Wildcat/ Flannery O’Connor revisited

Wildcat/ Flannery O’Connor revisited

We just watched a brilliant cinematic portrayal, directed by Ethan Hawke, of the brief but richly productive career and heart-breaking personal life of the iconic author Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964).

The film presents vivid and disturbing insights into her writing through the director’s depiction of her creative process, as he conceived it. Biography and fiction are juxtaposed in an appropriately off-kilter style aligned with the patterns of her work.

(2) WILDCAT Trailer | TIFF 2024 – YouTube

O’Connor contracted lupus in her 20s and penned her seminal works while in great pain and shackled by her incurable disability. She also struggled mightily to express and reconcile her profound Catholic beliefs with her sense of humanity’s ineradicable propensity for evil and folly in the context of a grotesque realm of existence, namely the US Deep South, but applicable to our world as a whole.

https://www.dappledthings.org/deep-down-things/wildcat-flannery-oconnor

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flannery_O%27Connor

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Flannery-OConnor

The article linked below addresses elements of disquieting racism that have been uncovered in O’Connor’s private correspondence, some but not all of it juvenilia. This of course fuels the ongoing debate concerning how an author’s opinions and failings can or should affect our appreciation of their work.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/22/how-racist-was-flannery-oconnor

How is your experience of works by writers such as Alice Munro or Flannery O’Connor impacted by horrendous misdeeds they committed or appalling opinions they expressed?

Your friend,

Robert