From exile, Grow man

Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor, by Brad Gooch, 2010.

When I received this as a gift this last Christmas, I was exceedingly happy.  I love anything and everything O’Connor.  Admittedly, I am not the world’s biggest biography fan.  However, there are certain people that I will make an exception for and Flannery O’Connor is easily one of them.  Every biography (at least biographies that truly matter) have the same outline.  The person is born, the person dies and it is the author’s job to convince the reader that the person at the center of the story did something in their life to be recognized.  Flannery O’Connor, if you have any conception of American Southern literature, needs no such introduction.  She is easily one of the great American writers of the 20th century.  So with the same outline present in every biography, it is hard to truly create some sort of real emotional response to the life of a person in book form.  However, towards the end of this book, I found myself moved by the final days of O’Connor’s life.  I knew her death was inevitable, but, to the author’s credit, he was able to make the inevitable matter.  He made it seem like the reader was actually invested in her life. 

The beauty of this biography is how fluidly Gooch ties in O’Connor’s stories into her life story.  He was able to tear apart the stories to find those parts that magnify the autobiography that every author shares in their works.  Seamlessly tying correspondence, interviews and story excerpts, Gooch was able to create a truly exceptional life story that read like a piece of literature, in and of itself.  Two sections of pictures illuminate key moments and people in Flannery O’Connor’s life.  It is amazing to see her at every point in her life and to get a glimpse of the beautiful eyes that caught the attention of just about every person she came in contact with. 

Gooch also does a good job of working in the theological ideas that O’Connor worked into her stories and tracing their development throughout her life.  Thinkers such as Aquinas and Teilhard were essential to how she viewed the world and how she presented the world of her often dark and twisted stories.  Most of the negatives of this book are not caused by Gooch, but, instead, the insubstantial elements of O’Connor’s theological system.  She was Catholic, and, though, it is not the case with every Catholic, she was too quick to find her presuppositions in the works of men instead of finding support and challenges in God’s revealed Word.  Very seldom is Scripture mentioned in how she developed her theological system.  At the same time, Gooch does a good job of not skirting the rather complex views of O’Connor on race and segregation in the South.  She was, by no means, perfect and Gooch does show those points where she could have been more consistent in her views. 

Nonetheless, this life of an imperfect person (but bearing the image of God) and saint (strictly in the non-Catholic sense) was truly encouraging for those, including myself, that have tried and would like to try their hand at writing.  Recognizing the fact that a Christian doesn’t have to write only about clean and good things in order to proclaim the reason for their hope in this life.  The way O’Connor wrote cut against non-believers just as much as it did against believers.  She let no one get away with a weak and unthoughtful faith.  That is exactly the reason I fell in love with her writing in the first place.