Flannery O’Connor on how truth is often blunt and unappealing

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally.”
— Flannery O’Connor

You won’t find photos of the American author Flannery O’Connor as an old woman, nor even really of a middle-aged one. She was killed by lupus before she turned 40.

The author of just two novels, O’Connor is I think better known for her many short stories, which have been widely anthologized through the years.

The quote above comes from one of her published letters, and reflects something she seemed to like to express in her fiction: words like “brutal” are often used to describe her characterization of the American south.

But O’Connor’s legacy is more than her fiction. A much-discussed New Yorker profile in 2020 explored her letters, and found that while she mocked the racism and hypocrisy of white southeners, she harboured racist views herself. The title of that piece said it all: “How racist was Flannery O’Connor?” I guess a white Catholic woman born in the 1920s, no matter how sharp and detached she was from her own culture, was going to absorb at least some of the prevailing cultural headwinds.

O’Connor carries a lot of complexities. A film on my track-down list is Ethan Hawke’s recent Wildcat, featuring his daughter Maya Hawke as O’Connor.