A bit ago, Chelsea (the other one) posted an entry on the writer’s inspiration. That is also fascinating to me, too. Not so much to really know where the ideas come from, though. I think most (I say most only to avoid an absolute) writers take their inspiration from the things that happen around them and tweak them to fit in a/the story.
Flannery O’Connor, in a letter to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, says:
“[My momma] and Mrs. S______, the dairyman’s wife, have been making curtains for the windows out of flowered chicken feed sacks. Regina was complaining that the green sacks wouldn’t look so good in the same room where the pink ones were and Mrs. S________ (who has no teeth on one side of her mouth) says in a very superior voice, ‘Do you think they’ll know what the colors even is?’ Usually the families that have been got around here for dairy work have turned out to be Polish shoe makers and have headed for Chicago just as soon as they could save the money.”Colored chicken feed sacks as curtains? Doesn’t that ring a bell or three? Flannery O’Connor wrote in The Displaced Person,
“They had collected a piece of odd furniture here and a piece there and they had taken some flowered chicken feed sacks and made curtains for the windows, two red and one green, because they had not had enough of the red sacks to go around. Mrs. McIntyre said she was not made of money and she could not afford to buy curtains. ‘They can’t talk,’ Mrs. Shortley said. ‘You reckon they’ll know what colors even is?’”I think it reveals a bit more about Mrs. Shortley’s character to know where her dialogue came from. I mean, that statement isn’t quite one of a person we should respect in the first place, but when writing to S&R, she deems it necessary to tell them that the woman who made the comment had teeth only on one side of her mouth, and Flannery O’Connor also made the judgment she usually refrains from in her fiction, of telling that the voice was, “very superior.”
It’s interesting.
I love to find out where writers get their "inspiration" for their stories, so I really loved reading O'Connor's letters that related to "Parker's Back." The first mention of it is really inobvious (is that a word?) because she doesn't mention a story at all. She is writing to a friend about newspaper clippings and how she is a depository for them. She says, "The latest I have got to add to my collection is one of a man who has just had Christ tattooed on his back. This is obviously for artistic and not religious purposes as he also has tiger and panther heads and an eagle perched on a cannon" (1145). When I read that, I basically laughed out loud. "Parker's Back" is based off a newspaper clipping! Go figure.
There are few other times that O'Connor talks about "Parker's Back" in her letters, but they are after she has actually written the story. I thought they also gave some clarification, at least for me. She says, "As for the 'on the back' business--that's a cherished Southern white assertion--the that negro is on his back and in a way it's quite true. But you had to be born below the M.D. line to appreciate it fully" (1216) I didn't quite understand this particular quote, so I hope that someone else does and can explain it to me. I get the gist, but if anyone wants to expound, I would be grateful.
Then O'Connor talks about heresy when it comes to "Parker's Back." She starts by saying that someone who read it told her she had
Succeeded in dramatizing a heresy. Well not in those terms did I set out but
only thinking that the spirit moveth where it listest. I found out about
tattooing from a book I found in Marboro list called 'Memoirs of a
Tattooist.' The old man that wrote it took tattooing as a high art and a
great profession. No nonsense. Picture of his wife in it--very demure
Victorian lady in off should gown. Everything you can see except her face &
hands is tattooed. Looks like fabric. He did it. (1217)
After first reading this I was wondering whether she was referring to Parker or Sarah Ruth being the heretic. I was hoping she would say Sarah Ruth, and I was not disappointed. In another letter To A. she says, "No Caroline didnt mean the tattoos were the heresy. Sarah Ruth was the heretic--the notion that you can worship in pure spirit" (1218). Hurrah! I feel as if I have been vindicated by these words. I know that we discussed the idea in class, but it always feels nice to have the "authority" of the author. If you believe in that (and not the death of the author stuff), that is.