Fitzgerald, and being forced to return to such a hole. That must’ve been devastating, and there is reason to believe she was upset. (See the character Hulga in the story Good Country People, a young woman with a PhD in philosophy and prosthetic leg, who is forced to return home to the family farm to be cared for by her ignorant mother, a woman who wishes her daughter were less strange.)
I share Flannery’s story not to fixate on its gloominess. Because she didn’t. It is what Flannery made of her circumstance that has always baffled and inspired me. Faced with terminal illness and rednecks and her mother, she kept her faith. She doubled down on the art. She used the depravity of her setting to paint dark and gorgeous stories of tragedy and redemption. Her prose pokes playfully at the stupidity of some southern traditions, but her themes run rich with serious consequences. She caused southerners to look into the mirror, and she used an unfortunate lot to fuel her own voice. She made no excuses; she just did the damn work.
Flannery was of course privileged in some ways. Her family was well-off enough (the Clines, a prominent Milledgeville line) that she never had to worry about money. But it is clear that the crosses she bore were burdensome. She was not expected to live as long as she did. She fought through terrible flare-ups and hospitalizations to produce thirty-two short stories, two and a half novels (her third somehow being released later this year), and countless critiques, essays, and letters. Through sickness and pain and despite being completely misunderstood by people around her, in the face of calamity, Flannery never wavered in her obedience to her true spiritual path and to her work. That, in my opinion, is something we can all learn from and appreciate.
Here I am complaining about minute details with a generally healthy body. I make excuses all the time. I’m too tired to write tonight; I’m too isolated and uninspired; I’m not getting the readership or feedback. These are the antics of a man who easily loses faith. There are of course changes I need to make, risks I have been afraid to take, but I am beginning to see that without risks, there are no rewards. And that an artist either suffers the pains of dedication or they suffer the deeper darker pains of regret. Because of Flannery’s example, among others, my goal for the remainder of this writing year, is to make fewer excuses and to do the damn work each day. It matters not who is paying attention. The true art is what the artist is becoming through the process of their dedication. That is the real alchemy of the world. That is true religion.
Art stands as the antithesis of our society’s values. It is the slow magic you make in quiet hours, the building hum of a frog pond, Darwin watching bees for days, undistracted. It is the uncovering of our own divine nature. “I write to discover what I know,” Flannery told her literary agent in a 1948 letter, “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” To investigate what is human — in her case, to look into the heart of human darkness — is to understand who we, the investigators, are.
I am declaring (at least for myself) that March 17th is henceforth Flannery O’Connor Day. I shall make it a priority to meditate on Flannery’s example this time each year. Why celebrate the man who brought an end to Irish paganism? The introduction of Christendom (I say this while recognizing Flannery’s sincere faith) all around the world marked the beginning of the end of humans living in harmony with the earth. That’s not worth celebrating in my book. Instead, I will honor a genius woman who just happened to be Irish Catholic, who loved birds and stories, and whose work has always inspired me.
~~~
I’d love to know what your experience reading Flannery is like, or what you thought of this reflection. I am grateful to anyone reading this work, and appreciate all the wonderful people I’ve met on substack and all the great feedback I’ve received. I say it doesn’t matter who is reading but of course it does. If you’ve never read Flannery, maybe I could offer my humble opinion on where to start.
As a side note, have you seen the trailer for Ethan Hawke’s film Wildcat, about Flannery life? It looks amazing; I can’t wait to watch. IMDb says the film was released last year, but I’m not sure that’s true. I can’t find it online, and I don’t know anyone who has seen it (and trust me, I would — I’m friends with a few Flannery fanatics/scholars). From the trailer it looks like Maya Hawke does a stellar job portraying someone who I can imagine might be challenging to portray. I’d love to know what you think about that, too.
Have a blessed (and lucky) afternoon.
Here’s the trailer:
Thank you for sharing this Mr. Murdock. Alongside you or in spirit, I shall also consider St. Patrick’s Day, henceforth, Flannery O’Connor Day. Your questions are all our questions; I believe and Flannery’s herself. As you traverse these questions, I wish you nothing but success in enlightenment day to day. You’re a fine writer and a brave one.
"It is the slow magic you make in quiet hours, the building hum of a frog pond..." Yes. Yes it is.