Flannery O'Connor

I don't have my novel outlined, and I have to write to discover what I am doing. Like the old lady, I don't know so well what I think until I see what I say; then I have to say it over again. p.5

I received Selby's letter today. Please tell me what is under this Sears Roebuck Straight Shooter approach. ...The criticism is vague and really tells me nothing except that they don't like it. I feel the objections they raise are connected with its virtues, and the thought of working with them specifically to correct these lacks they mention is repulsive to me. The letter is addressed to a slightly dim-witted Camp Fire Girl, and I cannot look with composure on getting a lifetime of others like them. I have not yet answered it and won't until I hear further from you, but if I were certain that Harcourt would take the novel, I would write Selby immediately that I prefer to be elsewhere.  p.9

I won't see you again as I have to go to the hospital Friday and have a kidney hung on a rib. I will be there a month and at home a month.  This was none of my plan... Please write me a card while I am in the hospital, I won't be able to do anything there but dislike the nurses.  p.20

I wrote Dilly (Mrs. John Thompson) to find out where you and Ann were this year and she said at Iowa. I congratulate you on your endurance. ...The brothers Rinehart and I have parted company to our mutual satisfaction, and I have a contract with Harcourt, Brace, but I am largely worried about wingless chickens. I feel this is the time for me to fulfill myself by stepping in and saving the chicken, but I don't know exactly how since I am not bold. I only know I believe in the complete chicken. You think about the complete chicken for a while.  The best to you and Anne. p.21

I got your letter a long time ago while I was at Emory Hospital.  I stayed there a month, giving generous samples of my blood to this, that, and the other technician, all hours of the day and night, but now I am at home again and not receiving any more awful cards that say, "To a dear sick friend," in verse what's worse.  Now I shoot myself with ACTH once daily, and look very well, and do nothing that I can get out of doing.  I trust you are as well. p. 24

I hope this one will be a girl and have a fierce Old Testament name and cut off a lot of heads. You had better stay down and take care of yourself. Your children sound big enough to do all the work. By beating them moderately and moderately often you should be able to get them in the habit of doing domestic chores. p.26

Enclosed is Opus Nauseous No. 1.  I had to read it over after it came from the typists's, and that was like spending the day eating a horse blanket. It seems mighty sorry to me but better than it was before. My mother said she wanted to read it again, so she went off with it and I found her a half hour later on page 9 and sound asleep. p. 27

I spent the summer in and out of Emory Hospital, but am hoping I can avoid it for the winter. I have got my last draft off to the publisher, and now am raising ducks like a respectable citizen.  I have twenty-one. However, if the Lord is willing, I am shortly going to eat all twenty-one of them and start another novel.  p. 29

I had to go have my picture taken for the purposes of Harcourt, Brace. They were all bad. (The pictures.) The one I sent looked as if I had just bitten my grandmother and that this was one of my few pleasures, but all the rest were worse. p. 31

I have a disease called lupus and I take a medicine called ACTH and I manage well enough to live with both. Lupus is one of those things in the rheumatic department; it comes and goes, when it comes I retire and when it goes, I venture forth. My father had it some twelve or fifteen years ago, but at that time there was nothing for it but the undertaker; now it can be controlled with the ACTH. I have enough energy to write with and, as that is all I have any business doing anyhow, I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.  What you have to measure out, you come to observe closer, or so I tell myself.  Last summer I went to Connecticut to visit the Fitzgeralds and smuggled three live ducks over Eastern Airlines for their children, but I have been inactive criminally since then. My mother and I live on a large place and I have bought me some peafowl and sit on the back steps a good deal studying them. I am going to be the world authority on peafowl, and I hope to be offered a chair someday at the Chicken College.  p.57

My mother wants to send you a fruit cake; however it actually takes her about two months to bring one into being. It's like building a nest. First she thinks about it, then she begins to gather the material, then she begins to put it together.  Right now she has hinted that I may pick out the nuts. I ain't sure my health permits this.  Anyway, sometime or other it will arrive.  p. 64

We are distressed that that cake hasn't arrived as we sent it before Thanksgiving, complete with all of the government stickers and stamps and other paraphernalia. Doubtless some official along the way ate it.  I was going to ask you how you fared for peanut butter, and if you needed it was going to send you some, but I won't if things don't get there any better than that. I hate to think of your suffering for want of peanut butter though, and I doubt if they have advanced to the state of culture where they have it over there. If you ever do get the cake it should be good and stale. p.65

I certainly am glad you like the stories because now I feel it's not bad that I like them so much.  The truth is I like them better than anybody, and I read them over and over and laugh and laugh, then get embarrassed when I remember I was the one wrote them.  Unlike Wise Blood, they were all relatively painless to me, but now I have to quit enjoying life and get on with the second novel. p.80

I am going to New York on the 30th to be interviewed by Mr. Harvey Breit on a program he is starting up over NBC-TV.  ...Do you think this is going to corrupt me? ... I will probably not be able to think of anything to say to Mr. Harvey but "Huh?" and "Ah dunno." When I come back I'll probably have to spend 3 months day and night in the chicken pen to counteract these evil influences.
...I am so glad to know I have a reader of quality because I have so many who aren't.  I get some letters  from people  I might have created myself.  ...I wish somebody real intelligent would write me sometime, but I seem to attract the lunatic fringe mainly.  I will be real glad when this television thing is over with. I keep having a mental picture of my glacial glare being sent out over the nation onto millions of children who are waiting impatiently for The Batman to come on.