1 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:07,000 Downloaded from YTS.MX 2 00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:13,000 Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX 3 00:00:14,324 --> 00:00:16,188 [clapper clacking] 4 00:00:16,188 --> 00:00:17,672 [ducks quacking] 5 00:00:17,672 --> 00:00:20,744 [cows mooing] 6 00:00:20,744 --> 00:00:23,161 [soft music] 7 00:00:29,201 --> 00:00:31,548 [crutches on floor] 8 00:00:36,346 --> 00:00:37,968 [clothes hangers moving] 9 00:00:39,073 --> 00:00:40,040 [zipper] 10 00:00:40,971 --> 00:00:41,972 [paper rustling] 11 00:00:44,837 --> 00:00:45,838 [door shutting] 12 00:00:46,494 --> 00:00:47,495 [car starting] 13 00:00:51,085 --> 00:00:53,950 - This program is an attempt to bring forward 14 00:00:53,950 --> 00:00:56,573 the most exciting new books we know of. 15 00:00:56,573 --> 00:00:59,369 Such a book is a collection of short stories, 16 00:00:59,369 --> 00:01:01,026 "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." 17 00:01:02,476 --> 00:01:05,513 One critic called her perhaps the most naturally gifted 18 00:01:05,513 --> 00:01:08,551 of the youngest generation of American novelists. 19 00:01:09,448 --> 00:01:11,381 Here she is, Flannery O'Connor. 20 00:01:12,451 --> 00:01:14,004 [upbeat music] 21 00:01:14,004 --> 00:01:16,593 - [Flannery] The grandmother didn't want to go to Florida. 22 00:01:16,593 --> 00:01:18,906 She wanted to visit some of her connections 23 00:01:18,906 --> 00:01:22,496 in East Tennessee and she was seizing at every chance... 24 00:01:22,496 --> 00:01:24,877 - To change Bailey's mind. 25 00:01:24,877 --> 00:01:27,949 Bailey was the son she lived with, her only boy. 26 00:01:27,949 --> 00:01:30,055 - [Flannery] "Now look here, Bailey," she said, 27 00:01:30,055 --> 00:01:31,332 "see here, read this. 28 00:01:31,332 --> 00:01:34,749 Here this fellow that calls himself The Misfit 29 00:01:34,749 --> 00:01:38,788 is a-loose from the federal pen and headed toward Florida." 30 00:01:42,550 --> 00:01:43,793 - I love Southern writing. 31 00:01:43,793 --> 00:01:45,898 I particularly loved Flannery O'Connor. 32 00:01:45,898 --> 00:01:47,969 You think it's this bitter old alcoholic 33 00:01:47,969 --> 00:01:50,386 who's writing these really funny dark stories, 34 00:01:50,386 --> 00:01:52,008 and then you find out she's a woman 35 00:01:52,008 --> 00:01:54,528 and that she's devoutly religious. 36 00:01:58,256 --> 00:01:59,740 - "I hope you don't think," 37 00:01:59,740 --> 00:02:02,260 he said in a lofty indignant tone, 38 00:02:02,260 --> 00:02:04,124 "that I believe in that crap." 39 00:02:05,228 --> 00:02:07,023 [typewriter keys clicking] 40 00:02:07,023 --> 00:02:11,579 - She was able to go straight to the craziness 41 00:02:11,579 --> 00:02:15,928 without always trying to make the craziness black 42 00:02:15,928 --> 00:02:17,723 or the craziness white. 43 00:02:17,723 --> 00:02:20,726 She just saw the mystery of the craziness. 44 00:02:23,729 --> 00:02:26,353 - Flannery O'Connor's life in some ways 45 00:02:26,353 --> 00:02:29,149 could have come out of a Flannery O'Connor story. 46 00:02:30,391 --> 00:02:33,325 It was the illness I think that made her 47 00:02:33,325 --> 00:02:34,706 the writer that she is. 48 00:02:34,706 --> 00:02:37,364 [soft music] 49 00:02:37,364 --> 00:02:40,332 - Flannery O'Connor is one of the maybe 50 00:02:40,332 --> 00:02:42,990 five or six writers in the history of the world 51 00:02:42,990 --> 00:02:45,717 who is least afraid to look at the darkness. 52 00:02:47,374 --> 00:02:52,344 - You have a wolf dressed up as a grandma. 53 00:02:53,276 --> 00:02:55,796 Something's going to happen. 54 00:02:55,796 --> 00:02:58,178 [soft music] 55 00:03:20,441 --> 00:03:23,341 [rooster crowing] 56 00:03:32,798 --> 00:03:36,388 [typewriter keys clicking] 57 00:03:48,435 --> 00:03:49,850 - [Narrator] "Whenever I'm asked 58 00:03:49,850 --> 00:03:53,060 why southern writers particularly have a penchant 59 00:03:53,060 --> 00:03:56,788 for writing about freaks, I say it is because 60 00:03:56,788 --> 00:03:59,515 we are still able to recognize one." 61 00:04:02,345 --> 00:04:04,865 [upbeat music] 62 00:04:09,663 --> 00:04:11,043 - [Barker] All right, ladies and gentlemen, step right up. 63 00:04:11,043 --> 00:04:15,496 [speaking drowned out by crowd noise] 64 00:04:18,085 --> 00:04:23,055 - In a small town, you can lie, you can steal, 65 00:04:24,850 --> 00:04:29,821 you can commit adultery, you can even murder somebody, 66 00:04:31,063 --> 00:04:35,827 but you can't not go to church. [laughs] 67 00:04:37,518 --> 00:04:40,659 [church bell ringing] 68 00:04:44,870 --> 00:04:46,216 [people chatting] 69 00:04:46,216 --> 00:04:48,771 [upbeat music] 70 00:04:58,850 --> 00:05:01,818 [dog barking] 71 00:05:01,818 --> 00:05:04,649 [marching band music] 72 00:05:04,649 --> 00:05:07,030 - Mary Flannery O'Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia, 73 00:05:07,030 --> 00:05:09,412 into an Irish Catholic immigrant community 74 00:05:09,412 --> 00:05:12,898 and she was in a largely Protestant town, 75 00:05:12,898 --> 00:05:15,107 but a very cosmopolitan town. 76 00:05:16,316 --> 00:05:18,904 [upbeat music] 77 00:05:21,182 --> 00:05:25,255 - She's far more American than she is Irish 78 00:05:25,255 --> 00:05:27,637 and she's far more southern than she is American. 79 00:05:31,365 --> 00:05:33,229 - She was shy. 80 00:05:34,782 --> 00:05:39,477 I mean she was not timid, and she was considered 81 00:05:39,477 --> 00:05:42,687 a little uppity by the nuns in the parochial school 82 00:05:42,687 --> 00:05:44,171 she attended in Savannah. 83 00:05:48,002 --> 00:05:50,004 She had a rather fortunate childhood, 84 00:05:50,004 --> 00:05:51,799 a very fortunate childhood. 85 00:05:51,799 --> 00:05:56,252 Her father adored her, and so did her mother of course. 86 00:05:56,252 --> 00:05:58,599 But they saw her in quite different ways 87 00:05:58,599 --> 00:06:03,397 and she was able to see herself in different ways. 88 00:06:04,847 --> 00:06:06,055 - [Narrator] "When I was five 89 00:06:06,055 --> 00:06:08,851 I had an experience that marked me for life. 90 00:06:08,851 --> 00:06:11,819 Pathe News sent a photographer from New York 91 00:06:11,819 --> 00:06:16,168 to Savannah to take a picture of a chicken of mine." 92 00:06:16,168 --> 00:06:18,343 - [Newsreader] Here's Mary O'Connor of Savannah, Georgia 93 00:06:18,343 --> 00:06:20,172 holding the only chicken in the world 94 00:06:20,172 --> 00:06:22,312 that actually walks backwards. 95 00:06:22,312 --> 00:06:24,522 When she advances, she retreats. 96 00:06:24,522 --> 00:06:26,178 To go forward, she goes back, 97 00:06:26,178 --> 00:06:29,078 and when she arrives, she's really leaving. 98 00:06:30,286 --> 00:06:35,084 - You'd see her at age five calm and in charge. 99 00:06:36,223 --> 00:06:37,155 I mean, there's something about her 100 00:06:37,155 --> 00:06:38,915 that's bewitching at that age. 101 00:06:40,089 --> 00:06:42,332 She came back to this incident often. 102 00:06:43,506 --> 00:06:46,716 She began to raise these special birds. 103 00:06:46,716 --> 00:06:50,237 [birds honking] 104 00:06:50,237 --> 00:06:53,482 She would joke about how she would then begin to raise 105 00:06:53,482 --> 00:06:56,036 one eyed chickens to try to lure the film company 106 00:06:56,036 --> 00:06:58,935 to come back to town, but they never did. 107 00:06:58,935 --> 00:07:02,249 [geese honking] 108 00:07:02,249 --> 00:07:04,803 [typewriter keys clicking] 109 00:07:04,803 --> 00:07:07,392 [upbeat music] 110 00:07:08,566 --> 00:07:11,361 - I would say her signature story 111 00:07:11,361 --> 00:07:13,329 is "A Temple of the Holy Ghost," 112 00:07:13,329 --> 00:07:16,366 because it envisions this young girl 113 00:07:16,366 --> 00:07:19,266 who is clearly a version of Flannery O'Connor. 114 00:07:21,199 --> 00:07:22,787 - The story is very provocative 115 00:07:22,787 --> 00:07:25,859 in exactly the way that O'Connor's stories usually are. 116 00:07:27,239 --> 00:07:30,208 For one thing, she incorporates what she calls a freak. 117 00:07:30,208 --> 00:07:33,383 A person who is not like everybody else, 118 00:07:33,383 --> 00:07:36,214 a person who is radically non-conformist. 119 00:07:36,214 --> 00:07:39,079 [girls singing in Latin] 120 00:07:39,079 --> 00:07:41,391 Two visiting cousins go to see at the fair, 121 00:07:41,391 --> 00:07:42,600 this intersex person. 122 00:07:43,808 --> 00:07:46,811 - The two girls are singing in Latin. 123 00:07:46,811 --> 00:07:49,710 They're Catholic girls, they go to Catholic school. 124 00:07:49,710 --> 00:07:53,749 The boys in the town, they call it juicing. 125 00:07:53,749 --> 00:07:55,923 [girls singing in Latin] 126 00:07:55,923 --> 00:07:58,098 - The child in the story is too young to go, 127 00:07:58,098 --> 00:08:00,410 so she doesn't actually get to see the person, 128 00:08:00,410 --> 00:08:03,413 but she is fascinated by this idea 129 00:08:03,413 --> 00:08:06,278 of someone who can be both male and female 130 00:08:06,278 --> 00:08:08,142 and yet neither male nor female. 131 00:08:11,629 --> 00:08:14,942 This child's faith life is in some ways 132 00:08:14,942 --> 00:08:17,393 a version of Flannery's own faith life 133 00:08:17,393 --> 00:08:19,291 in which she has doubts. 134 00:08:19,291 --> 00:08:21,466 - [Narrator] "He could strike you this way, 135 00:08:21,466 --> 00:08:23,192 but he has not, amen." 136 00:08:24,883 --> 00:08:27,334 - She decides "I could never be a saint," 137 00:08:27,334 --> 00:08:30,199 but she could be a martyr if they killed her quick. 138 00:08:30,199 --> 00:08:31,441 And then she thinks about the ways 139 00:08:31,441 --> 00:08:33,305 in which she would be willing to die. 140 00:08:33,305 --> 00:08:35,998 Boiled in oil, maybe, attacked by animals, 141 00:08:35,998 --> 00:08:37,793 probably being torn apart by animals. 142 00:08:37,793 --> 00:08:40,450 [lion growling] 143 00:08:43,833 --> 00:08:48,286 - if you went to mass, you heard those prayers 144 00:08:48,286 --> 00:08:50,150 over and over again. 145 00:08:50,150 --> 00:08:53,153 You were encouraged to pray silently, 146 00:08:53,153 --> 00:08:57,295 even oddly to contemplate at a very young age. 147 00:08:58,779 --> 00:09:02,334 - [Narrator] "Her mind began to get quiet and then empty. 148 00:09:02,334 --> 00:09:04,716 But when the priest raised the monstrance 149 00:09:04,716 --> 00:09:08,651 with the host shining ivory colored in the center of it, 150 00:09:09,894 --> 00:09:11,999 she was thinking of the tent at the fair 151 00:09:11,999 --> 00:09:14,105 that had the freak in it. 152 00:09:14,105 --> 00:09:18,419 You are God's imp, don't you know." 153 00:09:18,419 --> 00:09:21,802 - What's happening here is something so remarkable 154 00:09:21,802 --> 00:09:24,115 that the profane meets with the sacred 155 00:09:24,115 --> 00:09:28,291 and it's within that comic meeting that the stories operate. 156 00:09:32,088 --> 00:09:33,503 This is the way Flannery O'Connor works. 157 00:09:33,503 --> 00:09:35,747 You either get it or you don't, 158 00:09:35,747 --> 00:09:38,198 and if you don't, then don't go to the carnival. 159 00:09:41,373 --> 00:09:44,618 - [Narrator] "God's spirit has a dwelling in you, 160 00:09:44,618 --> 00:09:46,482 don't you know. 161 00:09:46,482 --> 00:09:47,310 Amen." 162 00:09:54,904 --> 00:09:57,389 ♪ Oh you go to your church 163 00:09:57,389 --> 00:09:59,564 ♪ And I'll go to mine 164 00:09:59,564 --> 00:10:03,879 ♪ But let's walk along together ♪ 165 00:10:03,879 --> 00:10:08,538 ♪ Our Heavenly Father is the same ♪ 166 00:10:08,538 --> 00:10:12,301 ♪ So let's walk along together 167 00:10:12,301 --> 00:10:16,857 - What does a writer try to do in a short story? 168 00:10:16,857 --> 00:10:19,411 Or what does a writer try to do in a novel? 169 00:10:19,411 --> 00:10:21,413 What is the secret of writing? 170 00:10:22,656 --> 00:10:27,247 - Well, I think that a serious fiction writer 171 00:10:27,247 --> 00:10:31,769 describes an action only in order to reveal a mystery 172 00:10:31,769 --> 00:10:34,841 because he may be revealing the mystery to himself, 173 00:10:34,841 --> 00:10:38,568 at the same time that he's revealing it to everyone else 174 00:10:38,568 --> 00:10:42,124 and he may not even succeed in revealing it to himself, 175 00:10:42,124 --> 00:10:45,127 but I think he must sense its presence. 176 00:10:48,130 --> 00:10:51,271 - Her father, he was a man like many people 177 00:10:51,271 --> 00:10:53,342 I know of that generation. 178 00:10:53,342 --> 00:10:55,102 He simply couldn't make it. 179 00:10:55,102 --> 00:10:58,209 The old economies in the south had just collapsed. 180 00:10:59,486 --> 00:11:01,350 Since she was in Faulkner's generation. 181 00:11:02,627 --> 00:11:04,733 The cities were where things were happening. 182 00:11:08,046 --> 00:11:10,566 - They moved from Savannah to Atlanta 183 00:11:10,566 --> 00:11:13,155 because that's where he could get work. 184 00:11:13,155 --> 00:11:15,847 Flannery did not like it there, nor did her mother. 185 00:11:17,124 --> 00:11:19,540 Regina, her mother and Flannery relocated 186 00:11:19,540 --> 00:11:22,060 to Milledgeville to the Cline family mansion. 187 00:11:22,060 --> 00:11:24,787 Edward would come home and visit them on weekends, 188 00:11:24,787 --> 00:11:26,720 but they were used to living without him 189 00:11:26,720 --> 00:11:28,757 for five days a week. 190 00:11:28,757 --> 00:11:32,381 - Regina had grown up in rather genteel 191 00:11:32,381 --> 00:11:35,522 circumstances in Milledgeville. 192 00:11:35,522 --> 00:11:38,283 Her family, the Cline family where a very prominent 193 00:11:38,283 --> 00:11:43,254 family in the town, much respected by other people there. 194 00:11:44,427 --> 00:11:47,154 One of the very few Roman Catholic families. 195 00:11:47,154 --> 00:11:50,468 The little church there may have been 196 00:11:50,468 --> 00:11:53,574 largely paid for by one of her ancestors. 197 00:11:55,197 --> 00:11:58,441 [muffled choir singing] 198 00:11:58,441 --> 00:12:01,790 [priest speaking softly] 199 00:12:03,999 --> 00:12:06,208 - Her mother had 15 brothers and sisters, 200 00:12:06,208 --> 00:12:08,555 and a number of them still lived in the house. 201 00:12:08,555 --> 00:12:10,419 Miss Mary still lived there. 202 00:12:10,419 --> 00:12:14,009 Mr. Hugh, Miss Kate who Flannery called the Duchess. 203 00:12:14,009 --> 00:12:15,493 Some great aunts. 204 00:12:15,493 --> 00:12:19,980 So she was used to people getting sick, dying, strokes. 205 00:12:19,980 --> 00:12:22,742 She always had a strong sense of mortality. 206 00:12:24,433 --> 00:12:27,022 [upbeat music] 207 00:12:33,131 --> 00:12:34,961 - The O'Connors had no money. 208 00:12:34,961 --> 00:12:38,654 The money came from Aunt Mary who had had inherited money 209 00:12:38,654 --> 00:12:41,139 and had land and these were not integrationists, 210 00:12:41,139 --> 00:12:42,002 I can tell you. 211 00:12:44,625 --> 00:12:49,596 The Jews of Charleston married the Jews of Savannah. 212 00:12:51,046 --> 00:12:52,979 So the Catholics married the Catholics of Milledgeville 213 00:12:52,979 --> 00:12:55,360 married the Catholics of Savannah, Augusta, so forth. 214 00:13:03,403 --> 00:13:04,956 The time that Flannery lived, 215 00:13:04,956 --> 00:13:08,891 the three Ks were always Koons, kikes and Catholics. 216 00:13:08,891 --> 00:13:12,964 That is African-Americans, Jews and Catholics. 217 00:13:14,448 --> 00:13:16,416 - Catholics were very suspect. 218 00:13:16,416 --> 00:13:20,040 So there was a kind of siege mentality by Catholics. 219 00:13:20,040 --> 00:13:23,112 But this was good for Flannery because it meant 220 00:13:23,112 --> 00:13:28,014 that she didn't take for granted widespread approval. 221 00:13:28,014 --> 00:13:30,637 She ignored the disapproval of her religion. 222 00:13:30,637 --> 00:13:33,157 She ignored the disapproval of her fiction. 223 00:13:40,785 --> 00:13:43,339 - If you look at her in that direction, 224 00:13:43,339 --> 00:13:47,965 you don't get this kind of romantic artist. 225 00:13:47,965 --> 00:13:50,899 You get someone who's writing out of a specific time, 226 00:13:50,899 --> 00:13:54,834 a specific code and a specific set of manners. 227 00:13:54,834 --> 00:13:57,077 And the interesting thing is what she found 228 00:13:57,077 --> 00:13:59,700 in all those manners was mystery. 229 00:13:59,700 --> 00:14:02,048 [soft music] 230 00:14:16,165 --> 00:14:17,753 - Flannery's father was the one 231 00:14:17,753 --> 00:14:19,928 who encouraged her literary ambitions. 232 00:14:19,928 --> 00:14:23,103 Her mother was interested in improving her. 233 00:14:23,103 --> 00:14:26,210 Corrective shoes, braces, everything. 234 00:14:27,659 --> 00:14:30,352 The father on the other hand, liked her as she was. 235 00:14:31,801 --> 00:14:35,012 - Ed O'Connor is a sensitive charismatic man 236 00:14:35,012 --> 00:14:37,842 who really went for her work and her cartoons 237 00:14:37,842 --> 00:14:40,017 and her writing and her creativity. 238 00:14:40,017 --> 00:14:42,329 Her father would carry around with him every day 239 00:14:42,329 --> 00:14:44,366 these little drawings and things that she made 240 00:14:44,366 --> 00:14:45,539 and show them to people. 241 00:14:46,506 --> 00:14:47,887 He was very proud of them. 242 00:14:51,580 --> 00:14:52,995 - Her drawings are marvelous. 243 00:14:53,616 --> 00:14:55,066 These sharp faces. 244 00:14:58,035 --> 00:14:59,415 Flannery would write to her father, 245 00:14:59,415 --> 00:15:01,245 little letters in the house, 246 00:15:01,245 --> 00:15:04,213 and they'd be under the napkins at breakfast. 247 00:15:04,213 --> 00:15:05,766 And then he would write her little letters back. 248 00:15:07,699 --> 00:15:09,149 - He had wanted to write himself, 249 00:15:09,149 --> 00:15:11,289 as she noted in one of her letters. 250 00:15:15,328 --> 00:15:19,642 She was 12 when he fell ill, 15 when she lost him. 251 00:15:23,267 --> 00:15:24,475 And he died from lupus. 252 00:15:26,339 --> 00:15:28,306 They had no treatment for lupus. 253 00:15:31,861 --> 00:15:34,243 [soft music] 254 00:15:41,043 --> 00:15:43,321 - The death of Edward O'Connor, no doubt, 255 00:15:43,321 --> 00:15:47,636 was a major turning point in her life. 256 00:15:47,636 --> 00:15:49,189 Up until that time, she had had 257 00:15:49,189 --> 00:15:51,881 a reasonably happy childhood. 258 00:15:51,881 --> 00:15:54,712 She was much loved. She was an only child. 259 00:15:54,712 --> 00:15:57,887 She had the full attention of both of her parents, 260 00:15:57,887 --> 00:16:01,374 and the loss of that suddenly was a huge void for her. 261 00:16:04,929 --> 00:16:07,587 - "I suppose what I mean about my father 262 00:16:07,587 --> 00:16:10,762 is that he would've written well if he could have. 263 00:16:11,971 --> 00:16:14,628 Needing people badly and not getting them 264 00:16:14,628 --> 00:16:17,459 may turn you in a creative direction. 265 00:16:17,459 --> 00:16:20,393 He needed the people, I guess and got them 266 00:16:20,393 --> 00:16:23,327 or rather wanted them and got them. 267 00:16:23,327 --> 00:16:25,570 I wanted them and didn't." 268 00:16:27,296 --> 00:16:29,712 [soft music] 269 00:16:36,271 --> 00:16:38,998 [birds chirping] 270 00:16:43,933 --> 00:16:45,763 [typewriter keys clicking] 271 00:16:45,763 --> 00:16:48,662 - [Narrator] "Anybody who survived his childhood 272 00:16:48,662 --> 00:16:51,010 has enough information about life 273 00:16:51,010 --> 00:16:53,667 to last him the rest of his days." 274 00:16:53,667 --> 00:16:57,223 [typewriter keys clicking] 275 00:17:00,157 --> 00:17:03,677 ♪ Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition ♪ 276 00:17:03,677 --> 00:17:07,267 ♪ Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition ♪ 277 00:17:07,267 --> 00:17:10,477 ♪ Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition ♪ 278 00:17:10,477 --> 00:17:13,929 ♪ And we'll all stay free 279 00:17:13,929 --> 00:17:17,036 [upbeat jazzy music] 280 00:17:19,176 --> 00:17:23,145 [speaking drowned out by music] 281 00:17:26,321 --> 00:17:28,495 - Flannery O'Connor started doing her writing 282 00:17:28,495 --> 00:17:30,877 during World War II when she was a student 283 00:17:30,877 --> 00:17:33,638 in Milledgeville at the Georgia State College for Women. 284 00:17:37,953 --> 00:17:40,231 There was actually an interesting important moment. 285 00:17:40,231 --> 00:17:42,095 She was in a women's college. 286 00:17:42,095 --> 00:17:46,168 Most of the men were away fighting the war. 287 00:17:46,168 --> 00:17:48,998 - The women professors here were encouraging 288 00:17:48,998 --> 00:17:51,622 the female students to think about the various things 289 00:17:51,622 --> 00:17:53,934 that they could do with their lives, 290 00:17:53,934 --> 00:17:56,696 and Flannery picked up on, it's about 291 00:17:56,696 --> 00:17:58,387 how the world was changing. 292 00:17:58,387 --> 00:18:00,976 [upbeat music] 293 00:18:05,049 --> 00:18:08,328 - [Sally Fitzgerald] She was very gifted as a caricaturists 294 00:18:08,328 --> 00:18:10,054 and you could see that from the work. 295 00:18:10,054 --> 00:18:11,504 [person whistles] 296 00:18:11,504 --> 00:18:12,988 - [Brad Gooch] She does cartoons which were then published 297 00:18:12,988 --> 00:18:15,439 in the student newspaper and in the yearbook 298 00:18:15,439 --> 00:18:17,786 about life on campus, but they're not 299 00:18:17,786 --> 00:18:22,756 happy prom sorority visions of life on campus 300 00:18:27,761 --> 00:18:28,693 - [Narrator] "Oh, don't worry about 301 00:18:28,693 --> 00:18:30,316 not getting on the Dean's list. 302 00:18:31,731 --> 00:18:34,182 It's no fun going to the picture show at night anyway." 303 00:18:36,908 --> 00:18:38,772 - [Brad Gooch] When the Waves are on campus, 304 00:18:38,772 --> 00:18:41,672 who were navy women, she makes fun of them 305 00:18:41,672 --> 00:18:44,951 as if they're an occupying force taking over the campus. 306 00:18:46,228 --> 00:18:50,301 This early sensibility is both sarcastic, 307 00:18:50,301 --> 00:18:55,064 empathetic, and funny and weird all at once. 308 00:18:55,064 --> 00:18:58,137 [bowstring twanging] 309 00:18:58,137 --> 00:18:59,655 - [Sally Fitzgerald] She thought she wanted to be 310 00:18:59,655 --> 00:19:03,832 a serious writer who would support herself by cartoons. 311 00:19:04,798 --> 00:19:06,041 - [Brad Gooch] She actually has 312 00:19:06,041 --> 00:19:08,112 great ambitions for her cartoons. 313 00:19:08,112 --> 00:19:09,803 She would send them to the New Yorker 314 00:19:09,803 --> 00:19:13,531 when James Thurber was the great New Yorker cartoonist. 315 00:19:13,531 --> 00:19:16,120 [upbeat music] 316 00:19:21,643 --> 00:19:23,369 - She kept an orderly journal, 317 00:19:23,369 --> 00:19:25,164 which she called higher mathematics. 318 00:19:26,958 --> 00:19:29,271 What she did was very interesting because we learned 319 00:19:29,271 --> 00:19:33,206 so much about her, how she felt about her shyness. 320 00:19:33,206 --> 00:19:36,278 She said "sometimes I think I would give it all up, 321 00:19:36,278 --> 00:19:38,453 for just a little social ease." 322 00:19:40,006 --> 00:19:43,043 - [Narrator] "One new quarter of college begun. 323 00:19:43,043 --> 00:19:46,288 I achieved enough success in English 360 324 00:19:46,288 --> 00:19:48,670 by making a rather humorous remark 325 00:19:48,670 --> 00:19:51,983 and then not laughing at it while the others did. 326 00:19:51,983 --> 00:19:55,987 This is the sort of me I strive to build up. 327 00:19:55,987 --> 00:19:59,508 The cool, sophisticated, clever wit. 328 00:19:59,508 --> 00:20:03,443 The inarticulate confused blunderer overwhelms 329 00:20:03,443 --> 00:20:06,550 the CSCW most of the time." 330 00:20:07,723 --> 00:20:10,312 [upbeat music] 331 00:20:12,349 --> 00:20:14,040 - She would never call herself a feminist, 332 00:20:14,040 --> 00:20:16,560 but she saw what her classmates were doing. 333 00:20:16,560 --> 00:20:20,288 She could leave mother, she could become 334 00:20:20,288 --> 00:20:23,567 a political cartoonist and have a career. 335 00:20:24,775 --> 00:20:26,397 - [Narrator] "Today, I envision myself 336 00:20:26,397 --> 00:20:30,884 as a cartoonist block printer of national repute. 337 00:20:30,884 --> 00:20:34,992 I'll make $400,000 before graduating from college 338 00:20:34,992 --> 00:20:38,582 and with it in tow, prepare for the leisurely life 339 00:20:38,582 --> 00:20:41,274 of a lethargic scholar and traveler." 340 00:20:44,035 --> 00:20:46,175 - [Marshall Bruce] She knew that was going outside 341 00:20:46,175 --> 00:20:49,282 the usual prescribed roles for a woman. 342 00:20:51,111 --> 00:20:52,768 - [Brad Gooch] In these early cartoons, 343 00:20:52,768 --> 00:20:56,669 you can almost see, weirdly, O'Connor's aesthetic intact. 344 00:20:59,223 --> 00:21:01,777 - [Narrator] "Today I'm devoted to realism. 345 00:21:01,777 --> 00:21:04,021 I will become a realist. 346 00:21:04,021 --> 00:21:08,267 I will take note of the things around me accurately. 347 00:21:08,267 --> 00:21:12,409 I wonder if some of these mental, emotional, social things 348 00:21:12,409 --> 00:21:15,204 that are happening to me and the people have around me 349 00:21:15,204 --> 00:21:18,207 could crystallize into a novel. 350 00:21:18,207 --> 00:21:20,520 I must write a novel." 351 00:21:20,520 --> 00:21:23,109 [upbeat music] 352 00:21:36,156 --> 00:21:39,712 [typewriter keys clicking] 353 00:21:43,129 --> 00:21:45,683 - The writing program there was very high powered, 354 00:21:45,683 --> 00:21:48,203 I suppose it was the most famous in the country 355 00:21:48,203 --> 00:21:52,966 and Flannery found herself in a literary hotbed. 356 00:21:54,727 --> 00:21:58,455 - There is no Flannery O'Connor without leaving Georgia. 357 00:21:59,973 --> 00:22:04,564 She's around people who get her maybe for the first time. 358 00:22:06,325 --> 00:22:11,295 She gets exposed to literature, I think in a way 359 00:22:12,158 --> 00:22:13,711 that she never had been before. 360 00:22:15,195 --> 00:22:18,716 I think maybe at Iowa is the first time she didn't 361 00:22:18,716 --> 00:22:21,581 feel like the absolutely smartest person in the room. 362 00:22:22,789 --> 00:22:24,826 - Paul Engle had just started a very important 363 00:22:24,826 --> 00:22:28,105 writers program, attracting all these soldiers 364 00:22:28,105 --> 00:22:30,176 coming back from World War II who wanted 365 00:22:30,176 --> 00:22:32,040 to write the great American novel. 366 00:22:34,870 --> 00:22:38,736 Southern fiction was the hot fiction 367 00:22:38,736 --> 00:22:42,740 and William Faulkner was the great modernist writer. 368 00:22:44,432 --> 00:22:46,399 - She said to herself, she'd never read Faulkner, 369 00:22:47,573 --> 00:22:50,714 never read Kafka and never read 370 00:22:50,714 --> 00:22:52,750 any of the southern writers. 371 00:22:52,750 --> 00:22:54,787 These were all new to her. 372 00:22:54,787 --> 00:22:57,652 - The men in the class were making fun of her 373 00:22:57,652 --> 00:23:01,380 for her writing and also for her southern accent. 374 00:23:02,795 --> 00:23:05,901 Whenever I spoke to someone about O'Connor who 375 00:23:05,901 --> 00:23:07,420 had been at Iowa Writer's Workshop, 376 00:23:07,420 --> 00:23:10,216 they always mentioned this accent as something 377 00:23:10,216 --> 00:23:12,908 so completely foreign and incomprehensible 378 00:23:12,908 --> 00:23:14,945 as if she were speaking Mandarin. 379 00:23:14,945 --> 00:23:18,017 - Workshops can be pretty brutal. [laughs] 380 00:23:19,121 --> 00:23:21,020 - She was very shy. 381 00:23:21,020 --> 00:23:22,815 People who were there, thought maybe 382 00:23:22,815 --> 00:23:24,403 she wouldn't be much of a writer, 383 00:23:24,403 --> 00:23:26,819 but the professors at the workshop 384 00:23:26,819 --> 00:23:29,338 instantly knew that she was talented. 385 00:23:30,995 --> 00:23:34,274 - They would tend to pick Flannery's work 386 00:23:34,274 --> 00:23:38,140 out of the pile of student work and sort of recognize 387 00:23:38,140 --> 00:23:41,178 this tone and this idiom in which she was writing, 388 00:23:41,178 --> 00:23:44,561 to the annoyance of some of her fellow male students 389 00:23:44,561 --> 00:23:47,149 who didn't understand why she was getting attention. 390 00:23:48,288 --> 00:23:51,533 - Paul Engle recognized her talent at once 391 00:23:51,533 --> 00:23:55,157 and immediately began to make a reading list for her. 392 00:23:55,157 --> 00:23:56,504 And she'd drank it in. 393 00:23:56,504 --> 00:23:58,229 She read Henry James. 394 00:23:58,229 --> 00:24:02,095 She read the Russians. Dostoevsky. 395 00:24:02,095 --> 00:24:04,166 She read everything at that point. 396 00:24:04,166 --> 00:24:05,858 Then she knew what she wanted to do. 397 00:24:07,929 --> 00:24:09,896 - One of the things O'Connor is trying to figure out 398 00:24:09,896 --> 00:24:11,967 while she's here at Iowa is not only how to be 399 00:24:11,967 --> 00:24:15,592 a good writer, but how to be a faithful Catholic writer. 400 00:24:15,592 --> 00:24:18,387 What does it mean to put these two seemingly disparate 401 00:24:18,387 --> 00:24:20,769 parts of her life and her personality together? 402 00:24:22,115 --> 00:24:24,635 [soft music] 403 00:24:24,635 --> 00:24:27,051 - If you take a look at the prayer journal, 404 00:24:27,051 --> 00:24:30,848 her transcribed prayers that she was even copying out 405 00:24:30,848 --> 00:24:33,161 while she was in graduate school, she was spending 406 00:24:33,161 --> 00:24:35,715 a surprising amount of time talking to God 407 00:24:35,715 --> 00:24:37,993 about the subconscious and the unconscious 408 00:24:39,581 --> 00:24:42,101 - [Brad Gooch] Instead of going to the tavern every night 409 00:24:42,101 --> 00:24:44,621 with the students, she went every morning to church. 410 00:24:44,621 --> 00:24:47,140 And she worried over and even asked the priest 411 00:24:47,140 --> 00:24:50,592 about dealing with race in her work, writing about 412 00:24:50,592 --> 00:24:53,768 these characters, prostitutes and things like that. 413 00:24:53,768 --> 00:24:55,977 She was trying to work out, almost sweetly 414 00:24:55,977 --> 00:24:57,979 and innocently, her Catholicism. 415 00:25:01,879 --> 00:25:03,122 - [Narrator] "Oh dear God, 416 00:25:03,122 --> 00:25:06,401 I want to write a novel, a good novel. 417 00:25:07,851 --> 00:25:11,786 I want to do this for a good feeling and for a bad one. 418 00:25:11,786 --> 00:25:16,722 The bad one is uppermost, the psychologists say 419 00:25:16,722 --> 00:25:18,206 it is a natural one." 420 00:25:22,382 --> 00:25:26,352 - She's completely humble in her enterprise. 421 00:25:26,352 --> 00:25:29,044 You see it in her prayer journal. 422 00:25:29,044 --> 00:25:32,703 She's not trying to put herself forward as the storyteller, 423 00:25:35,223 --> 00:25:38,157 as the wise woman, as the clever girl. 424 00:25:40,366 --> 00:25:43,127 "I must write down that I am to be an artist, 425 00:25:43,127 --> 00:25:45,923 not in the sense of aesthetic frippery, 426 00:25:45,923 --> 00:25:48,719 but in the sense of aesthetic craftsmanship. 427 00:25:48,719 --> 00:25:52,309 Otherwise I will feel my loneliness continually, 428 00:25:52,309 --> 00:25:53,310 like this today. 429 00:25:55,139 --> 00:25:57,970 I do not want to be lonely all my life, 430 00:25:57,970 --> 00:26:01,698 but people only make us lonelier by reminding us of God." 431 00:26:04,563 --> 00:26:05,805 It's unbelievable. 432 00:26:05,805 --> 00:26:07,704 - How is she going to find the stories 433 00:26:07,704 --> 00:26:10,327 that she knows she needs to tell 434 00:26:10,327 --> 00:26:11,984 and how is she going to tell them? 435 00:26:13,364 --> 00:26:15,539 And that's really the question that she's asking God, 436 00:26:16,816 --> 00:26:18,197 which is to say herself. 437 00:26:19,543 --> 00:26:21,925 [soft music] 438 00:26:24,548 --> 00:26:28,587 - It's a tremendous and astonishing in some way, 439 00:26:28,587 --> 00:26:32,349 unmovable faith that I don't think 440 00:26:32,349 --> 00:26:36,733 contemporary writers of any kind could sustain. 441 00:26:39,287 --> 00:26:41,703 - [Hilton Als] I think Flannery O'Connor's travels, 442 00:26:41,703 --> 00:26:43,256 I think they're vital. 443 00:26:43,256 --> 00:26:46,225 You don't know what home is until you leave it. 444 00:26:49,193 --> 00:26:51,092 - [Narrator] "Dear God, I cannot 445 00:26:51,092 --> 00:26:52,714 love thee the way I want to. 446 00:26:54,129 --> 00:26:58,651 You are the slim crescent of a moon that I see 447 00:26:58,651 --> 00:27:02,068 and myself is the earth's shadow that keeps me 448 00:27:02,068 --> 00:27:04,415 from seeing all the moon." 449 00:27:09,593 --> 00:27:12,147 [upbeat music] 450 00:27:47,838 --> 00:27:50,530 - After being at the Writers Workshop for three years, 451 00:27:50,530 --> 00:27:55,501 she was admitted to Yaddo, a program in Saratoga Springs 452 00:27:56,640 --> 00:27:58,607 where writers famously went and were able 453 00:27:58,607 --> 00:28:00,886 to devote themselves to their writing. 454 00:28:02,439 --> 00:28:05,131 There was a kind of southern renaissance. 455 00:28:05,131 --> 00:28:09,377 Truman Capote had been there, Carson McCullers. 456 00:28:12,587 --> 00:28:16,349 She changes from Mary Flannery to Flannery O'Connor 457 00:28:16,349 --> 00:28:20,768 in this period, partly to escape the Southern double name 458 00:28:20,768 --> 00:28:24,081 and also because as a writer in that period, 459 00:28:24,081 --> 00:28:27,809 being a woman writer was already difficult. 460 00:28:29,293 --> 00:28:31,640 When she sent out some of her first stories to magazines, 461 00:28:31,640 --> 00:28:33,884 she got at least one rejection letter back 462 00:28:33,884 --> 00:28:35,783 addressed to Mr. Flannery O'Connor. 463 00:28:39,200 --> 00:28:42,099 Yaddo was very connected with a kind of bohemianism 464 00:28:42,099 --> 00:28:45,240 and most of the tales of Yaddo are tales 465 00:28:45,240 --> 00:28:47,760 of Carson McCullers being drunk 466 00:28:47,760 --> 00:28:51,419 and everyone being drunk apparently. 467 00:28:51,419 --> 00:28:54,940 - [Narrator] "This is not sin but experience 468 00:28:54,940 --> 00:28:58,288 and if you do not sleep with the opposite sex 469 00:28:58,288 --> 00:29:01,705 than it is assumed you sleep with your own." 470 00:29:01,705 --> 00:29:06,641 - Her time at Yaddo was intense and complicated. 471 00:29:07,987 --> 00:29:10,887 Lowell is there. Elizabeth Hardwick's there. 472 00:29:10,887 --> 00:29:13,096 And she has a big crush on Lowell 473 00:29:13,096 --> 00:29:16,133 in a way that's heartbreaking. 474 00:29:16,133 --> 00:29:18,964 He was very sexy, very good looking, 475 00:29:18,964 --> 00:29:21,587 but he was with Elizabeth Hardwick who was 476 00:29:21,587 --> 00:29:24,693 kind of a glamor girl, also a southern girl. 477 00:29:24,693 --> 00:29:27,041 - It might have been heady times for her 478 00:29:27,041 --> 00:29:31,390 to be a companion protege of someone like Robert Lowell. 479 00:29:32,701 --> 00:29:35,497 - [Narrator] "You ask about Cal Lowell. 480 00:29:35,497 --> 00:29:38,086 I feel almost too much about him to be able 481 00:29:38,086 --> 00:29:40,364 to get to the heart of it. 482 00:29:40,364 --> 00:29:43,540 He is a kind of grief to me." 483 00:29:43,540 --> 00:29:44,990 - [Brad Gooch] In his late twenties, 484 00:29:44,990 --> 00:29:47,509 he'd already won a Pulitzer Prize. 485 00:29:48,683 --> 00:29:51,030 Lowell was haunted by Christianity. 486 00:29:52,238 --> 00:29:54,516 He was almost projecting onto O'Connor 487 00:29:54,516 --> 00:29:57,105 a kind of Catholic sainthood. 488 00:29:57,105 --> 00:29:58,348 - [Narrator] "I watched him that winter 489 00:29:58,348 --> 00:30:00,591 come back into the church. 490 00:30:00,591 --> 00:30:02,214 I had nothing to do with it, 491 00:30:02,214 --> 00:30:05,562 but of course it was a great joy to me." 492 00:30:05,562 --> 00:30:07,840 - [Brad Gooch] At the same time that she was writing 493 00:30:07,840 --> 00:30:10,498 "Wise Blood," about a Christ-haunted character 494 00:30:10,498 --> 00:30:13,156 who's also falling apart all the time. 495 00:30:15,503 --> 00:30:17,746 - [Mary Gordon] He's crazy. He's bipolar. 496 00:30:19,196 --> 00:30:22,613 He got her involved in this anticommunist witch hunt. 497 00:30:24,443 --> 00:30:26,963 - [Brad Gooch] Lowell decided that the director 498 00:30:26,963 --> 00:30:30,414 of the program had been harboring a communist 499 00:30:30,414 --> 00:30:35,385 named Agnes Smedley and then he accused her of this. 500 00:30:36,489 --> 00:30:39,182 He had O'Connor testifying against her, 501 00:30:39,182 --> 00:30:41,149 which caused the whole place to kind of 502 00:30:41,149 --> 00:30:42,771 blow apart for awhile. 503 00:30:43,911 --> 00:30:45,705 - The communist party is the minority, 504 00:30:45,705 --> 00:30:47,259 but a dangerous minority. 505 00:30:47,259 --> 00:30:48,777 I believe that the entire nation 506 00:30:48,777 --> 00:30:51,332 should be alerted to its menace today. 507 00:30:52,609 --> 00:30:54,162 - [Brad Gooch] Flannery was walking through this 508 00:30:54,162 --> 00:30:57,269 kind of political minefield that was going on 509 00:30:57,269 --> 00:30:58,718 in America at the time. 510 00:31:00,755 --> 00:31:01,860 - I hate communism. 511 00:31:03,068 --> 00:31:06,761 No concern whatever for the individual person. 512 00:31:06,761 --> 00:31:10,938 - It came down to that communism was atheistic 513 00:31:10,938 --> 00:31:13,630 and was against her religion. 514 00:31:13,630 --> 00:31:16,150 - Not the most admirable moment of her life, 515 00:31:16,150 --> 00:31:19,429 but I think she would have done anything he asked her to do. 516 00:31:19,429 --> 00:31:22,639 - [Brad Gooch] The upshot was that they all had to leave. 517 00:31:22,639 --> 00:31:24,572 Sort of fine for Elizabeth Hardwick who had 518 00:31:24,572 --> 00:31:27,402 an apartment in New York and fine for Robert Lowell, 519 00:31:27,402 --> 00:31:30,716 but for Flannery O'Connor, she now had no place to go. 520 00:31:32,649 --> 00:31:35,307 - [Narrator] "We have been very upset at Yaddo lately 521 00:31:35,307 --> 00:31:38,448 and all the guests are leaving in a group Tuesday. 522 00:31:38,448 --> 00:31:39,518 The revolution. 523 00:31:42,107 --> 00:31:44,799 I'll probably have to be in New York a month or so 524 00:31:44,799 --> 00:31:47,112 and I'll be looking for a place to stay. 525 00:31:48,389 --> 00:31:51,495 Oh, this has been very disruptive to the book 526 00:31:51,495 --> 00:31:54,774 and it's changed my plans entirely as I definitely 527 00:31:54,774 --> 00:31:57,536 won't be coming back to Yaddo." 528 00:31:57,536 --> 00:31:59,918 [soft music] 529 00:32:12,413 --> 00:32:15,726 [pen scratching] 530 00:32:15,726 --> 00:32:18,315 [cars and llama honking] 531 00:32:21,801 --> 00:32:24,459 - [Brad Gooch] O'Connor was living in Manhattan. 532 00:32:24,459 --> 00:32:27,531 She made two trips up to the Cloisters. 533 00:32:27,531 --> 00:32:30,810 There was an affinity between her work 534 00:32:30,810 --> 00:32:33,917 and the medieval aesthetic, and especially 535 00:32:33,917 --> 00:32:37,541 the mixing of the spiritual with the ribald 536 00:32:37,541 --> 00:32:40,372 and the humorous and the comic and the grotesque. 537 00:32:43,375 --> 00:32:45,342 - [Flannery] There were reasons that intensified 538 00:32:45,342 --> 00:32:50,002 the grotesque quality of some writing in these terms. 539 00:32:50,002 --> 00:32:53,868 I feel that the grotesque quality of my own work 540 00:32:53,868 --> 00:32:56,388 is intensified by the fact that I'm 541 00:32:56,388 --> 00:32:59,322 both a southern and a Catholic writer. 542 00:33:00,530 --> 00:33:03,050 [upbeat music] 543 00:33:06,708 --> 00:33:08,917 - [Brad Gooch] Lowell helpfully, maybe guiltily 544 00:33:08,917 --> 00:33:12,680 takes her to meet Robert Fitzgerald, translator and poet 545 00:33:12,680 --> 00:33:14,958 and Sally Fitzgerald, who then become 546 00:33:14,958 --> 00:33:17,374 O'Connor's really closest friends 547 00:33:17,374 --> 00:33:20,101 and kind of a second family for her. 548 00:33:21,551 --> 00:33:23,070 - One afternoon the doorbell rang, 549 00:33:23,070 --> 00:33:26,383 and Cal was standing there with a shy young woman 550 00:33:26,383 --> 00:33:28,178 in corduroy slacks and navy peacoat. 551 00:33:29,559 --> 00:33:31,561 Flannery had been living in a furnished room 552 00:33:31,561 --> 00:33:34,426 in someone's apartment up on the Upper West Side. 553 00:33:34,426 --> 00:33:36,669 And she was pretty miserable. 554 00:33:36,669 --> 00:33:38,326 So we said, "Well, why don't you come and live with us, 555 00:33:38,326 --> 00:33:39,638 and be our boarder?" 556 00:33:41,433 --> 00:33:45,333 [typewriter keys clicking] 557 00:33:45,333 --> 00:33:49,027 - And I think becomes a kind of daughter of the house. 558 00:33:49,027 --> 00:33:52,754 I don't think she ever yearned to be a wife or a mother. 559 00:33:52,754 --> 00:33:56,379 I think her female identity was most importantly daughter. 560 00:33:59,520 --> 00:34:02,937 - Underlying all that was the process 561 00:34:02,937 --> 00:34:04,456 of writing "Wise Blood." 562 00:34:04,456 --> 00:34:08,839 The struggle and the rewriting and the rewriting. 563 00:34:08,839 --> 00:34:10,703 As young as she was, she was still 564 00:34:10,703 --> 00:34:13,016 in her early twenties, I guess. 565 00:34:13,016 --> 00:34:14,604 Here's a big revelation. 566 00:34:15,984 --> 00:34:17,848 I think we all write somewhere in our notebooks, 567 00:34:17,848 --> 00:34:20,058 "Oh, this is no good," you know? 568 00:34:21,473 --> 00:34:24,890 I think you can see in her letters about working 569 00:34:24,890 --> 00:34:28,204 on "Wise Blood," and the process that she went through, 570 00:34:29,412 --> 00:34:31,103 her first publisher who didn't get it. 571 00:34:32,311 --> 00:34:35,866 - Flannery said that the editor at Holt 572 00:34:35,866 --> 00:34:38,938 treats me like a dim-witted campfire girl. 573 00:34:38,938 --> 00:34:41,803 - He called her prematurely arrogant. 574 00:34:43,150 --> 00:34:45,013 - [Brad Gooch] And O'Connor, very young, I mean, 575 00:34:45,013 --> 00:34:47,878 completely stands up for herself and the possibility 576 00:34:47,878 --> 00:34:50,433 that this book will never be published and just says 577 00:34:50,433 --> 00:34:52,400 that I'm not writing this kind of novel. 578 00:34:53,746 --> 00:34:56,611 - [Sally Fitzgerald] Publishers never intimidated her. 579 00:34:56,611 --> 00:34:59,027 - [Narrator] "I am not writing a conventional novel, 580 00:34:59,027 --> 00:35:02,583 and I think that the quality of the novel I write 581 00:35:02,583 --> 00:35:07,484 will derive precisely from the peculiarity or the aloneness, 582 00:35:08,899 --> 00:35:11,316 if you will, of the experience I write from." 583 00:35:12,213 --> 00:35:13,490 - She was very clear-eyed. 584 00:35:14,940 --> 00:35:16,183 You know, there are people you take one look at, 585 00:35:16,183 --> 00:35:19,047 and you know, that's a bum, or that's a liar. 586 00:35:20,428 --> 00:35:23,673 With her, it was, that's an honest person. 587 00:35:25,502 --> 00:35:27,125 I published every book she wrote. 588 00:35:30,887 --> 00:35:33,545 - One day she said, "You know, I think I'd 589 00:35:33,545 --> 00:35:35,202 better see a doctor, because I can't 590 00:35:35,202 --> 00:35:39,482 raise my arms to the typewriter." 591 00:35:40,621 --> 00:35:42,174 I made the appointment with the doctor. 592 00:35:42,174 --> 00:35:45,143 He said, "I suggest that when you go back to Milledgeville, 593 00:35:45,143 --> 00:35:46,799 you check into the hospital and have 594 00:35:46,799 --> 00:35:49,561 a complete physical examination." 595 00:35:52,080 --> 00:35:54,911 - When she left New York on the train, 596 00:35:56,154 --> 00:35:57,465 she wasn't feeling well. 597 00:35:59,916 --> 00:36:03,851 When Uncle Louis met her at the station in Atlanta, 598 00:36:03,851 --> 00:36:08,580 he said that she looked like she was a thousand years old. 599 00:36:08,580 --> 00:36:10,547 She was so sick. 600 00:36:11,997 --> 00:36:14,137 - Even when she knew that she was sick, 601 00:36:14,137 --> 00:36:16,346 she thought she had arthritis. 602 00:36:16,346 --> 00:36:18,245 She kept expecting to come back. 603 00:36:19,798 --> 00:36:23,284 Doctor Arthur Merrill in Atlanta recognized it. 604 00:36:23,284 --> 00:36:27,392 It sounds like lupus. Bring her in here today. 605 00:36:28,289 --> 00:36:30,222 And when he saw her, he realized 606 00:36:30,222 --> 00:36:33,432 that it was lupus, and it was advanced. 607 00:36:33,432 --> 00:36:35,469 He told her mother, but her mother, 608 00:36:35,469 --> 00:36:38,265 knowing that the father had died of the same disease, 609 00:36:38,265 --> 00:36:40,922 thought that the shock would be too great for Flannery 610 00:36:40,922 --> 00:36:43,753 and decided not to tell her. 611 00:36:43,753 --> 00:36:46,411 Mrs. O'Connor told us of this decision. 612 00:36:46,411 --> 00:36:48,516 Of course, we honored it. 613 00:36:48,516 --> 00:36:50,518 She lost her hair. 614 00:36:50,518 --> 00:36:53,659 She was rather disfigured by the medicine. 615 00:36:55,074 --> 00:36:59,734 It could be combated, although not cured, by cortisone. 616 00:36:59,734 --> 00:37:02,668 This is the way she was able to live as long as she did. 617 00:37:03,876 --> 00:37:06,396 Flannery continued to talk about her arthritis 618 00:37:06,396 --> 00:37:08,260 and the fact that she was looking forward 619 00:37:08,260 --> 00:37:09,882 to getting back to Connecticut. 620 00:37:09,882 --> 00:37:13,438 Never did send for her books, never sent for her clothes. 621 00:37:13,438 --> 00:37:15,129 - She never stopped writing. 622 00:37:15,129 --> 00:37:17,959 She was a good stonemason, good artisan, 623 00:37:17,959 --> 00:37:19,513 so that way in everything. 624 00:37:19,513 --> 00:37:22,205 Virgil wrote a line a day. 625 00:37:22,205 --> 00:37:25,104 Flaubert wrote a paragraph a day, but they were craftsmen. 626 00:37:25,104 --> 00:37:26,968 They weren't trying to save the world. 627 00:37:29,385 --> 00:37:31,663 - [Narrator] "In a sense, sickness is a place 628 00:37:31,663 --> 00:37:34,700 more instructive than a long trip to Europe. 629 00:37:34,700 --> 00:37:37,116 It's a place where there's no company, 630 00:37:37,116 --> 00:37:38,566 where nobody can follow." 631 00:37:42,294 --> 00:37:45,849 [typewriter keys clicking] 632 00:38:02,210 --> 00:38:05,248 [upbeat banjo music] 633 00:38:20,953 --> 00:38:21,885 - I'm a preacher. 634 00:38:23,301 --> 00:38:24,957 - What church? 635 00:38:24,957 --> 00:38:27,374 - Church of Truth Without Christ. 636 00:38:28,582 --> 00:38:32,033 - Protestant? Or is it something foreign? 637 00:38:32,033 --> 00:38:34,104 - Oh, no, ma'am, it's Protestant. 638 00:38:34,104 --> 00:38:36,797 - People did not really understand "Wise Blood" 639 00:38:36,797 --> 00:38:38,177 when it first came out. 640 00:38:38,177 --> 00:38:40,179 They all mistook her first book 641 00:38:40,179 --> 00:38:41,802 as being the work of a nihilist. 642 00:38:41,802 --> 00:38:44,667 - There ain't but one thing that I want you to understand, 643 00:38:44,667 --> 00:38:46,841 and that's that I don't believe in anything. 644 00:38:47,739 --> 00:38:48,809 - Nothing at all? 645 00:38:49,741 --> 00:38:51,432 - Nothing. 646 00:38:51,432 --> 00:38:52,916 - [Angela O'Donnell] Primarily because Hazel Motes 647 00:38:52,916 --> 00:38:57,265 is one of O'Connor's characters who is running away from God 648 00:38:57,990 --> 00:38:59,613 but is hounded by God. 649 00:39:00,786 --> 00:39:02,547 - Some preacher's left his mark on you. 650 00:39:03,789 --> 00:39:04,721 - [Angela O'Donnell] Always doing 651 00:39:04,721 --> 00:39:06,136 the most outrageous things. 652 00:39:06,136 --> 00:39:07,517 Going to a whorehouse, 653 00:39:07,517 --> 00:39:10,520 preaching the church of Christ without Christ. 654 00:39:10,520 --> 00:39:13,661 - The church without Christ don't have a Jesus. 655 00:39:15,042 --> 00:39:16,871 - [Angela O'Donnell] Murdering people in the street. 656 00:39:21,428 --> 00:39:23,291 And yet, every time he turns around, 657 00:39:23,291 --> 00:39:25,432 there's that ragged figure that's following him, 658 00:39:25,432 --> 00:39:26,881 that's following him. 659 00:39:26,881 --> 00:39:29,263 - Why don't we go someplace and have us some fun? 660 00:39:29,263 --> 00:39:31,679 - He can't estrange God, and there's no way 661 00:39:31,679 --> 00:39:34,337 you could ever entirely estrange yourself from God. 662 00:39:34,337 --> 00:39:38,030 So O'Connor understands this. This is her theology. 663 00:39:38,030 --> 00:39:40,481 - There's no peace for the redeemed. 664 00:39:40,481 --> 00:39:44,899 If they was three crosses there, and Jesus Christ hung- 665 00:39:44,899 --> 00:39:47,385 - When I went to do her first novel as a film, 666 00:39:47,385 --> 00:39:50,940 I in a very calculated way, I chose a director 667 00:39:50,940 --> 00:39:52,459 who was an atheist. 668 00:39:52,459 --> 00:39:57,429 Because I did not want some soppy religious thing, 669 00:39:57,429 --> 00:39:59,673 and she would have hated it. 670 00:39:59,673 --> 00:40:02,296 - When John Huston decided to make a movie of it 671 00:40:02,296 --> 00:40:03,608 many, many years later, I wondered, 672 00:40:03,608 --> 00:40:04,712 how is he going to do it? 673 00:40:04,712 --> 00:40:06,749 - Where you come from is gone. 674 00:40:08,198 --> 00:40:12,444 Where you thought you were going to, weren't never there. 675 00:40:12,444 --> 00:40:13,894 - [Michael Fitzgerald] But when she wrote the novel 676 00:40:13,894 --> 00:40:16,586 in my parents' house, my father was at the time translating 677 00:40:18,036 --> 00:40:20,245 the Oedipus Rex of Sophocles, which she had never read. 678 00:40:20,245 --> 00:40:22,385 [indistinct speaking] 679 00:40:22,385 --> 00:40:25,008 She was so shocked by the Oedipus Rex 680 00:40:25,008 --> 00:40:28,184 that she reworked the entire novel to accommodate 681 00:40:28,184 --> 00:40:30,497 Hazel Motes' blinding himself, as Oedipus does. 682 00:40:32,740 --> 00:40:35,985 - There is where the razor's edge of "Wise Blood" 683 00:40:35,985 --> 00:40:38,297 and Flannery O'Connor really are. 684 00:40:39,782 --> 00:40:43,233 - [Woman] Mr. Motes, what's that wire around you for? 685 00:40:43,233 --> 00:40:46,098 - How can a person really be a saint? 686 00:40:46,098 --> 00:40:49,205 What kind of a saint would that person be, she wondered? 687 00:40:49,205 --> 00:40:51,172 - Now I remember on the last day, John, 688 00:40:51,172 --> 00:40:54,106 his hands over my shoulders leaned in and said, 689 00:40:54,106 --> 00:40:57,075 "Ben, I think I've been had." 690 00:40:58,352 --> 00:41:00,906 By the end, he realized, I've told another story 691 00:41:00,906 --> 00:41:02,701 than the one I thought I was telling. 692 00:41:03,978 --> 00:41:06,464 I've told Flannery O'Connor's story. 693 00:41:09,467 --> 00:41:12,090 - Huston kind of looks down, and he looks up at everybody 694 00:41:12,090 --> 00:41:14,506 and looks around, and he says, "Jesus wins." 695 00:41:17,198 --> 00:41:21,306 [people talking over each other] 696 00:41:24,378 --> 00:41:28,934 ♪ I would sleep on a bed of nails ♪ 697 00:41:28,934 --> 00:41:33,629 ♪ Til my back was torn and bleeding ♪ 698 00:41:33,629 --> 00:41:38,185 ♪ In the deep darkness of hell 699 00:41:38,185 --> 00:41:42,741 ♪ The Damascus of my meeting 700 00:41:42,741 --> 00:41:47,297 ♪ I wanna get right with God 701 00:41:47,297 --> 00:41:52,233 ♪ Yes, you know you got to get right with God ♪ 702 00:41:53,407 --> 00:41:55,064 - [Sally Fitzgerald] It was admired. 703 00:41:55,064 --> 00:41:58,481 It was very much admired, because its power was undeniable. 704 00:41:58,481 --> 00:42:00,587 But critics didn't understand it. 705 00:42:00,587 --> 00:42:02,278 - [Robert Giroux] I'll tell you that 706 00:42:02,278 --> 00:42:04,936 the publishing point of view was, this book is a flop. 707 00:42:04,936 --> 00:42:06,765 It got bad reviews. 708 00:42:06,765 --> 00:42:09,837 I was shocked at the stupidity of these reviews, 709 00:42:09,837 --> 00:42:11,770 the lack of perception or even the lack 710 00:42:11,770 --> 00:42:15,843 of having an open mind about it. 711 00:42:15,843 --> 00:42:18,397 - [Narrator] "Reviewing time was terrible. 712 00:42:18,397 --> 00:42:20,745 Nearly gave me apoplexy. 713 00:42:20,745 --> 00:42:22,470 The one in the Atlanta Journal 714 00:42:22,470 --> 00:42:24,611 was so stupid, it was painful. 715 00:42:24,611 --> 00:42:26,026 It was written, I understand, 716 00:42:26,026 --> 00:42:28,753 by the lady who writes about gardening. 717 00:42:28,753 --> 00:42:31,687 They shouldn't have taken her away from the petunias." 718 00:42:34,482 --> 00:42:36,381 - At the autograph party in Milledgeville, 719 00:42:36,381 --> 00:42:39,418 all the ladies came, and they were all excited 720 00:42:39,418 --> 00:42:41,559 about this new author in town. 721 00:42:41,559 --> 00:42:45,770 They all walked away with her book, "Wise Blood," 722 00:42:45,770 --> 00:42:47,703 all autographed and everything. 723 00:42:49,325 --> 00:42:51,914 And I think she was just kind of chuckling to herself 724 00:42:51,914 --> 00:42:54,779 as she saw them all leave the room, thinking, 725 00:42:54,779 --> 00:42:56,953 oh, wait till they find out. 726 00:42:56,953 --> 00:42:59,335 Or wait till they really see what it's all about. 727 00:43:00,508 --> 00:43:02,856 [soft music] 728 00:43:12,003 --> 00:43:16,214 - Bernard Cline, brother of Regina, put together 729 00:43:16,214 --> 00:43:20,770 three tracts of land which became Andalusia Farm. 730 00:43:21,875 --> 00:43:26,534 In 1951 when Flannery became so ill, 731 00:43:26,534 --> 00:43:28,916 it was possible for them to move out here. 732 00:43:32,540 --> 00:43:36,027 Regina continued to run it as a dairy farm. 733 00:43:36,027 --> 00:43:39,168 They both could live on the ground floor 734 00:43:39,168 --> 00:43:41,929 and not have to climb stairs to the second floor. 735 00:43:43,759 --> 00:43:46,969 - [Brad Gooch] She was confined on this farm, 736 00:43:46,969 --> 00:43:49,592 and she really found her material 737 00:43:49,592 --> 00:43:51,629 around her in that setting. 738 00:43:54,252 --> 00:43:55,736 - [Sally Fitzgerald] She realized that she didn't have to 739 00:43:55,736 --> 00:43:58,877 sit in New York and lose her ear for southern speech, 740 00:43:58,877 --> 00:44:01,086 that she had it everywhere. 741 00:44:01,086 --> 00:44:03,433 The farm women, the farm people. 742 00:44:03,433 --> 00:44:05,366 Everything was grist for her mill. 743 00:44:06,851 --> 00:44:11,096 - I think maybe the reason she appeals to so many musicians 744 00:44:11,096 --> 00:44:15,273 is because she's one of those writers who is best heard. 745 00:44:16,446 --> 00:44:19,104 - [Narrator] "Everything is getting terrible. 746 00:44:19,104 --> 00:44:20,623 I remember the day you could go off 747 00:44:20,623 --> 00:44:23,039 and leave your screen door unlatched. 748 00:44:23,039 --> 00:44:23,971 Not no more." 749 00:44:25,386 --> 00:44:26,767 - One day, Flannery and I 750 00:44:26,767 --> 00:44:29,218 had driven over to Milledgeville to do errands. 751 00:44:29,218 --> 00:44:32,497 She said something again about her arthritis. 752 00:44:32,497 --> 00:44:36,225 I said, "Flannery, you don't have arthritis. 753 00:44:36,225 --> 00:44:37,295 You have lupus." 754 00:44:38,745 --> 00:44:42,818 Her hand was shaking. My knee was shaking on the clutch. 755 00:44:42,818 --> 00:44:46,614 We drove back up and down the road, and a few minutes, 756 00:44:46,614 --> 00:44:50,791 she said, "Well, that's not good news. 757 00:44:50,791 --> 00:44:54,346 But I can't thank you enough for telling me. 758 00:44:54,346 --> 00:44:58,868 I thought I had lupus. And I thought I was going crazy. 759 00:44:58,868 --> 00:45:01,457 And I'd a lot rather be sick than crazy." 760 00:45:02,734 --> 00:45:05,461 - The disease that had eaten her up and had, 761 00:45:05,461 --> 00:45:09,327 it was a great moment in which the hope and everything 762 00:45:09,327 --> 00:45:12,330 she had, suddenly, the hope of her writing and everything, 763 00:45:12,330 --> 00:45:14,850 suddenly hit her, that she just may never 764 00:45:14,850 --> 00:45:16,852 get to do what she wanted to do. 765 00:45:16,852 --> 00:45:18,750 - [Sally Fitzgerald] This was devastating knowledge. 766 00:45:18,750 --> 00:45:21,097 She expected to live three years, 767 00:45:21,097 --> 00:45:22,961 which is what her father had lived 768 00:45:22,961 --> 00:45:25,895 after his disease was diagnosed. 769 00:45:25,895 --> 00:45:28,760 - Going to Iowa, going to that early success, 770 00:45:28,760 --> 00:45:31,418 living with the Fitzgeralds, going to Yaddo, 771 00:45:31,418 --> 00:45:35,180 being part of that whole little literary scene. 772 00:45:35,180 --> 00:45:38,632 And then being really dragged out of it 773 00:45:38,632 --> 00:45:42,015 by the physical constraints of her lupus. 774 00:45:43,257 --> 00:45:47,227 - After she got sick and had to go home, 775 00:45:47,227 --> 00:45:49,539 she was a prisoner of her body. 776 00:45:49,539 --> 00:45:50,989 I think she loved writing so much 777 00:45:50,989 --> 00:45:53,060 because it freed her from the corporeal. 778 00:45:55,338 --> 00:45:58,376 - I think that it's inevitable that her dark view 779 00:45:58,376 --> 00:46:03,105 of the body and not nature, but the bodily world 780 00:46:03,105 --> 00:46:06,177 as being only a source of dark things, 781 00:46:06,177 --> 00:46:09,007 has to be connected to her lupus. 782 00:46:09,007 --> 00:46:13,978 The deformed body, the broken body, the afflicted body 783 00:46:15,876 --> 00:46:19,224 is very much a theme that recurs in her work. 784 00:46:23,125 --> 00:46:25,541 - In some ways, I think we can say now, 785 00:46:25,541 --> 00:46:28,509 thank God for her suffering, because it allowed her 786 00:46:28,509 --> 00:46:30,373 to produce the work that she produced. 787 00:46:35,516 --> 00:46:38,865 - To know yourself is to know your region 788 00:46:38,865 --> 00:46:41,281 and yet it's also to know the world. 789 00:46:41,281 --> 00:46:43,766 And in a sense, or paradoxically, 790 00:46:43,766 --> 00:46:46,804 it's also to be an exile from that world. 791 00:46:48,702 --> 00:46:53,707 ♪ Lord, a good man is hard to find ♪ 792 00:46:55,019 --> 00:46:59,989 ♪ You always get another kind 793 00:47:01,232 --> 00:47:05,753 ♪ Just when you think that he's your pal ♪ 794 00:47:07,548 --> 00:47:11,173 ♪ You look and find him foolin' round ♪ 795 00:47:11,173 --> 00:47:13,969 ♪ Some other gal 796 00:47:13,969 --> 00:47:16,695 [typewriter keys clicking] 797 00:47:16,695 --> 00:47:18,974 - [Sally Fitzgerald] The first real story 798 00:47:18,974 --> 00:47:21,804 that was unquestionably carrying the power 799 00:47:21,804 --> 00:47:23,254 that she would later show. 800 00:47:23,254 --> 00:47:27,879 - "A Good Man Is Hard To Find" changed her reputation. 801 00:47:27,879 --> 00:47:31,814 - She got her back up, earning her own voice 802 00:47:31,814 --> 00:47:36,819 and not caving to lupus at that time in her life 803 00:47:37,993 --> 00:47:40,927 when she then had no choice but to 804 00:47:40,927 --> 00:47:44,171 be there for her work constantly. 805 00:47:44,171 --> 00:47:45,966 - Unlike what happened with "Wise Blood," 806 00:47:45,966 --> 00:47:48,900 which was incomprehension, they had to go through 807 00:47:48,900 --> 00:47:51,592 several printings, she comes to New York, 808 00:47:51,592 --> 00:47:55,631 is interviewed on television, a kind of new popular medium, 809 00:47:55,631 --> 00:48:00,153 and has these great, glowing reviews in the New York Times, 810 00:48:00,153 --> 00:48:02,086 and this really establishes her then 811 00:48:02,086 --> 00:48:04,122 as an important American writer, and especially 812 00:48:04,122 --> 00:48:07,677 a writer of her signature genre, the short story. 813 00:48:07,677 --> 00:48:11,267 [typewriter keys clicking] 814 00:48:16,824 --> 00:48:20,035 - They're on their way to Florida for vacation. 815 00:48:20,035 --> 00:48:22,658 And the grandmother is sitting in the backseat 816 00:48:22,658 --> 00:48:24,177 with her two grandchildren. 817 00:48:25,626 --> 00:48:27,559 "'Tennessee is just a hillbilly dumping ground,' 818 00:48:27,559 --> 00:48:31,184 John Wesley said. 'And Georgia is a lousy state, too.'" 819 00:48:32,875 --> 00:48:34,739 - [Narrator] "Outside of Toomsboro, 820 00:48:34,739 --> 00:48:37,949 she woke up and recalled an old plantation 821 00:48:37,949 --> 00:48:40,296 that she had visited in this neighborhood once 822 00:48:40,296 --> 00:48:41,884 when she was a young lady. 823 00:48:41,884 --> 00:48:44,473 ' Oh, look at the cute little pickaninny,' she said, 824 00:48:44,473 --> 00:48:45,888 and pointed to a Negro child 825 00:48:45,888 --> 00:48:48,408 standing in the door of a shack. 826 00:48:48,408 --> 00:48:53,102 'Wouldn't that make a picture, now?' She asked." 827 00:48:53,102 --> 00:48:55,725 - The grandmother, who in a sense 828 00:48:55,725 --> 00:48:58,245 is the central character in the story, 829 00:48:58,245 --> 00:49:03,112 her vanity which literally causes the catastrophe. 830 00:49:04,562 --> 00:49:06,978 - [Narrator] "'It's not much farther,' the grandmother said. 831 00:49:06,978 --> 00:49:11,155 And just as she said it, a horrible thought came to her. 832 00:49:11,155 --> 00:49:13,778 The thought was so embarrassing that she turned 833 00:49:13,778 --> 00:49:16,643 red in the face, and her eyes dilated 834 00:49:16,643 --> 00:49:20,923 and her feet jumped up, upsetting her valise in the car. 835 00:49:20,923 --> 00:49:23,857 The instant the valise moved, the newspaper top 836 00:49:23,857 --> 00:49:27,274 she had over the basket under it, rose with a snarl 837 00:49:27,274 --> 00:49:31,934 and Pitty Sing the cat sprang onto Bailey's shoulder. 838 00:49:31,934 --> 00:49:34,972 [car crashing] 839 00:49:34,972 --> 00:49:38,423 'We've had an accident,' the children screamed 840 00:49:38,423 --> 00:49:40,494 in frenzy of delight. 841 00:49:40,494 --> 00:49:44,395 'But nobody's killed,' June Star said with disappointment. 842 00:49:44,395 --> 00:49:47,053 The horrible thought she had had before the accident 843 00:49:47,053 --> 00:49:50,642 was that the house she had remembered so vividly 844 00:49:50,642 --> 00:49:53,128 was not in Georgia but in Tennessee. 845 00:49:54,612 --> 00:49:57,684 In a few minutes they saw a car some distance away 846 00:49:57,684 --> 00:50:01,446 on top of a hill, coming slowly as if the occupants 847 00:50:01,446 --> 00:50:03,138 were watching them. 848 00:50:03,138 --> 00:50:06,382 The grandmother stood up and waved both arms dramatically 849 00:50:06,382 --> 00:50:07,832 to attract their attention." 850 00:50:09,006 --> 00:50:11,318 - Because she had seen newspaper accounts 851 00:50:11,318 --> 00:50:14,149 of the Misfit and most of the other figures. 852 00:50:14,149 --> 00:50:16,254 - [Narrator] "'You're The Misfit,' she said. 853 00:50:16,254 --> 00:50:19,464 'I recognized you at once.' 854 00:50:19,464 --> 00:50:22,329 'Yes'm,' the man said, smiling slightly, 855 00:50:22,329 --> 00:50:25,505 as if he were pleased in spite of himself to be known. 856 00:50:25,505 --> 00:50:28,542 'But it would have been better for all of you, lady, 857 00:50:28,542 --> 00:50:30,717 if you hadn'ta recognized me.'" 858 00:50:31,683 --> 00:50:33,168 - And he's going to shoot her. 859 00:50:33,168 --> 00:50:35,929 But she said, "I know you're not common and ordinary. 860 00:50:35,929 --> 00:50:37,724 I know you're a good man." 861 00:50:39,139 --> 00:50:41,314 - [Narrator] "There was a piercing scream from the woods, 862 00:50:41,314 --> 00:50:44,213 followed closely by a pistol report. 863 00:50:44,213 --> 00:50:47,872 'Lady,' The Misfit said, looking far beyond her 864 00:50:47,872 --> 00:50:50,599 into the woods, 'there never was a body 865 00:50:50,599 --> 00:50:52,635 that gives the undertaker a tip. 866 00:50:54,085 --> 00:50:56,674 Jesus was the only one that ever raised the dead,' 867 00:50:56,674 --> 00:50:59,297 the Misfit continued, 'and he shouldn't have done it. 868 00:50:59,297 --> 00:51:01,161 He thrown everything off balance. 869 00:51:01,161 --> 00:51:02,818 If he did what he said, then it's nothing for you to do 870 00:51:02,818 --> 00:51:06,235 but throw away everything and follow him, and if he didn't, 871 00:51:06,235 --> 00:51:08,686 then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes 872 00:51:08,686 --> 00:51:12,172 you got left the best way you can, by killing somebody 873 00:51:12,172 --> 00:51:13,691 or burning down his house, or doing 874 00:51:13,691 --> 00:51:15,175 some other meanness to him. 875 00:51:15,175 --> 00:51:17,108 No pleasure but meanness,' he said." 876 00:51:18,385 --> 00:51:19,593 - He's shot everybody else, 877 00:51:19,593 --> 00:51:21,423 and he's about to shoot the grandmother. 878 00:51:22,872 --> 00:51:26,393 And for the first time in her life, she gets it. 879 00:51:27,567 --> 00:51:28,913 - [Narrator] "'Why, you're one of my babies. 880 00:51:28,913 --> 00:51:30,880 You're one of my own children.' 881 00:51:30,880 --> 00:51:33,435 She reached out and touched him on the shoulder. 882 00:51:33,435 --> 00:51:36,507 Misfit sprang back as if a snake had bitten him 883 00:51:36,507 --> 00:51:38,888 and shot her three times through the chest." 884 00:51:38,888 --> 00:51:40,649 [gun firing] 885 00:51:40,649 --> 00:51:42,064 - And she dies quite happily. 886 00:51:43,203 --> 00:51:45,309 Flannery, of course, insisted 887 00:51:45,309 --> 00:51:49,485 that this is a story about grace. 888 00:51:50,969 --> 00:51:55,388 A woman's sudden realization of her kinship with a criminal. 889 00:51:56,941 --> 00:51:58,736 - The moment of violence is not 890 00:51:58,736 --> 00:52:01,325 where we recoil from each other, 891 00:52:01,325 --> 00:52:03,258 but when we are connected to each other. 892 00:52:05,052 --> 00:52:06,640 - "'Take her off and throw her where you'd thrown 893 00:52:06,640 --> 00:52:08,332 the others,' he said, picking up the cat 894 00:52:08,332 --> 00:52:10,610 that was rubbing itself against his leg." 895 00:52:10,610 --> 00:52:11,921 [cat meows] 896 00:52:11,921 --> 00:52:13,406 - [Narrator] "'She was a talker, wasn't she?' 897 00:52:13,406 --> 00:52:15,822 Bobby Lee said, sliding down the ditch with the yodel." 898 00:52:17,272 --> 00:52:18,825 - "She would have been a good woman if it had been 899 00:52:18,825 --> 00:52:20,965 someone there to shoot her every minute of her life," 900 00:52:20,965 --> 00:52:22,794 and well, most of us would be. 901 00:52:23,968 --> 00:52:27,074 [soft music] 902 00:52:27,074 --> 00:52:29,732 [birds calling] 903 00:52:46,715 --> 00:52:48,303 - [Host] I understand you're living on a farm. 904 00:52:48,303 --> 00:52:53,239 - Yes, I only live on one though. I don't see much of it. 905 00:52:54,516 --> 00:52:57,277 I'm a writer, and I farm from the rocking chair. 906 00:52:58,727 --> 00:53:01,143 [soft music] 907 00:53:33,486 --> 00:53:36,730 - [Brad Gooch] Because she was ill and she was on crutches, 908 00:53:36,730 --> 00:53:38,663 everything had to be precise. 909 00:53:38,663 --> 00:53:41,148 There was only so much energy that could be given. 910 00:53:43,358 --> 00:53:46,740 - I knew Flannery for quite a while when she was ill, 911 00:53:46,740 --> 00:53:48,570 and she was on crutches. 912 00:53:48,570 --> 00:53:51,400 And I never heard her complain. 913 00:53:51,400 --> 00:53:54,403 She was very adept at getting around on them. 914 00:53:54,403 --> 00:53:57,441 I never saw her wince in pain. 915 00:53:57,441 --> 00:54:01,065 She just was, as far as I could see, always in a good humor. 916 00:54:02,963 --> 00:54:04,448 - [Narrator] "I'm making out fine, 917 00:54:04,448 --> 00:54:07,520 in spite of any conflicting stories. 918 00:54:07,520 --> 00:54:09,694 I have enough energy to write with, 919 00:54:09,694 --> 00:54:13,733 and as that is all I have any business doing anyhow, 920 00:54:13,733 --> 00:54:17,288 I can with one eye squinting take it all as a blessing." 921 00:54:18,841 --> 00:54:23,294 - Flannery and Regina went to mass every morning, 922 00:54:23,294 --> 00:54:25,848 usually at seven o'clock which was the only mass there was. 923 00:54:25,848 --> 00:54:28,299 You know, the Catholics were very few in number. 924 00:54:30,094 --> 00:54:32,061 - Flannery worked every morning, 925 00:54:32,061 --> 00:54:35,030 from I guess she started around nine. 926 00:54:35,030 --> 00:54:37,343 But you couldn't go there before 11:30. 927 00:54:37,343 --> 00:54:39,103 - While I was staying at Andalusia, 928 00:54:39,103 --> 00:54:42,589 the farm in Georgia, where Flannery 929 00:54:42,589 --> 00:54:45,212 lived with her mother and needed her mother. 930 00:54:45,212 --> 00:54:47,456 Her mother, you know, took care of her. 931 00:54:47,456 --> 00:54:50,494 I of course learned a great deal about peacocks, 932 00:54:50,494 --> 00:54:54,532 because there were a certain 40 or 50 peacocks on the farm. 933 00:54:56,914 --> 00:54:58,640 I had a camera, and I said, 934 00:54:58,640 --> 00:55:01,263 whenever they saw my camera they'd start to pose. 935 00:55:01,263 --> 00:55:05,198 They're real, they're movie stars, you know. 936 00:55:05,198 --> 00:55:08,822 And she said, "I know they're stupid and all," she said, 937 00:55:08,822 --> 00:55:11,204 "but they have a lot to be proud of." 938 00:55:19,005 --> 00:55:21,559 - O'Connor is very difficult to predict 939 00:55:21,559 --> 00:55:23,285 what her reactions are going to be. 940 00:55:23,285 --> 00:55:28,255 She always had a kind of funny bone about popular culture. 941 00:55:29,774 --> 00:55:32,708 - Her aunt finally said, "Oh, well, you know, 942 00:55:32,708 --> 00:55:36,229 you're on television, you know, you're important." 943 00:55:38,576 --> 00:55:39,991 - [Brad Gooch] She gets a TV late. 944 00:55:39,991 --> 00:55:43,685 She's on TV before she actually owns one, 945 00:55:43,685 --> 00:55:45,756 so when her work is adapted for TV, 946 00:55:45,756 --> 00:55:48,206 she just focuses on, well, I bought my mother 947 00:55:48,206 --> 00:55:50,657 a new refrigerator with the royalties. 948 00:55:53,419 --> 00:55:55,110 - [Narrator] "I have just learned via one of those 949 00:55:55,110 --> 00:55:59,114 gossip columns that the story I sold for a TV play 950 00:55:59,114 --> 00:56:00,771 is going to be put on in the spring, 951 00:56:00,771 --> 00:56:04,671 and that a tap dancer by the name of Gene Kelly 952 00:56:04,671 --> 00:56:07,467 is going to make is television debut in it. 953 00:56:09,504 --> 00:56:12,610 The punishment always fits the crime." 954 00:56:18,892 --> 00:56:22,931 - Neither Flannery nor Regina ever expected 955 00:56:24,035 --> 00:56:28,108 to have to live together as adult women. 956 00:56:29,040 --> 00:56:31,146 Such a complicated relationship. 957 00:56:34,114 --> 00:56:36,772 - She was considered an eccentric, 958 00:56:38,843 --> 00:56:41,398 and yet, she was Miss Regina's daughter 959 00:56:41,398 --> 00:56:43,745 and her manners were perfect, and they couldn't 960 00:56:43,745 --> 00:56:46,920 quite reconcile these two figures. 961 00:56:46,920 --> 00:56:51,442 - Mrs. O'Connor said to me, "Mister Giroux, can you, 962 00:56:51,442 --> 00:56:56,413 why can't you get Flannery to write about nice people?" 963 00:56:57,862 --> 00:56:59,450 And I started to laugh, then I looked at Flannery, 964 00:56:59,450 --> 00:57:01,314 absolutely poker faced. 965 00:57:01,314 --> 00:57:03,040 So I didn't laugh. 966 00:57:03,040 --> 00:57:05,491 Her mother really was disappointed 967 00:57:05,491 --> 00:57:07,354 that her daughter was not a southern belle. 968 00:57:07,354 --> 00:57:08,873 Instead, she was a writer. 969 00:57:11,600 --> 00:57:14,603 - She had to, you know, face Regina at the dinner table, 970 00:57:14,603 --> 00:57:16,018 who was still waiting for her to come out 971 00:57:16,018 --> 00:57:17,503 with "Gone With the Wind Two." 972 00:57:18,918 --> 00:57:20,644 - From what I understand, she couldn't stand 973 00:57:20,644 --> 00:57:21,990 that movie when she was 14. 974 00:57:23,163 --> 00:57:25,234 - Her mother was such a classic, 975 00:57:25,234 --> 00:57:28,928 closed-mind southerner of that era. 976 00:57:28,928 --> 00:57:33,484 I feel, though, that Flannery had a great subject there. 977 00:57:33,484 --> 00:57:37,108 And that she did a lot of examination 978 00:57:37,108 --> 00:57:38,972 of that particular personality. 979 00:57:38,972 --> 00:57:42,493 [typewriter keys clicking] 980 00:57:43,943 --> 00:57:46,635 - For years, I've been fooling the sorry people. 981 00:57:46,635 --> 00:57:49,051 Sorry people, poor white trash and niggers. 982 00:57:49,051 --> 00:57:50,915 They drain me dry. 983 00:57:50,915 --> 00:57:53,228 - I first discovered Flannery O'Connor's work 984 00:57:53,228 --> 00:57:56,024 after I saw the television adaptation 985 00:57:56,024 --> 00:57:58,129 of "The Displaced Person." 986 00:57:58,129 --> 00:58:00,097 - [Brad Gooch] "The Displaced Person" is about 987 00:58:00,097 --> 00:58:02,133 an immigrant family from Poland, 988 00:58:02,133 --> 00:58:04,653 postwar refugees, who move into the south. 989 00:58:07,207 --> 00:58:08,277 - Who are they, now? 990 00:58:08,277 --> 00:58:10,694 - They come from over the water. 991 00:58:10,694 --> 00:58:13,455 Only one of them seems like can speak English. 992 00:58:13,455 --> 00:58:16,216 They're what is called displaced persons. 993 00:58:16,216 --> 00:58:20,531 - Regina never dreamed that she 994 00:58:20,531 --> 00:58:22,913 was a character in all of the stories. 995 00:58:22,913 --> 00:58:25,778 The stupid woman was herself. 996 00:58:26,986 --> 00:58:28,850 - Slowly but surely, the father figure 997 00:58:28,850 --> 00:58:30,230 for this refugee family starts to 998 00:58:30,230 --> 00:58:31,853 kind of take over the farm. 999 00:58:33,786 --> 00:58:34,614 - Screw? 1000 00:58:38,894 --> 00:58:40,551 - The violence in the stories 1001 00:58:40,551 --> 00:58:42,519 was something that was always clear to me 1002 00:58:42,519 --> 00:58:46,453 as a symbolic act leading to transformations. 1003 00:58:49,387 --> 00:58:52,218 [engine rumbles] 1004 00:58:59,605 --> 00:59:03,229 - Even though she is recognizable in Mrs. McIntyre, 1005 00:59:03,229 --> 00:59:06,543 Regina was not contained in those characters. 1006 00:59:07,820 --> 00:59:10,857 [people crying] [priest speaking Latin] 1007 00:59:10,857 --> 00:59:13,480 - You want some kind of clear resolution 1008 00:59:13,480 --> 00:59:16,587 of all these different conflicts, and she denies it to us. 1009 00:59:18,555 --> 00:59:21,143 - [Narrator] "I'm always irritated by people who imply 1010 00:59:21,143 --> 00:59:24,768 that writing fiction is an escape from reality. 1011 00:59:24,768 --> 00:59:27,667 It is a plunge into reality, 1012 00:59:27,667 --> 00:59:30,843 and it's very shocking to the system." 1013 00:59:33,604 --> 00:59:35,192 - But she's funny. 1014 00:59:35,192 --> 00:59:37,401 She's really funny, and she's often funny 1015 00:59:37,401 --> 00:59:39,023 in a very dire way. 1016 00:59:40,231 --> 00:59:42,337 The laughter is the laughter of the skull 1017 00:59:42,337 --> 00:59:44,753 of the memento mori on your desk. 1018 00:59:47,618 --> 00:59:50,448 [knives thudding] 1019 01:00:02,012 --> 01:00:04,083 - I didn't realize that Flannery O'Connor 1020 01:00:04,083 --> 01:00:08,259 lived across the way from us for many, many years. 1021 01:00:09,433 --> 01:00:11,953 It was one of our brothers who took milk 1022 01:00:11,953 --> 01:00:15,163 from her place to the creamery in town. 1023 01:00:17,234 --> 01:00:21,997 When we drove into Milledgeville, the cows that we saw 1024 01:00:21,997 --> 01:00:25,138 on the hillside going into town would have been 1025 01:00:25,138 --> 01:00:27,037 the cows of the O'Connors. 1026 01:00:29,315 --> 01:00:32,076 - [William Sessions] Milledgeville had a enclosed society. 1027 01:00:32,076 --> 01:00:33,733 It's a remarkable town. 1028 01:00:34,941 --> 01:00:37,530 It really was a culture in itself, 1029 01:00:37,530 --> 01:00:39,152 and they lived in terms of that. 1030 01:00:41,292 --> 01:00:44,088 - Of course in '52 there was the same racism 1031 01:00:44,088 --> 01:00:45,400 that had always been there. 1032 01:00:48,955 --> 01:00:50,232 - [William Sessions] They lived in terms of 1033 01:00:50,232 --> 01:00:51,993 the institutions that were there. 1034 01:00:53,580 --> 01:00:55,755 - When you said you were from Milledgeville, 1035 01:00:55,755 --> 01:00:58,171 everyone would laugh and say, 1036 01:00:58,171 --> 01:01:00,208 "Oh, you're one of those crazy," you know, 1037 01:01:00,208 --> 01:01:02,762 it was sort of like Milledgeville was synonymous 1038 01:01:02,762 --> 01:01:04,695 with the state hospital. 1039 01:01:08,181 --> 01:01:09,010 - Gothic. 1040 01:01:13,014 --> 01:01:13,842 Grotesque. 1041 01:01:16,500 --> 01:01:18,226 This small world. 1042 01:01:20,297 --> 01:01:24,611 A world that was circumscribed within a farmhouse. 1043 01:01:24,611 --> 01:01:28,270 A farm, the surrounding countryside. 1044 01:01:31,688 --> 01:01:34,829 So much could happen in that world. 1045 01:01:41,663 --> 01:01:44,528 - [Host] Do you have a fixed pattern of work? 1046 01:01:44,528 --> 01:01:46,150 - Yes, I work every morning. 1047 01:01:46,150 --> 01:01:47,462 - [Host] And you don't miss a day? 1048 01:01:47,462 --> 01:01:49,153 - No. Not even Sunday. 1049 01:01:49,153 --> 01:01:50,707 - Intense. 1050 01:01:50,707 --> 01:01:54,296 I remember that Tomas Mann once said that he hated writing, 1051 01:01:54,296 --> 01:01:57,403 that it was a trap that he had fallen into. 1052 01:01:57,403 --> 01:01:58,611 Do you feel that at all? 1053 01:01:59,854 --> 01:02:02,063 - Well, I think you hate it and you love it, too. 1054 01:02:03,340 --> 01:02:05,791 Something that, when you can't do anything else, 1055 01:02:05,791 --> 01:02:07,344 you have to do that. 1056 01:02:09,277 --> 01:02:13,453 - The ear for Flannery O'Connor is everything. 1057 01:02:13,453 --> 01:02:15,593 Not the eye. The ear. 1058 01:02:16,733 --> 01:02:21,530 - She liked capturing the actual speech 1059 01:02:21,530 --> 01:02:23,049 of all these people around her. 1060 01:02:23,049 --> 01:02:27,433 The actual speech of many southern whites at that time 1061 01:02:27,433 --> 01:02:30,401 was racist, and she would record it. 1062 01:02:31,575 --> 01:02:34,509 - We have a good set of niggers here. 1063 01:02:34,509 --> 01:02:37,098 And they don't want to be disturbed. 1064 01:02:37,098 --> 01:02:38,962 I have one that I just love. 1065 01:02:38,962 --> 01:02:41,481 She nursed my children for about six years. 1066 01:02:42,655 --> 01:02:45,071 Of course, there are some getting some ideas, 1067 01:02:46,141 --> 01:02:47,522 and that's all right. 1068 01:02:47,522 --> 01:02:48,626 That's progress. 1069 01:02:54,322 --> 01:02:57,704 - Part of my worry as a reader is that she's too good, 1070 01:02:58,740 --> 01:03:01,432 by which I mean that her mimicry 1071 01:03:01,432 --> 01:03:03,952 of the voices around her is too acute. 1072 01:03:06,575 --> 01:03:09,302 In that accuracy, she doomed herself, 1073 01:03:09,302 --> 01:03:11,235 because a lot of these stories are judged 1074 01:03:11,235 --> 01:03:13,893 by modern readers as unacceptable. 1075 01:03:16,585 --> 01:03:18,587 - I don't associate with niggers, but on the other hand 1076 01:03:18,587 --> 01:03:20,382 I don't associate with common white trash 1077 01:03:20,382 --> 01:03:22,281 or Jews or Catholics, if I can help it. 1078 01:03:25,732 --> 01:03:28,632 - She's a brilliant reporter about the ways 1079 01:03:28,632 --> 01:03:31,290 in which the social order was changing. 1080 01:03:31,290 --> 01:03:33,395 Over and over again in her stories, she was showing 1081 01:03:33,395 --> 01:03:37,192 the disruption of the fantasy of whiteness. 1082 01:03:37,192 --> 01:03:38,538 The fantasy of power. 1083 01:03:40,092 --> 01:03:42,819 - I think Flannery was writing for people 1084 01:03:42,819 --> 01:03:44,717 who have been racist for a long time, 1085 01:03:44,717 --> 01:03:48,479 and they know there's something wrong with that. 1086 01:03:51,172 --> 01:03:54,520 - [Hilton Als] I don't think Flannery was racist 1087 01:03:54,520 --> 01:03:56,487 so much as she has a knee jerk reaction to race 1088 01:03:56,487 --> 01:03:59,421 in the way that she had a knee-jerk reaction to her mother. 1089 01:03:59,421 --> 01:04:01,285 - I expect that before long, there won't be 1090 01:04:01,285 --> 01:04:04,288 no more niggers on the place, and I'll tell you what, 1091 01:04:04,288 --> 01:04:06,152 I'd rather have niggers than them Poles. 1092 01:04:07,533 --> 01:04:10,018 - [Sally Fitzgerald] "Artificial Nigger" was a reference 1093 01:04:10,018 --> 01:04:11,606 to a little hitching post. 1094 01:04:11,606 --> 01:04:13,642 They were ornaments. 1095 01:04:13,642 --> 01:04:17,163 She heard the expression from a local country man, 1096 01:04:17,163 --> 01:04:19,925 and she knew at once that she must use it somewhere. 1097 01:04:19,925 --> 01:04:24,343 [typewriter keys clicking] 1098 01:04:24,343 --> 01:04:27,725 - [Narrator] "The Artificial Nigger" tells the story 1099 01:04:27,725 --> 01:04:30,142 of the elderly Mister Head who brings 1100 01:04:30,142 --> 01:04:33,317 his young grandson Nelson to Atlanta 1101 01:04:33,317 --> 01:04:35,975 to see negros for the first time. 1102 01:04:37,977 --> 01:04:39,461 [train whistle blows] 1103 01:04:39,461 --> 01:04:43,155 "'That was a Nigger,' Mister Head said and sat back. 1104 01:04:43,155 --> 01:04:46,365 Nelson jumped up on the seat and stood looking backward 1105 01:04:46,365 --> 01:04:49,816 to the end of the car, but the negro had gone. 1106 01:04:49,816 --> 01:04:51,370 'I'd have thought you'd know a nigger, 1107 01:04:51,370 --> 01:04:53,579 since you've seen so many when you was 1108 01:04:53,579 --> 01:04:56,202 in the city on your first visit.' 1109 01:04:56,202 --> 01:04:57,928 'That's his first nigger,' he said 1110 01:04:57,928 --> 01:05:00,172 to the man across the aisle. 1111 01:05:00,172 --> 01:05:05,039 The boy slid down into the seat. 'You said they were black. 1112 01:05:05,039 --> 01:05:07,351 You never said they were tan. 1113 01:05:07,351 --> 01:05:09,560 How do you expect me to know anything 1114 01:05:09,560 --> 01:05:11,459 when you don't tell me right?'" 1115 01:05:12,909 --> 01:05:14,807 - Suddenly the boy is wondering, 1116 01:05:14,807 --> 01:05:17,672 what language have you been using? 1117 01:05:17,672 --> 01:05:20,295 You know, because negro or black 1118 01:05:20,295 --> 01:05:21,848 doesn't describe what this is. 1119 01:05:21,848 --> 01:05:25,024 - You take those white racist characters, 1120 01:05:25,024 --> 01:05:26,784 one of whom is learning to be a racist 1121 01:05:26,784 --> 01:05:28,855 in the course of the story. 1122 01:05:28,855 --> 01:05:31,582 You take them to Atlanta, and they encounter 1123 01:05:31,582 --> 01:05:34,758 scene after scene after scene after scene after scene, 1124 01:05:34,758 --> 01:05:36,794 where they have to be learning that 1125 01:05:36,794 --> 01:05:40,350 their racism has hurt them. 1126 01:05:43,387 --> 01:05:47,978 - [Brad Gooch] She insisted on having this title, 1127 01:05:47,978 --> 01:05:52,810 so there's a way in which she was true to what 1128 01:05:52,810 --> 01:05:55,779 she was actually observing and hearing around her. 1129 01:05:55,779 --> 01:05:58,506 And she could put on blinders about 1130 01:05:58,506 --> 01:06:01,336 what the repercussions might be. 1131 01:06:01,336 --> 01:06:03,994 - [Flannery] Well, but the title was so dominant. 1132 01:06:06,479 --> 01:06:09,172 - [Man] It's hard to live up to it. 1133 01:06:09,172 --> 01:06:12,589 - [Flannery] I didn't want to hurt anybody's feelings. 1134 01:06:12,589 --> 01:06:14,591 I stood out for my title. 1135 01:06:17,007 --> 01:06:19,906 - She's been banned, 'cause the N-word came out. 1136 01:06:19,906 --> 01:06:21,632 And that's true in certain universities 1137 01:06:21,632 --> 01:06:24,946 that her text won't be read because 1138 01:06:24,946 --> 01:06:27,121 the N-word is used or something else. 1139 01:06:27,121 --> 01:06:28,812 And this seems to me unfortunate, 1140 01:06:28,812 --> 01:06:30,779 It's like Huckleberry Finn. 1141 01:06:30,779 --> 01:06:34,093 - I think "The Artificial Nigger" is an amazing story 1142 01:06:34,093 --> 01:06:37,959 in terms of behavior and the ways in which 1143 01:06:37,959 --> 01:06:42,860 this sort of almost Pilgrim's Progress through Atlanta 1144 01:06:42,860 --> 01:06:47,831 and through difference, transforms these people. 1145 01:06:49,177 --> 01:06:50,730 - Well I think there Flannery's telling the truth 1146 01:06:50,730 --> 01:06:54,251 that recovering from white racism takes a long time. 1147 01:06:55,321 --> 01:07:00,292 ♪ On a hill far away 1148 01:07:02,432 --> 01:07:07,333 ♪ Stood an old rugged cross 1149 01:07:09,542 --> 01:07:13,753 ♪ The emblem of suffrin' and shame ♪ 1150 01:07:19,725 --> 01:07:22,383 [geese honking] 1151 01:07:23,901 --> 01:07:27,767 - [Richard Rodriguez] Around 1954 she met Eric Langkjaer- 1152 01:07:27,767 --> 01:07:30,046 - Who had grown up in Denmark, 1153 01:07:30,046 --> 01:07:32,565 decided to come to this country. 1154 01:07:32,565 --> 01:07:34,912 He was very much interested in religious matters, 1155 01:07:34,912 --> 01:07:36,880 but he was far from being a Catholic. 1156 01:07:38,571 --> 01:07:41,402 - I was working for Harcourt Brace 1157 01:07:41,402 --> 01:07:44,405 as a college textbook salesman. 1158 01:07:44,405 --> 01:07:47,166 And I had the whole of the south, 1159 01:07:47,166 --> 01:07:50,307 east of the Mississippi as my territory. 1160 01:07:51,791 --> 01:07:53,862 - [Sally Fitzgerald] And one of his stops along the way 1161 01:07:53,862 --> 01:07:56,865 was Georgia College in Milledgeville. 1162 01:07:56,865 --> 01:07:59,661 And when he was there, on his first visit, 1163 01:07:59,661 --> 01:08:01,698 he went out to meet Flannery. 1164 01:08:01,698 --> 01:08:03,596 They became fast friends. 1165 01:08:05,598 --> 01:08:06,875 - [Richard Rodriguez] Eric Langkjaer, 1166 01:08:06,875 --> 01:08:11,501 tall, very learned and interesting young man, 1167 01:08:12,985 --> 01:08:16,851 develops this fascination from his side with O'Connor. 1168 01:08:18,749 --> 01:08:20,579 She was very isolated. 1169 01:08:20,579 --> 01:08:24,307 This chance to have these kinds of conversations 1170 01:08:24,307 --> 01:08:27,793 with a handsome young man were very important to her. 1171 01:08:28,966 --> 01:08:31,210 - He liked her very much and they had clearly 1172 01:08:31,210 --> 01:08:34,110 a kind of affinity and he perceived that her life 1173 01:08:34,110 --> 01:08:37,906 was very limited and so he would take her out for rides. 1174 01:08:39,184 --> 01:08:41,841 - [Richard Rodriguez] This relationship 1175 01:08:41,841 --> 01:08:45,155 has a romantic aspect to it. 1176 01:08:45,155 --> 01:08:47,882 One of the women who worked on the farm 1177 01:08:47,882 --> 01:08:50,367 said to someone else who worked there, 1178 01:08:50,367 --> 01:08:53,025 "That's her boyfriend. They're going out on a date." 1179 01:08:55,165 --> 01:08:58,237 - I had to completely rearrange my itinerary 1180 01:08:59,411 --> 01:09:01,723 so as to be able to end up in Milledgeville 1181 01:09:01,723 --> 01:09:04,657 as often as possible on weekends. 1182 01:09:04,657 --> 01:09:08,972 And I would say that Regina absolutely did not 1183 01:09:08,972 --> 01:09:10,663 discourage this sort of thing. 1184 01:09:12,424 --> 01:09:13,666 - [Richard Rodriguez] On his last time 1185 01:09:13,666 --> 01:09:17,291 before he's going off to Europe for the summer, 1186 01:09:17,291 --> 01:09:20,086 they go for a ride in his car. 1187 01:09:21,571 --> 01:09:24,160 - I may not have been in love, but I was 1188 01:09:24,160 --> 01:09:26,990 very much aware that she was a woman. 1189 01:09:28,440 --> 01:09:33,030 So I felt that I'd like to kiss her, which I did. 1190 01:09:37,414 --> 01:09:42,385 I was not by any means a Don Juan, but in my late twenties, 1191 01:09:43,558 --> 01:09:46,112 I had of course kissed other girls. 1192 01:09:46,112 --> 01:09:50,600 And there had been this firm response 1193 01:09:51,808 --> 01:09:53,706 which was totally lacking in Flannery. 1194 01:09:54,949 --> 01:09:57,607 I had a feeling of kissing a skeleton 1195 01:09:58,849 --> 01:10:03,026 and it reminded me of her being gravely ill. 1196 01:10:04,165 --> 01:10:06,581 - [Mary Gordon] He loved her, he revered her 1197 01:10:06,581 --> 01:10:09,239 particularly as a writer, but he was very freaked out. 1198 01:10:10,689 --> 01:10:13,278 He then left the country, went back to Denmark. 1199 01:10:13,278 --> 01:10:15,935 - Then ensued a number of letters from Flannery, 1200 01:10:15,935 --> 01:10:18,938 about 13, which are very revealing. 1201 01:10:19,836 --> 01:10:21,596 - [Narrator] "Dear, dear Eric, 1202 01:10:21,596 --> 01:10:24,703 you're wonderful and wildly original. 1203 01:10:24,703 --> 01:10:27,637 Did I tell you I call my baby pea chicken 1204 01:10:27,637 --> 01:10:31,779 Brother in public and Eric in private?" 1205 01:10:31,779 --> 01:10:35,196 - In the course of time, he wrote announcing his engagement. 1206 01:10:36,508 --> 01:10:38,820 Flannery felt this disappointment very deeply. 1207 01:10:40,201 --> 01:10:43,480 Her mother had never mentioned Eric Langkjaer to me. 1208 01:10:43,480 --> 01:10:46,483 We were old friends and I was able to push her a little bit 1209 01:10:46,483 --> 01:10:50,280 and I said, "But did she suffer, Regina? 1210 01:10:50,280 --> 01:10:52,386 Did she suffer over this?" 1211 01:10:52,386 --> 01:10:55,043 And she looked down and against 1212 01:10:55,043 --> 01:10:58,771 her customary reserve, she was able to say, 1213 01:10:58,771 --> 01:11:01,602 "Yes she did. It was terrible." 1214 01:11:06,538 --> 01:11:08,643 - [Richard Rodriguez] She has a terrible emotional 1215 01:11:08,643 --> 01:11:11,163 personal reaction, but also a literary reaction 1216 01:11:11,163 --> 01:11:14,200 which is in four days, which is almost record time 1217 01:11:14,200 --> 01:11:17,514 for O'Connor, who was known as the demon rewriter, 1218 01:11:17,514 --> 01:11:21,760 she writes "Good Country People," a story that in some way 1219 01:11:21,760 --> 01:11:25,902 metaphorically is about this relationship. 1220 01:11:25,902 --> 01:11:28,284 - [Mary Gordon] "Good Country People" is this story 1221 01:11:28,284 --> 01:11:30,700 of an unhappy woman with a wooden leg 1222 01:11:30,700 --> 01:11:32,391 from a hunting accident. 1223 01:11:32,391 --> 01:11:36,395 Her given name was Joy, but she changed it to Hulga, 1224 01:11:36,395 --> 01:11:38,017 just to spite her mother. 1225 01:11:38,017 --> 01:11:41,711 One day, a traveling Bible salesman comes to her door. 1226 01:11:41,711 --> 01:11:46,440 - Eric's lists from Harcourt Brace, he called the Bible. 1227 01:11:46,440 --> 01:11:48,959 - Reading it, I realized right away 1228 01:11:48,959 --> 01:11:52,860 that here I was in some sort of disguise. 1229 01:11:55,207 --> 01:11:56,691 - [Richard Rodriguez] In the hayloft on the farm 1230 01:11:56,691 --> 01:12:01,317 that's exactly a replica of Andalusia, the O'Connor's farm, 1231 01:12:01,317 --> 01:12:04,423 she has this kind of flirtation with the Bible salesmen. 1232 01:12:05,562 --> 01:12:08,116 He gets her to unscrew her wooden leg, 1233 01:12:08,116 --> 01:12:09,601 and then makes off with it. 1234 01:12:11,188 --> 01:12:13,294 - "'Give me my leg,' she screamed and tried to lunge for it, 1235 01:12:13,294 --> 01:12:14,985 but he pushed her down easily. 1236 01:12:16,470 --> 01:12:18,851 'What's the matter with you all of the sudden,' he asked, 1237 01:12:18,851 --> 01:12:21,509 frowning as he screwed the top on the flask 1238 01:12:21,509 --> 01:12:24,132 and put it quickly back inside the Bible. 1239 01:12:24,132 --> 01:12:27,412 'You just awhile ago said you didn't believe in nothing. 1240 01:12:27,412 --> 01:12:30,069 I thought you was some girl.' 1241 01:12:30,069 --> 01:12:32,417 'Give me my leg,' she screeched. 1242 01:12:32,417 --> 01:12:35,074 He jumped up so quickly that she barely saw him 1243 01:12:35,074 --> 01:12:38,595 sweep the cards and the blue box into the Bible 1244 01:12:38,595 --> 01:12:40,701 and throw the Bible into the valise. 1245 01:12:42,150 --> 01:12:46,189 And then the toast colored hat disappeared down the hole 1246 01:12:46,189 --> 01:12:48,950 and the girl was left sitting on the straw 1247 01:12:48,950 --> 01:12:51,367 in the dusty sunlight. 1248 01:12:51,367 --> 01:12:55,543 When she turned her churning face toward the opening, 1249 01:12:55,543 --> 01:12:59,375 she saw his blue figure struggling successfully 1250 01:12:59,375 --> 01:13:01,722 over the green speckled lake." 1251 01:13:04,794 --> 01:13:06,416 you know, as Dostoevsky said, 1252 01:13:06,416 --> 01:13:08,763 "Without God, everything is permitted." 1253 01:13:15,252 --> 01:13:18,117 - [Narrator] "Dear Eric, I'm highly taken with the thought 1254 01:13:18,117 --> 01:13:21,086 of you seeing yourself as the Bible salesman. 1255 01:13:21,086 --> 01:13:25,539 Dear boy, remove this delusion from your head at once. 1256 01:13:25,539 --> 01:13:28,024 Never let it be said that I don't make the most 1257 01:13:28,024 --> 01:13:32,304 of experience and information, no matter how meager." 1258 01:13:33,926 --> 01:13:38,206 ♪ Well just because you think you're so pretty ♪ 1259 01:13:38,206 --> 01:13:41,831 ♪ Just because you think you're so hot ♪ 1260 01:13:41,831 --> 01:13:45,386 ♪ Just because you think you got something ♪ 1261 01:13:45,386 --> 01:13:49,183 ♪ That nobody else has got 1262 01:13:49,183 --> 01:13:52,773 ♪ So you make me spend all my money ♪ 1263 01:13:52,773 --> 01:13:56,604 ♪ You laugh and call me Old Santa Claus ♪ 1264 01:13:56,604 --> 01:13:58,123 ♪ But I'm telling you 1265 01:13:58,123 --> 01:14:00,194 ♪ Honey, I'm through with you 1266 01:14:00,194 --> 01:14:04,647 ♪ Honey, 'cause, just because 1267 01:14:04,647 --> 01:14:07,339 [pen scratching] 1268 01:14:09,583 --> 01:14:13,587 - I for myself think that although Ms. O'Connor 1269 01:14:13,587 --> 01:14:16,348 can be called a Southern writer, 1270 01:14:16,348 --> 01:14:18,005 I agree that she's not a Southern writer, 1271 01:14:18,005 --> 01:14:22,941 just as Faulkner isn't, and that they are, 1272 01:14:24,114 --> 01:14:26,703 for want of a better term, universal writers. 1273 01:14:26,703 --> 01:14:28,222 They're writing about all mankind 1274 01:14:28,222 --> 01:14:31,950 and about relationships and the mystery of relationships. 1275 01:14:31,950 --> 01:14:34,953 And I'm relieved that you write as simply as you do. 1276 01:14:34,953 --> 01:14:37,611 - So after the disruption of a relationship with Eric 1277 01:14:37,611 --> 01:14:39,095 and also then the publication of 1278 01:14:39,095 --> 01:14:42,098 "A Good Man is Hard to Find," she develops 1279 01:14:42,098 --> 01:14:43,858 different sorts of relationships. 1280 01:14:43,858 --> 01:14:46,378 That kind of friendship with Maryat Lee, 1281 01:14:46,378 --> 01:14:48,414 bisexual sister of the President of 1282 01:14:48,414 --> 01:14:51,348 the Georgia State College for Women comes to see her. 1283 01:14:51,348 --> 01:14:54,490 And Maryat Lee is living in Greenwich Village 1284 01:14:54,490 --> 01:14:58,286 and the unlikely eccentric looking woman 1285 01:14:58,286 --> 01:15:00,841 in the middle of Georgia, walking around in boots 1286 01:15:00,841 --> 01:15:02,325 and a cape and things like that. 1287 01:15:02,325 --> 01:15:05,190 But again, the two hit it off. 1288 01:15:05,190 --> 01:15:08,296 - Maryat and I came out once and Flannery was painting. 1289 01:15:08,296 --> 01:15:10,367 And I think she was working on this piece. 1290 01:15:17,651 --> 01:15:21,517 - She shows first of all her tremendous generosity 1291 01:15:21,517 --> 01:15:26,487 as a friend and her gameful spirit, you know, 1292 01:15:27,868 --> 01:15:29,283 especially with Maryat Lee, just hilarious spirit. 1293 01:15:31,872 --> 01:15:36,393 - Maryat's very being kind of buttressed Flannery's, 1294 01:15:36,393 --> 01:15:38,637 okay, there's another one out there. 1295 01:15:41,329 --> 01:15:46,300 - She could scowl as effectively as anybody I've ever known. 1296 01:15:49,234 --> 01:15:52,893 One of the few signs of Flannery's lupus 1297 01:15:52,893 --> 01:15:56,586 was the fact that after the midday meal, 1298 01:15:57,725 --> 01:16:00,417 you could see her tiring. 1299 01:16:00,417 --> 01:16:03,420 The cortisone derivative that she took, 1300 01:16:03,420 --> 01:16:05,975 which saved her life, had softened the bones 1301 01:16:05,975 --> 01:16:08,494 and also had put her on crutches 1302 01:16:08,494 --> 01:16:10,289 and this had altered her appearance. 1303 01:16:11,774 --> 01:16:14,570 But she was wonderfully animated 1304 01:16:14,570 --> 01:16:16,779 when she was interested in what she was saying, 1305 01:16:16,779 --> 01:16:20,196 when a good question was asked 1306 01:16:20,196 --> 01:16:24,476 and she could answer with zest. 1307 01:16:25,857 --> 01:16:27,893 - [Narrator] "If the fact that I'm a celebrity 1308 01:16:27,893 --> 01:16:30,275 makes you feel silly, what dear girl 1309 01:16:30,275 --> 01:16:32,277 do you think it makes me feel? 1310 01:16:32,277 --> 01:16:36,246 It's a comic distinction shared with Roy Rogers' horse 1311 01:16:36,246 --> 01:16:39,249 and Miss Watermelon of 1955." 1312 01:16:41,286 --> 01:16:44,979 - Betty Hester appeared at a point in Flannery's life 1313 01:16:44,979 --> 01:16:47,879 where she had just had a bit of disappointment 1314 01:16:47,879 --> 01:16:50,640 and realized that she was going to be alone 1315 01:16:50,640 --> 01:16:52,021 for the rest of her life, that her life 1316 01:16:52,021 --> 01:16:53,919 was going to be writing. 1317 01:16:53,919 --> 01:16:55,680 And she needed conversation. 1318 01:16:56,888 --> 01:16:59,511 And suddenly she received a letter 1319 01:16:59,511 --> 01:17:02,376 from a complete stranger in Atlanta 1320 01:17:02,376 --> 01:17:04,965 who seemed to realize that these stories, 1321 01:17:04,965 --> 01:17:07,070 as she put it, are about God. 1322 01:17:08,485 --> 01:17:12,006 And Flannery said, "Who is this who understands my story?" 1323 01:17:14,146 --> 01:17:17,184 - [Narrator] "I'm very pleased to have your letter. 1324 01:17:17,184 --> 01:17:19,773 Perhaps it is even more startling to me to find 1325 01:17:19,773 --> 01:17:23,190 someone who recognizes my work for what I try 1326 01:17:23,190 --> 01:17:26,193 to make it than it is for you to find 1327 01:17:26,193 --> 01:17:29,368 a God-conscious writer near at hand. 1328 01:17:29,368 --> 01:17:32,855 The distance is 87 miles, but I feel 1329 01:17:32,855 --> 01:17:35,789 the spiritual distance is much shorter." 1330 01:17:39,206 --> 01:17:40,759 - There began a conversation 1331 01:17:40,759 --> 01:17:43,313 that lasted for years, by letter. 1332 01:17:43,313 --> 01:17:45,074 They wrote every two weeks, 1333 01:17:45,074 --> 01:17:48,940 Betty Hester was a clerk in a credit office. 1334 01:17:50,113 --> 01:17:52,184 - Betty was lesbian and had actually 1335 01:17:52,184 --> 01:17:55,222 suffered horribly far that, I mean she was in the Air Force 1336 01:17:55,222 --> 01:18:00,192 and she was kicked out and had to go back to 1950 South 1337 01:18:00,192 --> 01:18:03,644 where it was hard for a woman, period, to get a job. 1338 01:18:03,644 --> 01:18:06,612 And if your service records said something, 1339 01:18:06,612 --> 01:18:08,511 you may as well go back to the penitentiary. 1340 01:18:08,511 --> 01:18:11,238 She lived in fear from that time on, 1341 01:18:11,238 --> 01:18:12,964 she had no relationships with anybody. 1342 01:18:12,964 --> 01:18:14,137 She lived with her aunt. 1343 01:18:15,621 --> 01:18:19,695 - She had a dingy little job and her whole life was reading 1344 01:18:19,695 --> 01:18:23,491 and the letters that she elicited from Flannery are 1345 01:18:23,491 --> 01:18:26,909 among the real treasures to be found in Flannery's letters. 1346 01:18:28,082 --> 01:18:30,429 - [Narrator] "I found myself in a world 1347 01:18:30,429 --> 01:18:33,398 where everybody has his compartment, 1348 01:18:33,398 --> 01:18:37,505 puts you in yours, shuts the door, and departs. 1349 01:18:37,505 --> 01:18:41,855 My audience are the people who think God is dead. 1350 01:18:41,855 --> 01:18:43,546 At least these are the people 1351 01:18:43,546 --> 01:18:45,721 I am conscious of writing for." 1352 01:18:46,963 --> 01:18:48,758 - Then Betty Hester, she writes a letter 1353 01:18:48,758 --> 01:18:51,485 of almost confession to Flannery O'Connor 1354 01:18:51,485 --> 01:18:54,246 about the lesbian activity that had caused her 1355 01:18:54,246 --> 01:18:56,317 to be discharged from the military. 1356 01:18:57,905 --> 01:19:00,114 When you're reading this exchange of letters between them, 1357 01:19:00,114 --> 01:19:02,910 I was on the edge of my seat because you're wondering 1358 01:19:02,910 --> 01:19:05,016 where O'Connor is going to go with this. 1359 01:19:05,016 --> 01:19:07,397 I mean she could go almost either way. 1360 01:19:08,813 --> 01:19:11,747 - [Narrator] "Betty, I can't write you fast enough 1361 01:19:11,747 --> 01:19:14,957 and tell you that it doesn't make the slightest 1362 01:19:14,957 --> 01:19:18,029 bit of difference in my opinion of you, 1363 01:19:18,029 --> 01:19:21,480 which is the same as it was, and that is based 1364 01:19:21,480 --> 01:19:25,036 solidly on complete respect. 1365 01:19:25,036 --> 01:19:27,901 You've done me nothing but good. 1366 01:19:27,901 --> 01:19:30,317 But the fact is above and beyond this 1367 01:19:30,317 --> 01:19:34,079 that I have a spiritual relationship to you. 1368 01:19:34,079 --> 01:19:36,668 What is necessary for you to know 1369 01:19:36,668 --> 01:19:41,638 is my very real love and admiration for you. 1370 01:19:42,363 --> 01:19:43,192 Yours, Flannery." 1371 01:19:44,814 --> 01:19:49,405 - Flannery's letters were her closest relationships 1372 01:19:50,855 --> 01:19:54,893 with other human beings and they were very important to her 1373 01:19:56,377 --> 01:20:01,348 and she worked really hard to be the kind of friend 1374 01:20:02,521 --> 01:20:04,972 that an individual needed for her to be. 1375 01:20:04,972 --> 01:20:08,562 Those letters, those are her real love relationships. 1376 01:20:10,529 --> 01:20:13,567 - A book of letters could reveal a person 1377 01:20:13,567 --> 01:20:16,984 in a way that biography doesn't. 1378 01:20:18,158 --> 01:20:21,471 - "The Habit of Being" opened that door 1379 01:20:21,471 --> 01:20:23,819 so that people understood that this woman 1380 01:20:23,819 --> 01:20:28,824 had a religious point of view, that she saw life 1381 01:20:30,032 --> 01:20:32,655 as the action of God's grace and that without 1382 01:20:32,655 --> 01:20:35,900 understanding that, it's impossible to know 1383 01:20:35,900 --> 01:20:39,006 what she was doing and what those stories really mean. 1384 01:20:39,006 --> 01:20:41,422 - That's the whole point of her writing, I think, 1385 01:20:41,422 --> 01:20:45,323 the Catholic thinking, to not be so doctrinaire 1386 01:20:45,323 --> 01:20:47,463 that she revealed it to be obvious 1387 01:20:47,463 --> 01:20:49,499 to feeling and thinking people. 1388 01:20:56,541 --> 01:21:01,166 ♪ Wildcat Willie, lookin' mighty pale ♪ 1389 01:21:01,166 --> 01:21:03,997 ♪ Was standin' by the Sheriff's side ♪ 1390 01:21:03,997 --> 01:21:05,826 ♪ And when that Sheriff said 1391 01:21:05,826 --> 01:21:08,139 ♪ I'm sendin' you to jail 1392 01:21:08,139 --> 01:21:10,520 ♪ Wildcat raised his head and cried ♪ 1393 01:21:10,520 --> 01:21:12,937 ♪ Oh give me land, lots of land ♪ 1394 01:21:12,937 --> 01:21:15,629 ♪ Under starry skies above 1395 01:21:15,629 --> 01:21:18,459 ♪ Don't fence me in 1396 01:21:18,459 --> 01:21:20,392 ♪ Let me ride through the wide open ♪ 1397 01:21:20,392 --> 01:21:22,705 ♪ Country that I love 1398 01:21:22,705 --> 01:21:25,570 ♪ Don't fence me in 1399 01:21:25,570 --> 01:21:29,505 ♪ Let me be by myself in the evenin' breeze ♪ 1400 01:21:29,505 --> 01:21:33,129 ♪ And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees ♪ 1401 01:21:33,129 --> 01:21:37,133 ♪ Send me off forever but I ask you please ♪ 1402 01:21:37,133 --> 01:21:38,617 ♪ Don't fence me in 1403 01:21:38,617 --> 01:21:40,240 - Why do you have to fight for your civil rights? 1404 01:21:41,655 --> 01:21:44,727 If you're fighting for your civil rights, 1405 01:21:44,727 --> 01:21:46,867 that means you're not a citizen. 1406 01:21:46,867 --> 01:21:49,905 - There was a famous incident that's been cited a good deal 1407 01:21:49,905 --> 01:21:52,528 when Flannery was invited by Maryat Lee 1408 01:21:52,528 --> 01:21:55,911 to meet James Baldwin, she offered to arrange a meeting 1409 01:21:55,911 --> 01:21:58,396 when Baldwin was traveling through Georgia. 1410 01:21:58,396 --> 01:22:01,364 And Flannery declined this meeting. 1411 01:22:01,364 --> 01:22:04,436 Although she was careful to say that she would be 1412 01:22:04,436 --> 01:22:07,232 delighted to meet James Baldwin anywhere else, 1413 01:22:07,232 --> 01:22:10,235 but she would not meet him in Milledgeville. 1414 01:22:11,685 --> 01:22:14,343 - [Narrator] "In New York, it would be nice to meet him. 1415 01:22:14,343 --> 01:22:16,345 Here, it would not. 1416 01:22:16,345 --> 01:22:20,004 I observe the traditions of the society I feed on. 1417 01:22:23,283 --> 01:22:25,561 Might as well expect a mule to fly 1418 01:22:25,561 --> 01:22:29,151 as me to see James Baldwin in Georgia." 1419 01:22:29,151 --> 01:22:31,532 - She didn't want to be a spokesman for the South. 1420 01:22:31,532 --> 01:22:33,603 She was an artist. 1421 01:22:33,603 --> 01:22:35,674 She could only talk about the South 1422 01:22:36,641 --> 01:22:39,092 if she was one of its citizens. 1423 01:22:39,092 --> 01:22:42,958 If they met in Georgia, it would be a civil rights cause 1424 01:22:42,958 --> 01:22:46,892 and she would not be able to live in that town unobserved. 1425 01:22:46,892 --> 01:22:49,033 And that was the whole point of writing for her 1426 01:22:49,033 --> 01:22:52,105 was to be almost a reporter. 1427 01:22:55,729 --> 01:22:57,144 - [William Sessions] Flannery was crippled, 1428 01:22:57,144 --> 01:22:58,456 Flannery was sick. 1429 01:22:58,456 --> 01:23:00,044 She couldn't say, "I'm out of here, I'm out." 1430 01:23:00,044 --> 01:23:01,424 "Where are you going Flannery? 1431 01:23:01,424 --> 01:23:03,254 Where are you going to get the money?" 1432 01:23:03,254 --> 01:23:04,772 They had no money. 1433 01:23:04,772 --> 01:23:07,396 I mean Flannery didn't make any money from her books. 1434 01:23:07,396 --> 01:23:09,846 That's why she went out on speaking tours. 1435 01:23:09,846 --> 01:23:13,333 - [Narrator] "Next week I go to Rosary College in Chicago 1436 01:23:13,333 --> 01:23:15,093 and then to Notre Dame. 1437 01:23:15,093 --> 01:23:17,751 Then I have to go to Emory and talk to 1438 01:23:17,751 --> 01:23:21,997 a Methodist Juden congregation on the South, 1439 01:23:21,997 --> 01:23:23,929 their choice of topic. 1440 01:23:23,929 --> 01:23:27,726 A little of this 'honored guest' business goes a long way, 1441 01:23:27,726 --> 01:23:30,557 but it sure does help my finances." 1442 01:23:30,557 --> 01:23:32,145 - [Sally Fitzgerald] For these meetings, 1443 01:23:32,145 --> 01:23:34,630 she wrote these wonderful little essays 1444 01:23:34,630 --> 01:23:36,425 that appear in "Mystery and Manners." 1445 01:23:37,771 --> 01:23:40,946 - [Flannery] There is something in us as storytellers 1446 01:23:40,946 --> 01:23:44,122 and as listeners to stories, that demands 1447 01:23:44,122 --> 01:23:48,230 a redemptive act, that demands that what falls 1448 01:23:48,230 --> 01:23:50,991 at least be offered the chance of restoration. 1449 01:23:52,441 --> 01:23:55,582 [protestors shouting] 1450 01:24:01,036 --> 01:24:04,694 - [Brad Gooch] When she came in to live in the South, 1451 01:24:04,694 --> 01:24:09,113 she felt that Northerners were trying to either 1452 01:24:09,113 --> 01:24:13,393 have some moral superiority in their positions on race 1453 01:24:13,393 --> 01:24:16,051 or were trying to impose changes. 1454 01:24:17,673 --> 01:24:21,953 So she had a position you couldn't easily characterize. 1455 01:24:24,162 --> 01:24:26,164 - [Narrator] "I am speculating that maybe, 1456 01:24:26,164 --> 01:24:29,650 by the time of your next visit, some of the local 1457 01:24:29,650 --> 01:24:33,827 backwoodsmen will be irritated enough by things in general 1458 01:24:33,827 --> 01:24:37,382 to stage a little cross burning on the mansion lawn. 1459 01:24:37,382 --> 01:24:39,936 Last time the Klan had a big gathering here, 1460 01:24:39,936 --> 01:24:42,629 they set up a portable fiery cross 1461 01:24:42,629 --> 01:24:43,975 in front of the courthouse. 1462 01:24:43,975 --> 01:24:47,047 That is to say they plugged it in. 1463 01:24:47,047 --> 01:24:50,947 It was lit from many red electric bulbs." 1464 01:24:52,328 --> 01:24:55,538 - Maryat Lee poked fun at Flannery's religion 1465 01:24:55,538 --> 01:24:59,853 and Flannery poked fun at Maryat's activism. 1466 01:24:59,853 --> 01:25:01,751 Flannery addressed her friend Maryat 1467 01:25:01,751 --> 01:25:05,686 as "Dear nigger-loving New York white woman." 1468 01:25:05,686 --> 01:25:09,449 It was the New York white woman that was the hidden insult, 1469 01:25:09,449 --> 01:25:12,797 but it has been held up as an example 1470 01:25:12,797 --> 01:25:15,282 of Flannery's errant racism. 1471 01:25:16,456 --> 01:25:19,079 - If you just see the Southern writers, 1472 01:25:19,079 --> 01:25:22,427 generally white Southern writers on the basis of 1473 01:25:22,427 --> 01:25:25,603 more or less their racism, which is there, 1474 01:25:25,603 --> 01:25:30,297 nobody should be locked into ideologies 1475 01:25:30,297 --> 01:25:34,059 that they were born into and that they often 1476 01:25:34,059 --> 01:25:35,716 were not even able to see. 1477 01:25:37,960 --> 01:25:42,171 So the writers get sold, they get sold down the river too. 1478 01:25:51,560 --> 01:25:55,357 [singing in foreign language] 1479 01:26:28,355 --> 01:26:29,770 - Flannery had been ill so long 1480 01:26:29,770 --> 01:26:32,187 and her prospects was so dim, 1481 01:26:32,187 --> 01:26:36,156 her cousin Katie wanted her to go to Lourdes. 1482 01:26:38,365 --> 01:26:41,161 As Flannery said, "it's her end all and be all 1483 01:26:41,161 --> 01:26:43,128 that I go to Lourdes." 1484 01:26:43,128 --> 01:26:44,785 And Regina wanted to go, 1485 01:26:44,785 --> 01:26:48,237 and Flannery very reluctantly agreed. 1486 01:26:48,237 --> 01:26:50,757 She said, "I don't want a miracle. 1487 01:26:50,757 --> 01:26:53,138 I've come to terms with my life. 1488 01:26:53,138 --> 01:26:55,658 I don't want a miracle. 1489 01:26:55,658 --> 01:26:58,558 I want to go right on doing what I'm doing." 1490 01:26:58,558 --> 01:27:00,801 But she didn't like to disappoint her cousin. 1491 01:27:01,975 --> 01:27:03,010 - [Newsreader] Without cessation, 1492 01:27:03,010 --> 01:27:04,529 throughout the day at Lourdes, 1493 01:27:04,529 --> 01:27:07,187 60,000 pilgrims attended or heard divine services. 1494 01:27:08,395 --> 01:27:11,605 Many will have been ill and beyond medical aid, 1495 01:27:11,605 --> 01:27:14,194 but hoping to show on their return 1496 01:27:14,194 --> 01:27:16,265 that their faith has made them whole. 1497 01:27:18,543 --> 01:27:21,270 - Of course, there were many people there, 1498 01:27:21,270 --> 01:27:24,687 sick, the lame, the halt and the blind were there 1499 01:27:24,687 --> 01:27:26,379 and everyone full of hope. 1500 01:27:27,794 --> 01:27:29,830 And it was very touching. It was very moving. 1501 01:27:31,384 --> 01:27:35,008 But Flannery was still very reluctant to take the bath. 1502 01:27:35,008 --> 01:27:37,182 She said, "I'm the kind of Catholic who could 1503 01:27:37,182 --> 01:27:40,082 die for her faith before she would take a bath for it." 1504 01:27:42,326 --> 01:27:43,844 - For a while, it looked as though something 1505 01:27:43,844 --> 01:27:45,915 had really happened 'cause about six months later, 1506 01:27:45,915 --> 01:27:47,952 Regina said to me in an aside, she said 1507 01:27:47,952 --> 01:27:50,195 the hip had begun to recalcify and so forth. 1508 01:27:50,195 --> 01:27:51,438 Of course it didn't last. 1509 01:27:55,200 --> 01:27:57,651 - [Narrator] "I have a large tumor and if they don't 1510 01:27:57,651 --> 01:28:00,654 make haste and get rid of it, they will 1511 01:28:00,654 --> 01:28:03,036 have to remove me and leave it." 1512 01:28:08,455 --> 01:28:10,492 - She had surgery the next day 1513 01:28:10,492 --> 01:28:14,150 and I had a note from her when she could write 1514 01:28:14,150 --> 01:28:19,121 saying that the surgery was a howling success. 1515 01:28:20,295 --> 01:28:22,262 The operation may have been a howling success, 1516 01:28:22,262 --> 01:28:26,818 but lupus came howling back. 1517 01:28:26,818 --> 01:28:29,165 - I was working with a dying writer, I knew it. 1518 01:28:31,029 --> 01:28:33,238 We were putting together her last book, 1519 01:28:33,238 --> 01:28:35,517 "Everything That Rises Must Converge." 1520 01:28:35,517 --> 01:28:37,588 She was in the hospital in Atlanta. 1521 01:28:37,588 --> 01:28:40,073 It was, in a way, it was in kind of a horror story 1522 01:28:40,073 --> 01:28:43,973 because she was so anxious to get the last story, 1523 01:28:43,973 --> 01:28:47,494 "Revelation," she wanted that to get in. 1524 01:28:47,494 --> 01:28:51,533 [typewriter keys clicking] 1525 01:28:51,533 --> 01:28:53,189 - There is this wonderful short story 1526 01:28:53,189 --> 01:28:56,745 about these people in a waiting room of a doctor's office. 1527 01:28:56,745 --> 01:28:59,092 [people coughing] 1528 01:28:59,092 --> 01:29:03,924 This young woman with this garish face who is angry at 1529 01:29:03,924 --> 01:29:07,721 the woman who was sitting across from her, Mrs. Turpin. 1530 01:29:07,721 --> 01:29:11,104 A black delivery man comes in. 1531 01:29:11,104 --> 01:29:12,761 - [Narrator] "'They oughtta send all them niggers 1532 01:29:12,761 --> 01:29:16,109 back to Africa,' the white trash woman said. 1533 01:29:16,109 --> 01:29:18,836 'That's where they come from in the first place.' 1534 01:29:18,836 --> 01:29:22,357 'Oh, I couldn't do without my good colored friends,' 1535 01:29:22,357 --> 01:29:24,600 the pleasant lady said. 1536 01:29:24,600 --> 01:29:27,051 'There's a heap of things worse than a nigger,' 1537 01:29:27,051 --> 01:29:29,053 Mrs. Turpin agreed. 1538 01:29:29,053 --> 01:29:31,124 'There's all kinds of them just like 1539 01:29:31,124 --> 01:29:32,850 there's all kinds of us. 1540 01:29:32,850 --> 01:29:36,716 It wouldn't be practical to send them all back to Africa. 1541 01:29:36,716 --> 01:29:39,166 They've got it too good here.'" 1542 01:29:39,166 --> 01:29:43,964 - Good satire always has a center. And she has a center. 1543 01:29:43,964 --> 01:29:47,209 It's a center so profound that she can see 1544 01:29:47,209 --> 01:29:49,798 everything is distorted and very funny. 1545 01:29:49,798 --> 01:29:53,249 - Flannery made Mary Grace this person 1546 01:29:53,249 --> 01:29:56,391 with a sense of rage that was building. 1547 01:29:59,497 --> 01:30:01,810 - [Narrator] "'Go back to hell where you came from, 1548 01:30:01,810 --> 01:30:02,983 you old warthog.'" 1549 01:30:06,504 --> 01:30:10,991 - "Revelation" was a bowing of Flannery to Maryat's concern 1550 01:30:10,991 --> 01:30:15,375 that she not address or reference issues of race. 1551 01:30:15,375 --> 01:30:19,897 Maryat went to Wellesley, Mary Grace went to Wellesley. 1552 01:30:19,897 --> 01:30:24,073 The last letter that Flannery wrote before she died 1553 01:30:24,073 --> 01:30:26,938 was to Maryat, which I think is a testament 1554 01:30:26,938 --> 01:30:30,528 to the kind of closeness they had. 1555 01:30:30,528 --> 01:30:34,256 - [Narrator] "Sometimes Mrs. Turpin occupied herself 1556 01:30:34,256 --> 01:30:37,639 at night naming the classes of people. 1557 01:30:37,639 --> 01:30:41,539 On the bottom of the heap were most colored people. 1558 01:30:41,539 --> 01:30:44,162 Not the kind she would have been if she'd been one, 1559 01:30:44,162 --> 01:30:45,716 but most of them. 1560 01:30:45,716 --> 01:30:49,685 Then next to them, not above, just away from, 1561 01:30:49,685 --> 01:30:51,687 were the white trash. 1562 01:30:51,687 --> 01:30:55,346 Then above them were the homeowners. 1563 01:30:55,346 --> 01:30:59,074 And above them, the home and landowners, 1564 01:30:59,074 --> 01:31:01,490 to which she and Claud belonged. 1565 01:31:01,490 --> 01:31:03,803 Usually by the time she'd fallen asleep, 1566 01:31:03,803 --> 01:31:07,047 all the classes of people were moiling and roiling around 1567 01:31:07,047 --> 01:31:09,912 in her head and she would dream they were all 1568 01:31:09,912 --> 01:31:13,951 crammed in together in a boxcar being ridden off 1569 01:31:13,951 --> 01:31:15,884 to be put in a gas oven." 1570 01:31:17,782 --> 01:31:20,164 [soft music] 1571 01:31:23,098 --> 01:31:24,340 - She always worked. 1572 01:31:24,340 --> 01:31:27,309 As long as she was able to work, she worked. 1573 01:31:27,309 --> 01:31:29,967 Even in the hospital she was making notes 1574 01:31:29,967 --> 01:31:32,452 or observations, certainly. 1575 01:31:33,729 --> 01:31:35,628 [pen scratching] 1576 01:31:35,628 --> 01:31:37,837 - "The sun was behind the wood, very red. 1577 01:31:37,837 --> 01:31:39,701 Looking over the paling of trees 1578 01:31:39,701 --> 01:31:42,704 like a farmer inspecting his own hogs. 1579 01:31:43,739 --> 01:31:46,777 'Why me?' She rumbled. 1580 01:31:46,777 --> 01:31:49,055 'It's no trash around here, black or white, 1581 01:31:49,055 --> 01:31:52,748 that I haven't given to and break my back to the bone 1582 01:31:52,748 --> 01:31:56,683 every day working, and do for the church. 1583 01:31:56,683 --> 01:31:58,202 Go on!' She yelled, 1584 01:31:58,202 --> 01:32:03,138 'Call me a hog, call me a warthog from hell. 1585 01:32:04,070 --> 01:32:05,796 Put that bottom rail on top. 1586 01:32:05,796 --> 01:32:08,833 There'll still be a top and bottom.' 1587 01:32:10,283 --> 01:32:14,667 A final surge of fury shook her and she roared, 1588 01:32:14,667 --> 01:32:17,324 'Who do you think you are?'" 1589 01:32:18,912 --> 01:32:19,982 It's so good. 1590 01:32:21,466 --> 01:32:24,021 [somber music] 1591 01:32:33,099 --> 01:32:36,516 - We found a calender in Regina's room, 1592 01:32:36,516 --> 01:32:39,208 and it was turned to August of '64. 1593 01:32:40,416 --> 01:32:42,833 And on the day Flannery died, 1594 01:32:42,833 --> 01:32:46,906 Regina had written "death came for Flannery." 1595 01:32:48,148 --> 01:32:50,772 - I'm really sorry she died at the age of 39. 1596 01:32:52,428 --> 01:32:53,706 Iúthink that both my parents thought 1597 01:32:53,706 --> 01:33:00,126 that she was with God, so it was okay. 1598 01:33:03,129 --> 01:33:05,994 - She looks at the darkness unflinchingly 1599 01:33:05,994 --> 01:33:10,550 and she approaches it with clarity and with precision. 1600 01:33:11,724 --> 01:33:13,967 And that I think is her greatness. 1601 01:33:15,382 --> 01:33:19,007 - I feel that that Flannery O'Connor's life 1602 01:33:19,007 --> 01:33:22,527 and Flannery O'Connor's work were all of a piece. 1603 01:33:23,977 --> 01:33:27,429 They were both returns of her gifts, her talents. 1604 01:33:27,429 --> 01:33:29,500 She considered her faith a gift. 1605 01:33:29,500 --> 01:33:31,191 She considered her talent a gift. 1606 01:33:32,710 --> 01:33:36,576 And she wanted to return them with gain. 1607 01:33:37,957 --> 01:33:39,786 And I think she did. 1608 01:33:39,786 --> 01:33:44,757 I think her life is almost as imposing as her work. 1609 01:33:48,726 --> 01:33:51,315 - She's one of the best writers of the 20th century. 1610 01:33:52,488 --> 01:33:54,214 I've read everything that she's written 1611 01:33:58,943 --> 01:34:02,464 - The life of Flannery O'Connor and what she had to offer 1612 01:34:02,464 --> 01:34:05,985 in terms of her relationship to the greater mysteries 1613 01:34:05,985 --> 01:34:08,643 of existence are going to be things that people 1614 01:34:08,643 --> 01:34:10,990 will tap into because they aren't going away. 1615 01:34:13,164 --> 01:34:15,891 - "At length, she got down and turned off the faucet 1616 01:34:15,891 --> 01:34:20,275 and made her slow way on the darkening path to the house. 1617 01:34:20,275 --> 01:34:23,761 In the woods around her, the invisible cricket choruses 1618 01:34:23,761 --> 01:34:27,385 had struck up, but what she heard were the voices 1619 01:34:27,385 --> 01:34:31,493 of the souls climbing upward into the starry field 1620 01:34:31,493 --> 01:34:33,357 and shouting, 'Hallelujah!'" 1621 01:34:47,578 --> 01:34:50,788 [soft harmonica music] 1622 01:35:02,282 --> 01:35:07,184 ♪ I saw her standin' on her front lawn ♪ 1623 01:35:09,462 --> 01:35:14,467 ♪ Just-a twirlin' her baton 1624 01:35:16,918 --> 01:35:21,888 ♪ Me and her went for a ride, sir ♪ 1625 01:35:25,202 --> 01:35:30,172 ♪ And ten innocent people died 1626 01:35:32,105 --> 01:35:37,076 ♪ From the town of Lincoln, Nebraska ♪ 1627 01:35:39,181 --> 01:35:44,152 ♪ With a sawed off .410 on my lap ♪ 1628 01:35:46,913 --> 01:35:51,884 ♪ Through to the badlands of Wyoming ♪ 1629 01:35:54,507 --> 01:35:58,545 ♪ I killed everything in my path ♪ 1630 01:36:09,660 --> 01:36:14,665 ♪ I can't say that I'm sorry 1631 01:36:16,771 --> 01:36:21,776 ♪ For the things that we done 1632 01:36:24,330 --> 01:36:29,300 ♪ At least for a little while, sir ♪ 1633 01:36:31,889 --> 01:36:35,859 ♪ Me and her we had us some fun ♪