The correspondence of Flannery O'Connor and the Brainard Cheneys

The Correspondence of Flannery O'Connor and the Brainard Cheneys,

edited by C. Ralph Stephens (Mississippi, 220 pp., $24.95)

THIS BOOK'S TITLE is cumbersome and slightly misleading, too. The book contains an almost complete set of the letters Flannery O'Connor wrote to the Cheneys and the ones Brainard Cheney wrote to her; but the letters from Frances Neel Cheney are missing, since she did not keep copies of her own correspondence. Thus, even though more than half of Miss O'Connor's 117 letters are addressed either solely to Fannie or to both husband and wife, Mrs. Cheney, a professional librarian, remains on the periphery of this exchange. And, even though the bulk of the 188 letters are written by Flannery O'Connor, the major figure in this correspondence, which spanned the last 11 years of Miss O'Connor's life, is Brainard--or Lon--Cheney, a member of the Nashville literary circle who was also a reporter, political advisor, and speechwriter. It is his interests, his activities, and his personality that predominate.

Nevertheless, the O'Connor fan will find here a small but rich cache of anecdotes, descriptions, and asides as the writer chips away the superfluities around her to reveal miniature gems of human comedy. As usual, the most entertaining of these emerge from the life at Andalusia that she and her mother, Regina, shared with farm tenants, field hands, and other assorted birds she collected or attracted. Just home from a visit with the Cheneys, Miss O'Connor writes of Regina's latest ordeal with the farm children:

Regina was supposed to have Hedwig spend three nights with her but Miss Hedwig attended a double feature twice, a total of five hours in the local theater, on the afternoon before she was to render this service and was thus unable to. She came over with a long vague face, Regina said, and said she felt like she was "almost going to vomit' so Regina told her to go home and do it and send Alfred. Alfred is nonconversational but he loves to visit so Regina said she sat on the porch with Alfred until she was blue in the face and finally asked him if he didn't think he ought to go up and go to bed. He said well he would but he wasn't sleepy yet, so she said well wouldn't he like something to eat and he said well what did she have. So she fed him for the next half hour and that made him sleepy. The next two nights she told him not to come until he was sleepy. He is 15. She always seems glad to have me back.

Of course, Miss O'Connor is also perspicacious in capturing the literary milieu at home and abroad. On the reviews of Wise Blood: "The one in the Manchester Guardian was a little weird, said the scoffers won and that the hero was focused throughout in a gaze of devoted lunacy. I have just about decided that is the way I will focus everything from now on.' On local audiences: "After the talk, one lady shook my hand and said, "That was a wonderful dispensation, honey.' Another lady said, "What's wrong with your leg, sugar?'' Addressing Catholics on Catholic readers: "I did tell them that the average Catholic reader was a militant Moron. They sat there like a band of genteel desperados and never moved a face muscle. I might have been saying the rosary to them.'

In Mystery and Manners a similarly caustic remark is leveled at would-be writers: "Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them.' Yet we have only to look at The Habit of Being to see that Miss O'Connor's public pronouncements were often harsher than her private allowances. She did indeed offer friends of lesser talent not only guidance but encouragement, and in these new letters we see the many ways she extended herself for Cheney, whose perceptive review of Wise Blood had led to their acquaintance.

Miss O'Connor's letters to the Cheneys lack real intimacy, and their subtle reserve stands in sharp contrast to Cheney's effuse and often volatile style. Nonetheless, she lends warm and friendly support to Cheney's theater projects, political causes, and literary efforts. She allows her name to be placed on various committees he organizes, she sends him detailed critiques of his novels-in-progress, and she is instrumental in having a novel of his reviewed by the Atlanta Constitution. These letters collectively document a generosity of spirit and, yes, a gentleness in Miss O'Connor that only a reader of her personal prose can fully appreciate.

For his part, Cheney is exceedingly polite, sometimes to the point of fawning. Thanking the O'Connors for their recent hospitality, he begins, "Never such comprehensive succor and solace extended me in one weekend! Body and soul!' He can also be indelicate (detailing a stay in the hospital for a complaint that is ultimately diagnosed as gas), silly ("wee Lonnie and Fannie have a mind to pop ye a call'), and maudlin ("I'm a sodden sinner--this isn't a confession, it's a chronic state that I only half work at. Mercy, mercy, mercy . . .'). The posturing in his early letters tends to cloy, but it does not conceal the genuineness of his affection for and admiration of Miss O'Connor, and it does give way to more natural (if residually self-absorbed) expression as he settles into the security of long-term friendship.