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It is not hard to imagine there being countless more people than I who are complete opposites of Mary Flannery O'Connor. To think she was such a serious Catholic who almost never missed a 7AM mass unless she was sick enough to be in hospital or on her death bed. To imagine she never ever had sex with anyone, and the only time she ever came close was in the awful tooth kiss she had with an early male suitor. At least if we believe the writings of her biographer, Brad Gooch, who portrayed our Miss O'Connor in the most dreadful of terms as if she were a story written for a newspaper flash. The facts went on and on, if they were indeed the facts, and the reportage never ceased to not overwhelm me.
Flannery O'Connor was character enough to overwhelm anyone who got to know her. It is obvious the reader of this biography never will. In my own confession I admit to reading O'Connor only in the company of
A Good Man Is Hard To Find and having little interest in reading much else the woman wrote. But that story of The Misfit alone was worth all the tea in China, given that I am not the least concerned with tea or the money I could make off it. Let's just say for the sake of argument that Flannery wasn't interested in men or women sexually, that she was obsessed with her bible and theological studies, and the birds and her mother gave her all the attention she actually required. Let's say that writing gave her the impetus to go on living. That fame was a fleeting romance she never wanted to advance past the occasional lecture or public reading of her work required by her publishers. But what kind of story is that? And remember, Flannery herself said her life wouldn't be one for biographers anyway as all it mostly consisted of was her daily round trip from the steps off her kitchen onto the path toward the hen house.
Her biographer, Brad Gooch, has been acclaimed and his work featured in numerous magazines. He is a professor of English at William Paterson University. He earned his PhD at Columbia University. But he writes like a lady wannabe all made up in furs and dangling gaudy jewelry. I felt as if I was reading a society gossip column instead of an academic work of high stature. Gooch was even pretentious enough to use the ghastly word "genuflected" at least twice too many times. In previous criticism of other works I have argued how necessary it is for the writer of creative non-fiction to invest something of himself in the book, to make it personal. Writers such as Paul Hendrickson (
Hemingway's Boat) would have been a better choice for a more compelling and interesting story about Flannery O'Connor. At the very least the sex would have been better.
One example regards the relationship between O'Connor and Erik Langkjaer. Their relationship was becoming quite intimate according to this biographer. From the quoted words of Langkjaer we learn that Flannery was remarkably inexperienced sexually for a woman of her age. She was quite prepared to receive a kiss from Erik when he initially made his advance to do so. But what he found was a feeling as if kissing a skeleton. The woman was stiff, her mouth lacked resilience, and his own lips touched her teeth rather than her lips. They were interrupted by a stray couple from a nearby parked car who poked their heads in, which Flannery seemed to be overjoyed in with the disturbance. Needless to say the relationship between the couple was different from then on, and Erik Langkjaer went on to marry someone else and keep a geographical distance from O'Connor though they remained pen pals for some time after the awkward incident. But why didn't Gooch handle the story better? Surely there are anecdotes regarding all her intimate relationships that Gooch could have researched and offered another point of view. There was nothing of Gooch in this book and that is where he failed. The biographer has to have a stake in what he is writing about. He has to make it personal.
After reading this book, Flannery O'Connor remains for me at least as large a mystery now as she was before I started. This book was basically straight reporting, and how reliable it is could be debatable. She obviously had a few friends who could have offered more had their own stories been brought to the page as Paul Hendrickson is want to do with the subjects he chooses to write and learn about. But Brad Hooch obviously doesn't care about his subject. But he'll take the acclaim and the rewards that the literati deems fitting for an academic the stature of a Brad Hooch, which isn't saying much for the rest of the serious, and more creative, literary world. Some might say I am being too harsh with Brad Hooch, but I am harsh with others and Brad Hooch does not get special treatment from me because of somebody else's agenda which may or may not hurt me. And for the record I have been equally hard on another biographer much more highly respected than the anointed Brad Hooch. Walter Isaacson, in his biography of Steve Jobs, gave us straight reportage, and though Isaacson had a very interesting subject who could, and did, carry the book just on his own terms and face of who he was, Isaacson did nothing creative in the telling of the more complex story possible. In other words, Isaacson put nothing of himself on the page. He never got personal. I have been also equally harsh with translators such as the well-known editor, poet, and translator Jonathan Galassi who translated the poems of Eugenio Montale brilliantly but can't write a poem of his own worth salt. Or how about the translator George Zsirtes whom I think brilliant in his work on Laszlo Krasznahorkai but awful in his translation of Sandor Marai?
Fact is, I want more. I want a new biography of Flannery O'Connor that makes me want to read her propaganda, something solid that makes me believe in her church, more proof that we all are sinners, and that sex is bad or it isn't, or that having friends is even worse. Yes, give me that book and I will write a favorable review of it.