A Homage to Flannery O’Connor
As a working artist, I attempt to take care about the environment I create around me. I am influenced by my workspace and environment, and they reflect my personality, practical needs, and I hope they inspire me.
Accordingly I’m fascinated by the environment that other artists use and generate. Iike to look at photos about this, movies, and, when I can do it, go to see the actual location.
The location and space we create for our work is a type of shrine, a physical manifestation of what we think about our work, ourselves as artists, and the world around us. Now, obviously things like electrical cords, computers, needed light, and clutter might become part of that, but I’m curious about what people place into their environments.
I recently had the pleasure of visiting the home of author Flannery O’Connor in Milledgeville, Georgia. If you don’t know about her, I recommend you dip into her work, watch a documentary about her, or even a movie, including the recent one “Wildcat” starring Maya Hawke and directed by her father, Ethan Hawke.
Flannery O’Connor was a southern writer whose specialized in short stories and also authored two novels. She is considered one of the southern Gothic writers, and she was a devote Catholic, who included religious themes in her work. She died in 1964 at the young age of 39 from lupus, however, along the way she won many awards, and I’ll include below a link to her basic biography.
For the last 14 years of her life she lived in a farmhouse with her mother, where she was confined largely to one large room, and there she did her writing. She was also a painter and would paint as a way to stimulate and regenerate her thoughts and imagination.
In about 1950, O’Connor learned that she had lupus, an autoimmune disease, which severely limited her via the pain it generated in her hands, needed for typing, also in her face and her hips and legs. She used crutches for many years and had limited strength and energy.
O’Connor then lived most of her life in one large room on the first floor of her house, which included large floor-to-ceiling windows. In this rectangular room, she included a single bed, and the walls were largely flanked by bookcases, holding her library, with religious books – – she was catholic and went to mass every day – – and the writings of many famous fiction authors.
I was most struck by the way she arranged the room for her typing. She took a large armoire or cabinet and faced it away from her bed and into the cavity of her room; and against the back of it she placed a small table complete with her Underwood typewriter — thus she faced into a blank wall with nothing on it for decoration or adornment. This arrangement also divided the room into two smaller parts, and it may have assisted if her mother came in unannounced to interrupt her.
Connor went to mass every morning at 7:00 a.m., ate breakfast, and then sought to write for about three hours. She did that each day – – seven days a week – – in the small, confined space she created. Next to her bed, she kept a Bible and the works of Saint Thomas Aquinas, that she read every day.
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I gained the impression that O’Connor’s room served much like that of a nun or monk confined to a cell, who remained in contemplation and prayer. She worked every day at her craft, which perhaps was her prayer.
I find O’Connor’s dedication exceptionally inspirational, and I also appreciate the simplicity of the environment she created for herself. And if you find yourself near where she lived, I recommend you visit the house, Andalusia, in Milledgeville, Georgia.
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Lovely story of a wonderful creative women who didn’t allow her health to define what she was and lived a full life.
She is an original thinker