Episode 15: Flannery O'Connor (Audio Version)
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Episode 15 Description:
In the summer of 1948, twenty-three year old Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) arrived at Yaddo. She had just earned her M.F.A from the University of Iowa, where she was considered quiet, provincial, and extremely talented. That summer at Yaddo she proved to be every bit as talented as expected, but perhaps less shy. She befriended writer Robert Lowell, who introduced her to the man who would become her agent. But Lowell also introduced her to trouble. In February 1949, Lowell charged that Executive Director Elizabeth Ames knowingly harbored Communists at Yaddo, and demanded she be removed from office. O'Connor joined Lowell, and their accusations unleashed a maelstrom in New York City literary circles. Somehow, O'Connor managed to disentangle herself from the ensuing fracas, seemingly unscathed. But the short stories she penned in its immediate aftermath, such as "Enoch and the Gorilla" and "A Good Man is Hard to Find," labored over themes of morally ambiguous or flawed action, and the thirst for celebrity—or at least, notoriety—that comes with self-determination.Perhaps, then, the ending to her chapter at Yaddo was not so clean as was imagined.
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Posted at 02:03PM Oct 11, 2008
by rich in General |
