So Very Flannery.
A Good Hard Look.
Today I traveled to Georgia State and College University (GCSU) — a truly outstanding liberal arts public school — to interview a few professors for something I’m working on.
As I was coming into Milledgeville this morning — with not a second to spare for my 10 o’ clock meeting — I passed this sign again like I’d done so many times before.
The sign indicating the turn into the 544 acre farm and site of Flannery O’Connor’s family home Andalusia. The place where she wrote most of her published works.
I’m always in a rush. Always busy. Never time to turn in.
But today the interview didn’t last long as expected.
As I walked along the college grounds,
and found my car, it occurred to me I had a little time.
I could stop at Chick-fil-A for a coke and waffle fry or I could turn in?
Turn in the gravel road by the sign on the busy highway and visit Andalusia.
I am always honest with you. I am not pretending to be any Flannery O’Connor expert. I have read some of her works.
Truthfully, I find her hard to read. Maybe it’s the grotesqueness (isn’t that the word everyone uses of her work, so I might as well too) of her characters? Maybe it’s her disturbing brilliance? But there is no doubt she was a force in words. A Gothic Southern writer in the truest sense.
Here’s an article from Salon if you need a quick Cliff Notes on her.
I have also read a fictional book, A Good Hard Look by Ann Napolitano on Milledgeville and Flannery. The Flannery Napolitano created captured my imagination. This brilliant woman living in rural Georgia. A devout Catholic with painfully-razored mindset who wrote about her fellow denizens in this small Southern world.
Mired in Central Georgia. Trapped by an illness that would take her from this earth at 39.
Today, I turned left. And traveled down the gravel road.
After a little bit I saw this . . .
I don’t know if it was the Paperwhites? Or seeing her standing on that porch with her determined look and horn-rimmed glasses? But my heart stopped.
For a moment.
Now I’m not a drama mama. Lord knows sometimes I wish I was a little bit more something ~ but pretty much what you read is what I am.
And something hit me when I saw the house.
Just the force of her.
Peacocks. She had dozens of peacocks, I had learned that.
They have a few feathered representatives though now these birds sit in a cage rather than drip from the branches of the oaks lining the drive.
I parked and walked around.
It was so very quiet.
And grey. And Gothic.
So very Flannery.
When I got in the car, I just sat.
And started weeping.
I wept for the tragedy of her life.
I wept for my dad.
Nothing like a good cleansing cry in the shadow of literary history.
So very Flannery indeed.
