Habit of Being, an Introduction

As you might guess from the title and URL of my blog, I love Flannery O'Connor. I named my first car after one of her peacocks (Colonel Eggbert). I fantasize about meeting her in heaven. Also, God.

If you, like most people who are acquainted with Flan Flan, only know her through her most famous story, "A Good Man is Hard to Find," you may wonder what's so great about this woman who wrote Southern Grotesque fiction and died of Lupus in the sixties. Let me help you.

Beginning tonight, I will intermittently make blog entries which present my favorite moments from Habit of Being, a 600 pg collection of Flannery's letters. I'll arrange them by subject so you can know up front whether or not you'll be interested. Consider this entry a sampler plate of O'Connor quotes. Maybe, like me, you'll find yourself steadily falling in love with this woman from Georgia who raised peacocks and wrote stories about men who steal wooden legs from girls. Who knows?

I am doing fairly well these days, though I am practically bald-headed on top and have a watermelon face. I think that this is going to be permanent… I stay strictly out of the sun and strictly do not take any exercise. No great hardship.

1-25-53

I have just got back from 2 days in NYC. There is one advantage in it because although you see several people you wish you didn’t know, you see thousands you’re glad you don’t know.

11-5-49

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.

10-18-51

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. We liked your Christmas card very much and recognized yer assorted children.

Early 1952

Miss B. is still violently interested in finding herself a husband and still asks personal questions without any preparation and at the most inconvenient times. I do wish somebody would marry the child and shut her up. I am touched by her but you know what a long way a little goes.

5-23-52

I am taking painting again but none of my paintings go over very big in this house although mamma puts them up and is loth to take them down again. Sister used to teach painting classes in her youth and she says she doesn’t like this modern art because it’s not “smoothed down.” My mamma says it’s not modern art (insulted), it’s very true to nature and there’s no use spending five hours on a painting you can do in two. This refers to the fact that I have been painting with a palette knife because I don’t like to wash brushes.

Summer 1953

Mr. P. is taking a correspondence course in Catholicism. He is not going to be a Catholic or anything—he just likes to get things free in the mail.

August 1953

I would like to create the impression over the television that I’m a hillbilly Thomist, but I will probably not be able to think of anything to say to Mr. Harvey Breit but “Huh?” and “Ah dunno.” When I come back I’ll probably have to spend three months day and night in the chicken pen to counteract these evil influences… I wish somebody really 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.

5-18-55

I don’t deserve much credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.

6-10-55

The latest came from a Mr. Semple of Cincinnati who has not read anything of mine but doesn’t really see how I can say a good man is hard to find. He is an industrial engineer, likes to play bridge, is the active type, 31 years old, single etc. etc. I wrote Mr. Semple that I didn’t think I’d like him a bit but he would be crazy about me as I had seven gold teeth and weighed 250 pounds.

6-16-55

Arizona Road Trip!

I have not posted in a long time. A long time indeed. So I thought I'd share a little about my road trip to Arizona last week. Probably won't write about the whole trip, but at least it'll break the dry spell.

Day One
Victor, John Mark, and I set out for Prescott, AZ at 6:30 AM. I bought a pair of Converse shoes last month, years after the trend was at its peak, having taken that long for me to work up the self-confidence to tap into the "cool skater" look. Now, I realize that Converse shoes make my toes amazingly cold. Even so, I'm not getting cold feet: this trip is going to be awesome.

After John Mark, a veritable encyclopedia, names an interesting fact about almost every town we pass, we cross the border into New Mexico. All the buildings are tan adobe on a tan, dirty landscape, hiding in plain sight like soldiers in camo gear. It's kind of ridiculous, actually. New Mexico says "we love tan" like Chic Fil A workers say "my pleasure."

For lunch, we stop in Albuquerque, the Weird Al song soundtracking in my mind until we leave ("Where the sun is always shining and the air smells like warm root beer"). We pull into a parking lot for Subway, but then see an adjacent Mexican grocery store and decide to check it out. As we're walking in, a Texan woman, as evidenced by her big hair and big accent, pulls up in her car and addresses us: "Is this a Mexycan resturaun?"

"We don't know, we're just checking it out."

"Well is it a resturaun?"

"We've never been here. We're on a roadtrip."

She pauses half a beat, comes to a decision, and says, "Well, I'll just wait here and see if you come out."

Sure enough, she follows us in three minutes later. I hear her at the counter asking for "More cheese. More CHEESE. MORE CHEEEESE!"

Albuquerque. ("where anyone on the street will gladly shave your back for a nickel.")

All the workers at the Mexican grocery store speak spanish (go figure). Victor foretells, "They're going to speak to me in spanish." They do. Also, Victor arrives at the counter and pays sixty cents for a drink. Turning to me, he whispers, "Sixty cents! Back in America this would be at least..." and then catches himself. This isn't another country, Victor. Just Albuquerque. ("Where the shriners and the lepers play their ukuleles all day long.")

We cross into Arizona, and somehow the chiles rellenos burrito I ate for lunch doesn't give me any problems. In fact, the entire trip is easy. Sunny skies. Good company. No traffic or construction.

We left Colorado as the sun was rising, and we arrive in Prescott as it's setting. There is spaghetti, a game of Catan, and kids running everywhere. And then bed.

Day Two

An interesting disaster happened that night, namely, that Victor found a very comfortable sheet in the middle of the night and wrapped himself in it. Unfortunately, it was not a sheet. It was a window curtain. During the rest of the trip, I catch our hosts checking on other household items, making sure Victor hasn't put them to some ungodly use. "That's not a napkin, it's our cat." Or, "Can you please use a Q-tip for your ears, instead of our homegrown carrots?"

Shiloh kindly makes us a quiche, which is like Heaven in a crock pot, only filled with cheese and meat instead of God and the saints.

That morning we get the tour of Prescott, which as it turns out, is pronounced by locals to rhyme with "Biscuit." Who knew? Prescott is an amalgamation of old hippies, young students, and outdoorsy folk. Everything is a something/bar. Icecream/beer. Hair salon/saloon. It's weird.

We eat lunch at In-N-Out, which (for me) does not measure up to the hype. Good shakes, though.

And then the afternoon. Oh Lord, the afternoon! After removing the canoe from the backyard, where it is covered with scraps of lumber and dusty from disuse, we set out for a lake ten minutes from their house. This lake is the best of all lakes, at least to a Coloradoan who sees the dog's water dish and calls it a pond. The water is calm, and towers of rock jut up from it. This makes it a perfect place for adventure, as you can maneuver between islands or park your boat and go hiking (Park? That can't be right. Moor? Hitch?).

The afternoon is perfect.

On the way back home, we are in such good spirits that we flirt with a pair of girls who pulls up next to us at a stop light. When the light changes, I keep accelerating or decelerating as necessary to keep in line with their car, making the three of us feel awkward and also a little charming. After a few minutes of this, we are dancing wildly, and so are the girls, they in their jeep and us in our.... uh, minivan. Yes, we're in Shiloh's minivan. But we have a boat strapped to the top, so that has to count for something.

That night we eat chicken teriyaki with rice, which is delicious. (You can tell I'm related to my mom, who will forget entire days of a vacation while remembering every single meal. Also, you can tell I'm fasting today.)

During dinner, the youngest daughter becomes obsessed with finding out how many days remain till her birthday. After shutting herself in a room for fifteen minutes to concentrate on her calculations, she emerges triumphantly with an announcement: "Forty-six hundred days!"

The guys try to teach me Halo, which I have somehow avoided my entire life. I do wonderfully. I'm sorry, did I say wonderfully? I meant to say disastrously. I get killed dozens of times and never shoot a single person. It is enormous fun, actually.

Later, we watch a few episodes of Portlandia and eat icecream. (Is icecream a liquid or solid? I'm only fasting solid food today...)

Before we go to bed, Victor says to me, "Today was a good day."