[percy-l] Confessions of a Catholic Novelist
desmond
desmond at whitman.edu
Mon Jun 22 17:41:25 EDT 2015
On 6/22/2015 11:37 AM, Lauren Stacy Berdy wrote:
> The reader as much as the writer creates the vision in their own mind
> If the process of creation does not happen in the readers mind is not
> reenacted
> If the subterranean links and connections do not link
> The work fails
> For this reader Born a Jew Dr Percy wants us alert like one of his hawks
> His words give us a renewal and a resuscitation for our own lives
> Whitman too was religious ( okay a religion not made by a mind) he
> helped us with our emotional evolution
> Dr Percy adds to that self generating order
> That creative struggle that all great authors ask of Their readers
>
> I read that article twice and I am sorry that he is wresting so with
> his demons
> catholic or otherwise.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Jun 22, 2015, at 12:14 PM, Michael Larson <larsonovic at gmail.com
> <mailto:larsonovic at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>> I so hope the world will take him at his word when Mr. Giraldi denies
>> being a Catholic. Otherwise, people might mistake his interests and
>> concerns for those of a real Catholic novelist. As a secular
>> novelist, Mr. Giraldi seems most interested in how his life has
>> prepared him to be an /artiste/, his boyhood Catholicism being one of
>> those preparations: "An upbringing in the Church has, I suspect and
>> hope, outfitted me well as a storyteller." He likes the instincts
>> Catholicism gave him--but for the purpose of storytelling and not for
>> the purpose of apprehending and conforming oneself to the truth. He
>> even likes there to be a quasi-religious vision to fiction, as long
>> as it is sufficiently amorphous: "A novel should indeed be a groping
>> after some form of the metaphysical, a benediction to unseen powers,
>> the upholding of the /mysterium tremendum/, those insistent inklings
>> of the numinous."
>>
>> But the Catholic novelist is most interested in objective reality,
>> and he sees his role as artist to be one of rendering that reality as
>> well as he can. Obviously some novels (and novelists) are better than
>> others, but the vision of the Catholic novelist is neither
>> narcissistic nor subjective (Nor is it proselytizing, as Giraldi
>> claims with regard to Percy and Greene in particular.). No, the
>> Catholic novelist's vision is of something outside of himself,
>> corresponding to divine revelation. His characters may be at any
>> level of understanding (or rejecting) that reality, but the
>> (Catholic) novelist himself has no such freedom. He knows what he
>> knows, and the world he creates, in which his characters live and
>> breathe, must bear a close resemblance to the real one. But this
>> includes immaterial as well as material reality. Mr. Giraldi is fine
>> with being exact about material reality ("my books are
>> flesh-obsessed"), but he wants to keep the immaterial vague,
>> subjective, fuzzy. That's why he's not a Catholic ... and why he
>> should therefore remain silent about the concerns of Catholic writers.
>>
>> Michael Larson
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 22, 2015 at 6:35 AM, <percy-l-request at lists.ibiblio.org
>> <mailto:percy-l-request at lists.ibiblio.org>> wrote:
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>> Today's Topics:
>>
>> 1. 2016 SOUTHEAST CONFERENCE ON CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE -
>> Walker Percy Centennial - Call for Papers (Henry Mills)
>> 2. Re: A Good Stamp is Hard to Find (Jonathan Potter)
>> 3. Confessions of A Catholic Novelist: When water, bread, and
>> blood aren't just water, bread and blood - William Giraldi
>> (Henry Mills)
>>
>>
>> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 1
>> Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2015 09:05:40 -0400
>> From: Henry Mills <wppdirector at gmail.com
>> <mailto:wppdirector at gmail.com>>
>> To: Percy-L at lists.ibiblio.org:Literary and Philosophical Discussion
>> <percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org
>> <mailto:percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org>>
>> Subject: [percy-l] 2016 SOUTHEAST CONFERENCE ON CHRISTIANITY AND
>> LITERATURE - Walker Percy Centennial - Call for Papers
>> Message-ID: <557C2AA4.1040800 at gmail.com
>> <mailto:557C2AA4.1040800 at gmail.com>>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"
>>
>> The following is a Call for Papers Announcement. For more
>> information,
>> contact Rich Gray (rgray at montreat.edu <mailto:rgray at montreat.edu>
>> <mailto:rgray at montreat.edu <mailto:rgray at montreat.edu>>).
>>
>> **
>>
>> ***
>> Walker Percy Centennial:****Pilgrimage in Literature*
>>
>> 2016 SOUTHEAST CONFERENCE ON CHRISTIANITY AND LITERATURE
>>
>> *April 7-9, 2016*
>> Montreat College, Montreat, NC 28757
>>
>> Keynoters: *Farrell O?Gorman*, Belmont Abbey College
>>
>> *Jim Wildeman*, Covenant College, emeritus
>>
>> Like Binx Bolling in Walker Percy?s first novel /The Moviegoer,
>> /literary characters often seek relationship with the God of the
>> Bible.
>> They feel detached from affairs in the material world. Pilgrims
>> sense a
>> call from God to pursue him in spite of the unbelief surrounding
>> them.
>> Essays will be considered from a variety of authors. Topics should
>> pursue the intersection of faith and literature. Creative writing
>> presentations are welcome.
>>
>> Undergraduate Research essays are invited; the Thursday evening
>> session
>> is devoted to them.
>>
>>
>> Please submit completed essays to Rich Gray (rgray at montreat.edu
>> <mailto:rgray at montreat.edu>
>> <mailto:rgray at montreat.edu <mailto:rgray at montreat.edu>>)
>> by January 10, 2016
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 2
>> Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2015 09:32:59 -0700
>> From: Jonathan Potter <jopomojo at gmail.com
>> <mailto:jopomojo at gmail.com>>
>> To: "Percy-L: Literary and Philosophical Discussion"
>> <percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org
>> <mailto:percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org>>
>> Subject: Re: [percy-l] A Good Stamp is Hard to Find
>> Message-ID:
>>
>> <CALpVE-4JnfLF9H9E7RcoovDKxkV8sHWp_gaopxt13C6H_oAXzA at mail.gmail.com
>> <mailto:CALpVE-4JnfLF9H9E7RcoovDKxkV8sHWp_gaopxt13C6H_oAXzA at mail.gmail.com>>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>
>> Someone at the Korrektiv blog has created an enhanced version of the
>> Flannery O'Connor stamp:
>>
>> http://korrektivpress.com/2015/06/lets-try-that-again/
>>
>> On Sun, Jun 7, 2015 at 1:16 PM, Jim Forest <jhforest at gmail.com
>> <mailto:jhforest at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> >
>> >
>> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/05/opinion/a-good-stamp-is-hard-to-find.html?mabReward=CTM&moduleDetail=recommendations-2&action=click&contentCollection=N.Y.%20%2F%20Region®ion=Footer&module=WhatsNext&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&configSection=article&isLoggedIn=true&src=recg&pgtype=article
>> > A Good Stamp Is Hard to Find
>> >
>> > By LAWRENCE DOWNES / NY TIMES / JUNE 4, 2015
>> > Photo
>> > Credit United States Postal Service
>> >
>> > English majors, say hooray: Flannery O?Connor is on a postage
>> stamp. It
>> > comes out Friday and costs 93 cents.
>> >
>> > It?s a pretty picture. She wears a simple top with a jewel
>> neckline, and
>> > pearls. Her pink porcelain face, framed in a 1940s bob, glows
>> with the
>> > barest hint of a how-do-you-do smile.
>> >
>> > Wait ? what?s Betty Crocker doing on Flannery?s stamp?
>> >
>> > This stamp does not, to my eyes, show Flannery O?Connor, the
>> 20th-century
>> > master of the short story, the ?hermit novelist? who fused her
>> art and life
>> > as a Southerner and a Roman Catholic with stories that are
>> shocking,
>> > hilarious and often bloody. The one who lived with her mother in
>> > Milledgeville, Ga., and raised peafowl. Who got sick and died
>> young, of
>> > lupus, in 1964. Who gazed at the sin-stricken world through
>> cat-eye glasses
>> > that are as much her visual signature as Hemingway?s beard or
>> Frida?s
>> > eyebrow.
>> >
>> > This stamp shows the artist as a very young woman, barely 20
>> years old.
>> > It?s based on a photo of her as an undergraduate at Georgia
>> State College
>> > for Women. Her oeuvre then amounted to cartoons and stories for
>> the college
>> > magazine. Everything else in her dazzling career ? the Iowa
>> Writers?
>> > Workshop, the artists? retreat Yaddo, ?Wise Blood,? ?A Good Man
>> Is Hard to
>> > Find? ? lay ahead.
>> > Photo
>> > Flannery O'Connor beneath her self portrait in June 1962.
>> Credit Joe
>> > McTyre/Atlanta Journal-Constitution
>> >
>> > The image has rattled some O?Connor admirers. (Facebook
>> > <https://www.facebook.com/Andalusiafarmpage>: ?This is all
>> wrong. They
>> > glamour-shot her. She looks like she has a bad case of pink eye.? )
>> >
>> > The United States Postal Service gave this job to an art
>> director, who
>> > hired a freelance artist. I spoke with both of them, and
>> learned that
>> > neither knew much about O?Connor, but they did their best with
>> the images
>> > they had. The artist told me he had read one of her novels in
>> college. He
>> > knew O?Connor had raised peacocks, so he framed her with
>> feathers. The art
>> > director remembered that her work was ?unsettling,? and that
>> she was a
>> > Catholic.
>> >
>> > I can?t blame either of them for deciding on this striking
>> portrait as the
>> > best fit for their tiny canvas, but I wish they and the Postal
>> Service had
>> > produced a stamp that was more recognizably the grown-up
>> Flannery, and
>> > contained some taste of her strange and majestic artistic vision.
>> >
>> > I know she does not present an automatic illustrative equation,
>> like
>> > mustache + steamboat = Mark Twain. But a better choice was
>> staring the
>> > Postal Service in the face: a painting made by the author
>> herself, a
>> > self-portrait from 1953. She is wearing a yellow straw hat,
>> holding a
>> > devilish-looking pheasant and looking straight at you, baleful and
>> > brilliant, as if she could smell your stupidity. It is gorgeous
>> and jagged
>> > and honest and perfect.
>> >
>> > ?The self-portrait was made ten years ago,? O?Connor wrote to a
>> friend,
>> > ?after a very acute siege of lupus. I was taking cortisone,
>> which gives you
>> > what they call a moon-face, and my hair had fallen out to a
>> large extent
>> > from the high fever, so I looked pretty much like the portrait.
>> When I
>> > painted it I didn?t look either at myself in the mirror or at
>> the bird. I
>> > knew what we both looked like.?
>> >
>> > A version of this editorial appears in print on June 5, 2015,
>> on page A26
>> > of the New York edition with the headline: A Good Stamp Is Hard
>> to Find.
>> > --
>> > *two new books*:
>> > *Loving Our Enemies: Reflections on the Hardest Commandment*:
>> > www.jimandnancyforest.com/2014/07/loving-our-enemies/
>> <http://www.jimandnancyforest.com/2014/07/loving-our-enemies/>
>> > *Saint Nicholas and the Nine Gold Coins:*
>> >
>> www.jimandnancyforest.com/2015/04/saint-nicholas-and-the-nine-gold-coins/
>> <http://www.jimandnancyforest.com/2015/04/saint-nicholas-and-the-nine-gold-coins/>
>> >
>> <http://jimandnancyforest.com/2015/04/saint-nicholas-and-the-nine-gold-coins/>
>> >
>> > Jim & Nancy web site: www.jimandnancyforest.com
>> <http://www.jimandnancyforest.com>
>> > Photo albums: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimforest/sets/
>> >
>> > *Jim & Nancy Forest*
>> > Kanisstraat 5 / 1811 GJ Alkmaar / The Netherlands
>> >
>> > * * *
>> >
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>> > * Contact the Moderator: percy-l-owner (at) lists.ibiblio.org
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>> >
>> > * Visit The Walker Percy Project: http://www.ibiblio.org/wpercy
>> >
>> >
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>> ------------------------------
>>
>> Message: 3
>> Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2015 07:35:28 -0400
>> From: Henry Mills <wppdirector at gmail.com
>> <mailto:wppdirector at gmail.com>>
>> To: Percy-L at lists.ibiblio.org:Literary and Philosophical Discussion
>> <percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org
>> <mailto:percy-l at lists.ibiblio.org>>
>> Subject: [percy-l] Confessions of A Catholic Novelist: When water,
>> bread, and blood aren't just water, bread and blood -
>> William Giraldi
>> Message-ID: <5587F300.6070206 at gmail.com
>> <mailto:5587F300.6070206 at gmail.com>>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"
>>
>> Dear Percy-L:
>>
>> For those wishing to read an interesting, if not provocative essay
>> byWilliam Giraldi -- novelist and contributing editor for /The New
>> Republic -- /on his views of Catholicism and novel-writing from
>> hiscontemporary perspective, you may wish to consider his below essay
>> just published online.
>>
>> Entitled "Confessions of A Catholic Novelist: When water, bread, and
>> blood aren't just water, bread and blood," Percy, O'Connor, and
>> Graham
>> Greene are each considered and represented in their perspectives with
>> numerous quotes and discussion by Giraldi.
>>
>> In addition, given the recent postal stamp "controversy" with
>> O'Connor,
>> the essay features a fascinating photograph of her standing with
>> one of
>> her peacocks, a photo worth enjoying.
>>
>> SPOILER ALERT: Giraldi's essay is both affirming and non-affirming of
>> its treated subjects. Perhaps some list members would like to
>> respond
>> for the benefit of the Percy-L community?
>>
>> See:
>> http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122078/confessions-catholic-novelist
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Henry Mills
>> Percy-L Administrator
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>> End of Percy-L Digest, Vol 114, Issue 3
>> ***************************************
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In his reading of The Moviegoer, Mr. Giraldi completely ignores one of
its most important thematic threads, i.e. Binx's intuition of his
"Jewishness" as a "clue" to his deepest identity, and where that clue
leads him in the novel. Giraldi's simplified interpretation is a
serious misreading of the novel (for his own purposes, I suppose).
John Desmond
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