ENGL 4310

One thing I especially enjoy while reading the letters of both Porter and O'Connor is their perceptions of other writers. They are both continuously rattling off impressive lists of the famous writers they are familiar with, and we are fortunate enough to get a glimpse of their opinions of those writers.

In both O'Connor and Porter's letters, I've found instances where they critique the character development of other authors, again strongly implying that these two women are primarily concerned with portraying realistic characters rather than analyzing a larger philosophical question or focusing on plot development.

I read several instances of this in O'Connor's letters, but the one that comes to mind is a letter "To A." on pg. 1181. In the letter, she refers to a book she's been reading (I was unable to discover which book), and she says "I began to feel I was reading a connundrum about some philosophical problem and not about folks and I got most weary." This recalls to mind the "treat" we had earlier this semester, if I'm remembering correctly, in which O'Connor has her neighbor read one of her stories and she says something to the effect of "I guess that's just how some folks would do" and O'Connor took it as a compliment to her work. She doesn't care if we like her characters or not, as long as they are realistically and effectively portrayed, which I think they undoubtedly are.

Similarly, in one of Porter's letters to Barbara Wescott (pg. 307), she discusses some of the Russian writers, primarily Dostoievski. She says that she "madly (wants) to get into the book and take some of the characters by the nap of the neck and knock some sense and logic into their maggoty heads." I'm not really sure if this is a critique of the quality of the characters or if it is just evidence of Porter's investment in the characters she both creates and reads about, but either way, I think a character's mental development is her primary concern.