Book review: Flannery by Brad Gooch

As I mentioned before, I spent last week reading Brad Gooch's new biography of Flannery O'Connor, titled Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor. It was a fascinating look at a woman about whom I knew very little, other than that she was Catholic, from Georgia, a writer, and she died young.

I found the quotes from O'Connor about her faith to be particularly resonant. As a graduate student in Iowa City, she attended daily Mass as a way of combating her homesickness. She said that "I went to St. Mary's as it was right around the corner and I could get there practically every morning. I went there three years and never knew a soul in the congregation or any of the priests, but it was not necessary. As soon as I went in the door I was at home" (120-1). This is one of the many things that I love about the universality of Catholicism; as soon as I walk in the door of any Catholic church, anywhere in the world, I, like O'Connor, am at home.

O'Connor was also not reticent about sharing her Catholicism with her friends. She wrote in a letter to a friend, who was in the process of converting, but saw herself as a "history of horror" that "The meaning of the Redemption is precisely that we do not have to be our history" (282). O'Connor wrote that, which struck me as very true and beautiful, after her friend had disclosed some information that was incredibly scandalous, more so in the 1950s than today, and which her friend felt would mar their friendship. But O'Connor's response was one of love, as she wrote in another letter that "from my point of view, you are always wanted" (282)-again, a beautiful, pure expression of friendship that's rooted in love.

These examples are just a small sampling of what Gooch's biography contains. As an aside, I learned that O'Connor gave a lecture at my alma mater, Meredith College, not long before her death. I never knew that, but I love thinking about her walking around the campus that is so dear to me.

I would definitely recommend this biography to any and everyone. The only thing that took some getting used to was the length of the chapters; I like reading a chapter at a time, but I found that I could only read parts of chapters in one sitting, since the book is close to 400 pages and only has 10 chapters. But other than that, I thought it was wonderful.

Bookstores

Ever since I was a very little girl, I have had a love affair with books. One of the most memorable Christmases I had was when I was 5 and got a boxed set of the Little House on the Prairie books; if I'm remembering correctly, I took off the wrapping paper, got through the cellophane and immediately started reading the first book. This love is why I majored in English in college and why I've continued into grad school for literature. It is also why I boxed up all 200+ books that I own and moved them and two bookshelves down to South Carolina. Even though I have very little time to read for leisure, I like to know that I have all my books at hand because they may (and have) come in handy at unexpected times (so, Daddy, you didn't move them all down for nothing. Some of them, maybe, but not all :))

Since books are such a huge part of my life, it should come as no surprise that I love bookstores. Like Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's, going to a bookstore, even if I have no money, cheers me up when I've got the blues or the mean reds. But I'm a bit peculiar when it comes to bookstores. I prefer small used bookstores to the mega-stores like Barnes and Noble. I like other people's books because they sometimes have notes; I also feel like I'm rescuing books that were unloved and thus sold to a bookstore. This is not to say that I dislike big stores; they have their own special feeling, but it's different than the little places like, say, Reader's Corner back home. I suppose the small places also feed into my slightly hipster pretensions ;)

At big stores, I always look first at the bargain books because I feel like they're just a little less loved; clearly, somebody decided that the books should get a sticker proclaiming that, more or less, the store just wants to get rid of those volumes (Perhaps I'm projecting a bit? Probably just a tad). Sometimes the bargain racks and bins have real treasures, like the $7 copy of Yeats' Irish Fairy Tales that I picked up the other night with the gift card my sweet sister-to-be gave me for my birthday; sometimes books are in the bargain bin for a reason, like the $7 biography of Grace O'Malley, the Irish pirate queen, that I bought several months ago--it's full of shoddy scholarship and rampant misspellings, despite being in its second edition (and yes, I'm a little bitter about that purchase).

I also have a hard time buying magazines at bookstores. It somehow seems like a cop-out, to go to a building full of glorious (and not-so) volumes, in hardback and paperback, with pictures in black and white and color, without pictures, large and small: to take in all those options and decide instead to purchase a publication that the publisher knows will end up in next month's recycling just seems wrong. For the record, I like magazines too, but I prefer to buy them at the drugstore or where have you, not a bookstore. Back to bookstores.

Just for giggles, I'll walk you through a typical trip to a bookstore, whether large or small. When I walk through the doors of a bookstore, it's as if I've entered a trance. I scan the room, trying to decide where to start. Once I pick a row to start with, I slowly make my way up one side and down the other, picking one up, scanning the covers, then placing it back on the shelf where it goes (I can't stand people who don't follow alphabetical order when reshelving books. That's just rude). Sometimes I back up because I think I've missed something good. It literally takes me forever to get through the fiction section until I get to the horror/Western/romance shelves. Those I breeze through, since none of those topics interest me. I skip certain sections in non-fiction as well, but that depends on my mood; the sports section is the only one I shun consistently. Very rarely do I pick a book on my first trip around the store. I need to absorb the selection, to see what I'm in the mood for, and then make my choice. As you can imagine, bookstore visits are long, involved rituals that I can't perform too often, because I don't have time and for which rarely have the money, though looks, thankfully, are always free.

(the above post inspired by Tuesday night's trip to Barnes and Noble, where I bought Yeats while [inadvertently] dressed like Olive Oyl from Popeye. True story)

Book obsession

Yesterday went really, really well. I enjoyed having my mom and dad to myself for several hours and loved having dinner with my whole family and my best friend. Right now, I'm just glad my thesis presentation is done! 

While we were out between my thesis presentation and my study abroad essay reading, I went into a little bookstore near campus to find a thank you card for my thesis advisor. I came out with a book full of John Williams Waterhouse's paintings (like "The Lady of Shallot," 1888). It was only $17, which I couldn't pass up. Actually, I rarely can pass up a cheap book (usually I don't spend as much as I did yesterday, but it was an art book, which are rarely that cheap). A book that's $3-10 is hard for me to resist because you never know when it might be good. Which explains the two novels that I have sitting on my shelf waiting for exams to be over so that I can start them.