“Many of my ardent admirers would be roundly shocked and disturbed if they realized that everything I believe is thoroughly moral, thoroughly Catholic, and that it is these beliefs that give my work its chief characteristics.” —Flannery O’Connor Flannery O’Connor’s work has been described as “profane, blasphemous, and outrageous.” Her stories are peopled by a sordid caravan of murderers and thieves, prostitutes and bigots whose lives are punctuated by horror and sudden violence. But perhaps the most shocking thing about Flannery O’Connor’s fiction is the fact that it is shaped by a thoroughly Christian vision. If the world she depicts is dark and terrifying, it is also the place where grace makes itself known. Her world—our world—is the stage whereon the divine comedy plays out; the freakishness and violence in O’Connor’s stories, so often mistaken for a kind of misanthropy or even nihilism, turn out to be a call to mercy. In this biography, Jonathan Rogers gets at the heart of O’Connor’s work. He follows the roots of her fervent Catholicism and traces the outlines of a life marked by illness and suffering, but ultimately defined by an irrepressible joy and even hilarity. In her stories, and in her life story, Flannery O’Connor extends a hand in the dark, warning and reassuring us of the terrible speed of mercy. Jonathan Rogers received his undergraduate degree from Furman University in South Carolina and holds a Ph.D. in seventeenth-century English literature from Vanderbilt University. The Rogers family lives in Nashville, Tennessee, where Jonathan makes a living as a writer. THE TERRIBLE SPEED OF MERCY A Spiritual Biography of Flannery O'Connor By JONATHAN ROGERS Thomas Nelson Copyright © 2012 Jonathan Rogers All right reserved. ISBN: 978-1-59555-023-1 Contents Introduction...........................................................................................................xi1. The Girl Who Fought with Angels: Savannah, 1925–1939..........................................................12. "Mostly she talked Flannery": Milledgeville, 1939–1945........................................................153. "I began to read everything at once": Iowa, 1945–1948.........................................................234. "The peculiarity ... of the experience I write from": New York and Connecticut, 1948–1950.....................315. "Sickness is a place": 1951–1952..............................................................................436. Wise Blood : 1952...................................................................................................577. "I seem to attract the lunatic fringe": 1953–1954.............................................................718. A Good Man Is Hard to Find: 1954–1955.........................................................................879. "The accurate naming of the things of God": 1955–1956.........................................................10110. "The society I feed on": 1957–1958...........................................................................11511. The Violent Bear It Away: 1959–1960..........................................................................12912. "Everything That Rises Must Converge": 1961–1963.............................................................14313. "Beyond the regions of thunder": 1964..............................................................................155Notes..................................................................................................................163Acknowledgments........................................................................................................175About the Author.......................................................................................................177Index..................................................................................................................179 Chapter One THE GIRL WHO FOUGHT WITH ANGELS: SAVANNAH, 1925–1939 "Anybody who has survived his childhood," wrote Flannery O'Connor, "has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days." Her childhood began in Savannah, Georgia, on March 25, 1925. O'Connor was born in St. Joseph's, a Catholic hospital of which her family were important benefactors, and she was brought home to Lafayette Square, the very center of Catholic culture in Savannah. Across the square from her tall, narrow row house was St. John's Cathedral, built in part through the generosity of John Flannery, the relative for whom Flannery O'Connor was named. At one corner of the square was the St. Vincent's Grammar School for Girls. At the opposite corner was the Marist Brothers School for Boys. Though Savannah (like the rest of the American South) was overwhelmingly Protestant, Flannery O'Connor's neighbors on Lafayette Square and adjacent streets were mostly Catholic. O'Connor's family was Irish Catholic on both sides. Flannery's great-grandfather Patrick