ENGL 4310

Again going back to what we talked about on Tuesday, I keep thinking of what Sarah said about how when we write a letter, we don't typically make a draft of it first, and then later refine it or correct any mistakes before sending it out into the world. Although we don't write letters much anymore, I know that when I write an email to someone, I often push the send button without altering it in any way. And all I would have to do is push the "delete" button. It wasn't even that easy in Porter and O'Connor's day. Porter was also such a prolific letter writer and set aside time in the day for the very purpose of writing so I doubt that she often agonized over the way a sentence sounded or the structure of the letter.

I think part of the reason I'm interested in this is because the letters represent a kind of rawness. Since they were likely created in a short amount of time and in the heat of the moment, they may refelct their creator the way a revised story cannot. I've found several examples of this. In a letter to Glenway Wescott (p. 169), Porter makes a typo when she attempts to write "phony" and it comes out instead as "P6H6o6N6Y." She goes on to say that it was a mistake caused from pressing the space bar rather than just correcting the mistake. I love that. It may sound ridiculous, but little things like this make these letters come alive for me. In another letter to Josephine, Porter writes "Your splendid letter came about an hour ago, and I am so zipped up by it I run to answer" (31). So it seems that Porter anxiously creates a response and, from the sound of it, probably put it in the mailbox as quickly as possible, with minimal revisions; it represents her authentic voice rather than her revised voice. In one letter, Porter seems to recognize this authentic nature of the letter by beginning a letter to Barbara Wescott, "your letter was like you" (165). Now, I'm not sure if "like you" means the structure of the letter in some way represented her friend or if the words themselves were so authentic and raw that she would've known it was Barbara who wrote them. I like to think it's the latter.

Because theory did not use to be part of the program and I am one of those old returning students, I have not yet taken a theory class. So I looked up The Intentional Fallacy. I think I've always agreed with it's argument that "the design or intention of the author is . . . [not] desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art," even though I would argue as to the "availability" of the author's intent. As for O'Conner and Porter, I believe that regardless of their intent, their works have proven successful. So my argument would be that study of the author's life and letters, etc. outside the works they've written is a study significant in itself and not illegitimate. As successful writers, these two provide a study in the psychology of a writer, a study both fascinating and perhaps helpful to both readers and hopeful writers themselves. We do want to make connection from their lives to their works, but it is secondary to the judgment of their success, it is merely validation for our own understanding. As a reader and potential writer, we long to connect more strongly with the works we have already connected with as well as with the writer of such accomplishments. A study of who these writers are and how they may think and write only establishes a stronger connection to their works. If we understand (if at all possible) their thought process to even the smallest degree, we may understand their works on a different level -- a different way perhaps than how their works touched us before, or perhaps in a stronger way, and neither experience is more or less valuable than the other, nor does it detract from the original success of their works. I hope I've made some sense, but I guess my point is that their intent does not matter in my own mind as to the judgement of their works and that I recognize a value in the study of their letters that although we might find insightful as we try to understand their writing better, has a value all of its own and unrelated to the judgment of their success.

In class, we talked about how these letters show us the multiple aspects of Porter and O'Connor's personalities. This absolutely fascinates me. We have developed a kind of equation for O'Connor's stories: a stranger comes to town which subsequently causes someone's life to be turned upside down. We get comfortable knowing what will happen next while reading her stories, and I get to the point where I feel like I kind of know the author, although to a small degree. After reading her letters, though, I've realized that she has several "selves" and, unlike her stories, we cannot apply an equation to her and therefore cannot know her as intimately as we wish we could.

Chelsea mentioned in her blog how Porter called feminism a "slimy word," which was a little upsetting due to the fact that we like to classify her under the category of "feminist." As Chelsea pointed out, I'm sure a lot of this has to do with the fact that in the 50's, feminism had many negative connotations. But also, there were probably aspects of feminism that Porter did and did not agree with, and so she cannot be correctly classified under this title. Maybe the title of "feminist" is a kind of equation we like to place on people in order to categorize them in a way that we feel we can better understand them. Unfortunately, Porter is much too complex to be placed under a label and her mutiple selves won't condone it.

As I was reading O'Connor's letters, I became aware of a subtle change of voice from one letter to another. I mean, you can obviously still tell it's O'Connor speaking, but there is something a little bit different in the ways in which she addresses certain people. One of the biggest changes seems to be in her letters to Maryat Lee. I'm not sure what Maryat's relationship to O'Connor was, but, just from the way O'Connor writes to her, I get the impression that they are intimate friends. To me, there seems to be a playfulness about the way these women interact with one another. In one of her letters, O'Connor writes to Maryat, saying "you didn't know I had a DREAD DISEASE didja? Well I got one" (1063) and goes on to make light of her sitution. At the end of this same letter, there is a little drawing of a skull and crossed bones. The skull is smiling, again making light of the fact that O'Connor knows she will likely die at a young age. Instances like this can be compared with her writings to A. These letters to A. seem much more formal than the letters to Maryat. In them, O'Connor talks a lot about her work and also about the authors she is reading or has read. It seems that A. is her "literary" friend and Maryat is her "buddy" friend. Nearly everyone she writes to will have their own category as they relate to her, making it impossible to produce a single title that will effectively define Flannery O'Connor.

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.

The letters are so fun to read. I'm enjoying seeing Porter's and O'Conner's personalities. I found it really interesting to read Porter's letter on Hemingway's death, (p.586). She didn't love his work and seems quite upset at his death. I found a comment she maid about letter writing that I thought interesting too, (p.405):

. . . for letters I always thought were meant to be personal messages standing
instead of talk between two persons who are not arguing, or trying to convert
each other to anything, or writing essays for posterity or even the present
public--so the free-er and easier the tone, the nearer it comes to a letter,
seems to me.

I've been interested in O'Connor's little insights she gives about her own writing. I want to better understand the religious element she presents and she gives us some great information. In several of her letters she states that she writes what she writes because she is a Catholic. She says in her letter on p.930 that "If my stories are complete it is because I see everything as beginning with original sin, taking in the Redemption, and reckoning on a final judgment." In another, p.952, she says: "I believe an the Church teaches that God is as present in the idiot boy as in the genius." This belief is most definitely seen in her writing. She mentions that she thinks herself to be a writer who believes in "distortion" rather than a realistic writer (p.932), and she seems to extend or distort her idea that God is present in the idiot boy to God is present in several of her "vulgar" characters. I use vulgar because that is how she describes the characters she creates. She explains this idea in her agreement of thought with Guardini in a letter on p. 953:

I think his supreme external attribute is vulgarity and that the vulgar
must be saved and that generally this is accomplished by the vulgar, or vulgarer
than they. Who may be closer to God even than the Idiot Boy.

Wow! I love that. It is fascinating to me that she associates herself as such (she describes herself as a cross between Hulga and Nelson p. 954 ). One other statement I have to add to this. She creates the characters she feels comfortable with or capable of being.

Hulga in this case would be a projection of myself into this kind of
tragic-comic action--presumably only a projection, because if I could not stop
short of it myself, I could not write it. Stop short or go beyond it, I
should say. You have to be able to dominate the existence that you
characterize. That is why I write about people who are more or less
primitive.

She makes me laugh that she thinks herself so primitive and such a monster even. I love her next letter, p.962, where she has been referred by her friend as cupid. She replies with "I'd rather be the Minotaur or the Gorgon or that three-headed dog at the river Styx, or Anybody."

I have been thinking about our discussion last class on O’Conner’s letters that mention the KKK(p.904 & 905) and Porter’s anti-Nazi, almost anti-German response in her letter (p. 208). Then I recalled a hint of anti-Semitic sentiment in her letter to Mr. Schwartz, p.547. What she says in her letter is true about how Jews subjugate women (and early Christian Fathers: Tertullian, St. Augustine, etc.) and I am right with her on how she feels about it. Likewise, I am not impressed with Freud’s ideas of penis envy. Where I find perhaps some anti-Semitism is in the link she makes between the two. It is just the allusion she makes that, Freud was a Jew, so it figures? I don’t mean to make a bigger deal out of this than that, and I don’t want to focus on subtle negative attitudes. I just wondered if this helps explain, along with her growing up in “a world that was highly Germanized,” her need to disassociate herself with Germans. Coupled with WWII, that need of disassociation would almost seem imperative.
I am interested as well in O’Conner’s attitude towards the KKK, but we aren’t given it at all. I think we are too far removed from their situations to understand the influence or impact of their racist social atmospheres. Time and distance has afforded us a historical awareness. If we were immersed as they were we might better understand, and not that I believe either one needs an excuse nor would ask for one. I do tend to think that what one is submersed in would show itself, in one degree or another, in one’s writing. This is one of the reasons I’m interested in O’Conner’s attitudes. For example, I’ve noticed in some of her letters that she is concerned with “class,” or levels of people — a thing no doubt she saw and was subject to throughout her life— and I noticed even terminology or associated words used in her stories like Revelation. Check out the letter on p.902 to Sally Fitzgerald: “I never have read Aiken or Henry Miller or that dope that wrote the Jurgen things but from what I have read about them they all sound like steps on the same ladder— with old Aiken the high rung.”
After I went back and read the letter on 904 and 905 discussing the KKK, I understood that O’Conner was only making an observation and I even wonder if any of these people, the P—-s or J——s, are even black, because the L—-’s are clearly not. The L’s, P’s and J’s seem to be people that rent from the O’Conners. They may even be “Displaced Persons” or immigrant workers (Check out the letter on p. 893 to the Fitzgeralds, it’s The Displaced Person real life situation). Initially, in letter 904, O’Conner seems worried because she has just found out that the KKK has burned a cross at the L’s. The KKK was prevalent in Carbon County’s early years, where I grew up. The miners that came there were immigrant workers and the KKK hated all of them, not necessarily just black folks. Anyway, in the letter on 893 O’Conner is anticipating the arrival of who she suspects might be Polish immigrants to rent their property. In letter 905, O’Conner has discovered that the cross burning was just part of an initiation and the L’s were not victims of a threat or crime. We never get any insight into how O’Conner feels about the Klan herself. If anyone finds anything else out, I’d love to hear it.

After reading O'Conner's essay addressing her own creative process, I found myself interested in what Katherine Porter says of her own. In a letter to Glenway Wescott, p.102, she says:

I spend my life thinking about technique, method, style--the only time I do not
think of them at all is when I am writing! This is a kind of madness. . .

She sounds a little like O'Conner who, in her essay, initially claims she can't really identify her process, she just writes.
Another letter I found interesting was one to Josephine Herbst, p.109, who wrote the story Man of Steel which contains a character, Miranda, who I guess is Katherine Porter (I'd love to get my hands on that story). This letter is her reaction upon reading her friends depiction of her. She doesn't say that she is opposed, but I get the impression that Katherine isn't really thrilled about it. My impression comes from Porter's attitude and formula that she describes in her own writing:

. . .myself, I never used anybody I ever knew or any story about any one,
complete. My device is to begin more or less with an episode form life,or
with a certain character; but immediately the episode changes and the
original character disappears. I cannot help it. I find it utterly
impossible to make a report, as such. I like taking a kind of person, and
inventing for him or her a set of experiences which might well have happened to
that person. But they never did happen, except in the story. . . . I must
either write friction, or report the facts. The combination for me is
deadly.

Porter makes another statement I like in a letter commenting on a review of her work, in a letter to Barbara Wescott, p. 133. Speaking of artist in general and using an idea she has studied in a Thiberge textbook she says:

[Thiberge] insists on "spontaneite rigoreusement controle" and isn't that
a wonderful statement of what must happen in any work of art? Great
dancers, bullfighters, automobile racers, painters, tight rope walkers,
writers--all have it, or they couldn't be great. The potential ability to
split a hair at one stroke. It always looks so easy and simple. So,
well regulated chaos is just what I mean . . .

It is interesting to see who she considers artists.
I have not read all her letters, and have skipped around. I'd love to hear about anything you've read about Porter's perspectives on the writing process.
My favorite letter, as of yet, I won't speak about here, but I'd love to hear any one's reaction to is to Edward Schwartz, p.547. It addresses women's perspectives and feminism verses Freud's thoughts. I didn't realize she was so anti-Semitic, but again, loved what she says about women. I shared it with my husband and will be sharing forever with people about women.