Flannery (54 page)

116
“Humph!”: Sally Fitzgerald, “Rooms with a View,”
Flannery O’Connor Bulletin
10 (1981): 12.

CHAPTER FOUR: IOWA

117
Iowa Writers’ Workshop: The Workshop began in 1936, under the direction of Wilbur Schramm. Paul Engle assumed the directorship in 1941 and held it for twenty-five years.

117
“one of the most”: The account of the meeting is drawn from two sources: Colman McCarthy, “Servant of Literature in the Heart of Iowa,”
Washington Post,
March 27, 1983; and Paul Engle, letter to Robert Giroux, July 13, 1971, “Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc. Records,” New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. In the
Post
piece, Engle gives a slightly different version of the note as: “My name is Flannery O’Connor. I’m from Milledgeville, Georgia. I’m a writer.”

118
State University of Iowa: The name of the university was shortened, in 1964, to the University of Iowa.

118
“naturally blank”: FOC to Elizabeth Hardwick and Robert Lowell, March 17, 1953,
CW,
910.

119
“Iowa City was a bustling place”: John Gruen, in discussion with the author, October 5, 2006.

119
“hick”: James B. Hall, e-mail to the author, September 14, 2006.

120
“a new Bohemia”: James B. Hall,
Contemporary Authors: Autobiography Series
12 (Detroit: Gale Research Series, 1990), 132; Hall went on to write about twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, and was the founding provost of the Arts College of the University of California at Santa Cruz.

120
“I did know what it meant”: FOC to Maryat Lee, February 24, 1957,
CW,
1023.

120
Currier House: O’Connor did form a friendship with one roommate, Louise Trovato.

120
“I went to St. Mary’s”: FOC to Roslyn Barnes, December 12, 1960,
HB,
422.

121
“shom storrowies”: James B. Hall,
Seems Like Old Times,
edited by Ed Dinger (Iowa City: Iowa Writers’ Workshop, 1986), 13.

121
“Who was likely”: Richard Gilman, “On Flannery O’Connor,”
New York Review of Books
13, no. 3 (August 21, 1969): 24.

121
“selling stories”: Bob Fawcell, “William Porter’s Writing Career — from Pulp to Post,”
Daily Iowan,
January 26, 1946.

122
“You can get an M.A. degree”: “Engle, Paul,”
Current Biography 1942
(New York: H. W. Wilson, 1942), 249.

122
“was able to breathe”: FOC to Betty Hester, December 29, 1956,
CW,
1017.

123
“a man’s realization”: FOC, State University of Iowa examination blue book, November 28, 1945, GCSU.

123
“It was a plain little room”: Jane Wilson, in discussion with the author, October 5, 2006. The original offices for the Writers’ Workshop were in Calvin Hall, just up the hill from the Iowa Memorial Union on Jefferson Street.

123
“Each meeting consists”: Paul Engle, “How Creative Writing Is Taught at the University of Iowa Workshop,”
Des Moines Sunday Register,
December 28, 1947.

123
“Her voice was quiet”: Mary Mudge Wiatt, in discussion with the author, October 1, 2006.

124
“dat coat”: FOC, “The Coat,”
DoubleTake
2, no. 3 (Summer 1996): 39.

124
“What first stuns”: FOC, “The Writer and the Graduate School,”
Alumnae Journal
13, no. 4 (Summer 1948): 4. She was more tart by the time she said in a later talk, “Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is they don’t stifle enough of them.” FOC, “The Nature and Aim of Fiction,”
MM,
84.

124
“of the right sort”: James B. Hall, “Our Workshops Remembered: The Heroic Phase,” unpublished essay, 6, private collection.

124
“It did spoil”: Robie Macauley,
Esprit: Journal of Thought and Opinion
8, no. 1 (University of Scranton, Scranton, Pa., Winter 1964): 34.

125
“Flannery was so cold”: Norma Hodges, in discussion with the author, May 6, 2005.

125
“I couldn’t though have written”: FOC to Maryat Lee, February 24, 1957,
CW,
1023.

126
“pitched himself”: Norma Hodges, in discussion with the author, May 6, 2005.

126
“This scene of the attempted”: McCarthy, “Servant of Literature,”
Washington Post,
March 27, 1983.

126
“I was right young”: Sally Fitzgerald, “A Master Class: From the Correspondence of Caroline Gordon and Flannery O’Connor,”
Georgia Review
33, no. 4. (Winter 1979): 845.

127
“When I went there”: Katherine Fugin, Faye Rivard, and Margaret Sieh, “An Interview with Flannery O’Connor,
Censer
(College of St. Teresa, Winona, Minn., Fall 1960): 59.

127
“discarded subject”: FOC, “The Crop,”
The Complete Stories
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1971), 34.

127
“Although I reckon”: Jean Wylder, “Flannery O’Connor, A Reminiscence and Some Letters,”
North American Review
225, no. 1 (Spring 1970): 59.

127
“Then I began to write”: FOC interview with Harvey Breit,
Galley Proof,
WRCA-TV (NBC), New York, May 1955,
Con,
6.

128
“When R. P. Warren”: Hall, “Our Workshops Remembered,” 6.

128
“Horgan never even knew”: FOC to Betty Hester, August 9, 1957,
CW,
1042.

128
“a sort of waif of the art of writing”: Paul Horgan to Father Quinn, April 25, 1969,
HB.

128
“I write only about two hours”: FOC to Cecil Dawkins, September 22, 1957,
CW,
1042.

129
“in a rather uncertain”: Allen Maxwell to FOC, July 16, 1946, GCSU.

129
“an easier, freer childhood”: Sally Fitzgerald, “Flannery O’Connor, Patterns of Friendship, Patterns of Love,”
Georgia Review
52, no. 3 (Fall 1998): 417.

129
“kindred spirits”: Barbara Tunnicliff Hamilton, “Flannery in Iowa City,” unpublished essay, 1, private collection.

129
“They would have house parties”: Barbara Tunnicliff Hamilton, in discussion with the author, October 2, 2005.

130
“business woman”: Hamilton, “Flannery in Iowa City,” 2.

130
“I didn’t bother her”: Barbara Tunnicliff Hamilton, in discussion with the author, October 2, 2005.

130
“had to”: Hamilton, “Flannery in Iowa City,” 1.

130
“She was very serious”: Barbara Tunnicliff Hamilton, in discussion with the author, October 2, 2005.

130
“With the door open”: Barbara Tunnicliff Hamilton, e-mail to the author, September 30, 2006.

131
“When more than half”: Doris Cone, “Writers’ Workshop at Iowa U. Draws New York Publisher,”
Cedar Rapids Gazette,
November 24, 1946.

131
“The Barber”: The story was first published in
New Signatures: A Collection of College Writing,
edited by Alan Swallow (Prairie City, Ill.: James A. Decker, 1948), 113–24. For a discussion of the story’s prob-able debt to Ring Lardner’s “The Haircut,” see Sarah Gordon,
Flannery O’Connor: The Obedient Imagination
(Atlanta: University of Georgia Press, 2000), 65.

131
“Flannery’s answer”: Jean Cash, “O’Connor in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop,”
Flannery O’Connor Bulletin
24 (1995–96): 71.

132
“She once said to my wife”: James B. Hall, e-mail to the author, September 6, 2006.

132
“I see I should ride”: FOC to Betty Hester, November 16, 1957,
CW,
1050.

132
black woman: Ralph C. Wood,
Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2004), 102.

132
“Iowa Barber School”: FOC to Robie Macauley, October 13, 1953,
CW,
914.

133
“like Billy Grahme”: Folder 17, GCSU.

133
“He thought of Bing Crosby”: Ibid. Actually O’Connor was confusing
Boys Town,
starring Spencer Tracy, with two films in which Bing Crosby played a priest —
Going My Way
(1944) and
The Bells of St. Mary’s
(1945).

133
“Now, Miss O’Connor”: Jean Cash,
Flannery O’Connor: A Life
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002), 95.

133
“I didn’t really start”: FOC to Betty Hester, August 28, 1955,
CW,
950–51.

134
“It started when”: Paul Levine, “The Soul of the Grotesque,”
Minor American Novelists,
edited by Charles Alva Hoyt (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), 107.

134
“a journey that never impressed”: FOC to Betty Hester, January 31, 1959,
HB,
317.

134
Dixie Limited: In her talk “Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction,” O’Connor compared Faulkner to the Dixie Limited: “The presence alone of Faulkner in our midst makes a great difference in what the writer can and cannot permit himself to do. Nobody wants his mule and wagon stalled on the same track the Dixie Limited is roaring down,”
CW,
818.

134
“the dilapidated station”: “1 p. working draft,” GCSU.

134
“I sat down next to”: FOC to Maryat Lee, April 28, 1960,
HB,
392–93.

135
“the Oedipus complex”: “Look for Their Names on the Bindings,”
Cedar Rapids Gazette,
June 10, 1948.

135
“a thump of recognition”: FOC, “
Wise Blood,
working draft,” GCSU.

136
“pizen snake”: Andrew Nelson Lytle, “The Hind Tit,”
I’ll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition,
by Twelve Southerners (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), 234.

136
“I was told later”: Andrew Lytle,
Esprit: Journal of Thought and Opinion
8, no. 1 (University of Scranton, Pa., Winter 1964): 33.

136
“make a federal case”: Hall, “Our Workshops Remembered,” 11.

136
“She would put a man in bed”: Carl H. Griffin, “Andrew Lytle at DeKalb College, a Return Engagement,”
Chattahoochee Review
8, no. 4 (Summer 1988): 98.

136
“sink the theme”: FOC to Betty Hester, January 28, 1957, Emory.

136
“a bale of cotton”: James B. Hall, e-mail to the author, September 6, 2006.

136
“She was a lovely girl”: Griffin, “Andrew Lytle,” 97–98.

136
“Why, she can just walk”: James B. Hall, e-mail to the author, July 14, 2005.

137
“People who were favored”: Eugene Brown, in discussion with the author, October 6, 2006.

137
“It comes to us all”: “Look for Their Names on the Bindings,”
Cedar Rapids Gazette,
June 10, 1948.

137
“She paid me for doing”: Hamilton, “Flannery in Iowa City,” 3.

137
“Her magnified eyes”: Norma Hodges, “Flannery,”
River King Poetry Supplement
2, no. 3 (Autumn 1996): 4.

137
T. S. Eliot’s: O’Connor’s adult library contained twelve of Eliot’s books. For a discussion of Eliot’s influence on O’Connor, see: Sally Fitzgerald, “The Owl and the Nightingale,”
Flannery O’Connor Bulletin
13 (Autumn 1984): 44–58.

137
“His search for a physical home”: FOC, “SYNOPSIS: (after first four chapters),” GCSU.

138
“typed”: “Flannery O’Connor Wins Rinehart-Iowa Award for Novel,”
Daily Iowan,
May 29, 1947.

138
“We had dinner there”: Cash,
Flannery O’Connor,
93.

139
“She was a loner”: Charles Embree, in discussion with the author, October 3, 2006.

139
“It was wholly typical”: Paul Engle to Robert Giroux, July 13, 1971, FSG.

139
“In spring, it was as though”: Hall, “Our Workshops Remembered,” 8.

139
“Andrew was talking”: James B. Hall, e-mail to the author, July 14, 2005.

139
“I was in Milledgeville”: Frances Florencourt, e-mail to the author, October 26, 2006.

140
Old Dental Building: In a letter to the author, dated October 29, 2006, Robert Yackshaw wrote, “I have spent time with her at the Student Union. And at the Library. And much more at The Old Dental Building next to University Hall: the place where graduate assistants had offices with lower members of the English faculty.”

140
“was most a hundred”: FOC to Roslyn Barnes, September 29, 1960,
HB,
410.

140
“Mrs. Guzeman was not very fond”: FOC to Jean Williams Wylder, December 28, 1952, quoted in Wylder, “Flannery O’Connor,” 60.

140
“Flannery was sitting alone”: Ibid., 58.

141
“I doubt if Flannery”: Ibid., 59.

141
“He was a brilliant”: Bernie Halperin, in discussion with the author, June 25, 2005.

141
“entirely original”: Thomas E. Kennedy, “A Last Conversation with Robie Macauley,”
Agni
45 (Boston College: 1997): 182.