Prematurely Arrogant: A Tiny Bit About Flannery O'Connor

I went looking for a Flannery O'Connor quote the other week, and couldn't find it. But it reminded me that I might want to re-read The Habit of Being, a collection of her letters. It has probably been 20 or 25 years since I read them last, and I thought that they might be very rewarding to read again as the person I am now. I am only on page 10, but am struck by her self-confidence. OK, she does do a lot of self-deprecating in her letters to her agent: "The enclosed story is for sale to the unparticular," and "I have another chapter which I have sent to Partisan Review and which I expect to be returned." (On the contrary, Partisan Review published it.)

But I like how she thinks about the bottom line. In her query letter to the woman who would become her agent, she wrote, "I am writing to you...mainly because I am being impressed just now with the money I am not making by having stories in such places as American Letters," and, later, "Here are the first nine chapters of the novel, which please show John Selby and let us be on with financial thoughts."

But this is what made me stop writing to share with you. Flannery O'Connor is 24 years old; she has published a few stories in the kinds of literary reviews that don't pay much, and has written about 2/3 of what was apparently quite a bad draft of her first novel, Wise Blood. She has heard back from John Selby, who is editor-in-chief at Rinehart, who is interested in Wise Blood but has given her an extensive critique which she feels misses the point, and she writes this to him:

I think, however, that before I talk to you my position on the novel and on your criticism in the letter should be made plain.

I can only hope that in the finished novel the direction will be clearer, but I can tell you that I would not like at all to work with you as you do other writers on your list. I feel that whatever virtues the novel has are very much connected with the limitations you mention.... In short, I am amenable to criticism but only within the sphere of what I am trying to do. I will not be persuaded to do otherwise. The finished book, though I hope less angular, will be just as odd if not odder than the nine chapters you have now. The question is: Is Rinehart interested in publishing this kind of novel?

She wrote to a friend a bit later:

I learned indirectly that nobody at Rinehart likes the 108 pages.... I told Selby that I was willing enough to listen to Rinehart criticism but that if it didn't suit me, I would disregard it. That is the impasse.

Any summary I might try to write for the rest of the novel would be worthless and I don't choose to waste my time at it. I don't write that way. I can't write much more without money and they won't give me any money because they can't see what the finished book will be. That is Part Two of the impasse.

To develope at all as a writer I have to develope in my own way. The 108 pages are very angular and awkward but a great deal of that can be corrected when I have finished the rest of it--and only then. I will not be hurried or directed by Rinehart. I think they are interested in the conventional and I have no indication that they are very bright.

...If they don't feel that I am worth giving more money to and leaving alone, then they should let me go. Other publishers, who have read the two printed chapters, are interested. Selby and I came to the conclusion that I was "prematurely arrogant." I supplied him with the phrase.

You will be astonished to learn that Rinehart did not choose to publish Wise Blood. I am astonished at O'Connor's certainty about her direction. It's not that she thought she knew everything about writing--she mentions just one paragraph later that she hopes to reach a point "in a few years" where she doesn't have to do so much re-writing--but that she has confidence in both her process of developing as a writer, and in the work she's producing. I am almost 45 and do not have that kind of bold self-assurance. I can't help wondering where I'd be if I'd had it at 24.

(Also, I love the little dig in "I supplied him with the phrase," that she had to give him the words to criticize her with. Heh.)

Update: Rinehart later released O'Connor from the option-to-publish she had signed, which freed her up to sign a contract with Harcourt. In the release letter, Selby called O'Connor, "stiff-necked, uncooperative, and unethical." "Unethical" stung.