particularly remembered “the illustrations about a young man of about six in a sailor suit and round hat. He stood on a wharf and watched a ship come in. In each illustration the ship was bigger. He therefore came to the conclusion that the world was round. He did this without assistance. I was mighty impressed and will never forget the Book of Knowledge. I reckon it’s deteriorated though.” She complained that “the rest of what I read was Slop with a capital S.”
After “the Slop period,” she became absorbed, “for years,” with a ten-volume “commemorative” edition of Poe’s work she found on the family bookshelf. She enjoyed
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym,
a short lyric novel about a stowaway on a whaling ship whose survivors resorted to cannibalism. But her favorite was volume eight, the
Humorous Tales,
including “The Spectacles,” “The Man That Was Used Up,” and “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether.” She later recalled, “These were mighty humerous — one about a young man who was too vain to wear his glasses and consequently married his grandmother by accident; another about a fine figure of a man who in his room removed wooden arms, wooden legs, hair piece, artificial teeth, voice box, etc. etc.; another about the inmates of a lunatic asylum who take over the establishment and run it to suit themselves.” She added, “I’m sure he wrote them all while drunk too.”
According to Elizabeth Hardwick, who met O’Connor at Yaddo, the Poe collection was a staple in many educated homes of the period. “We didn’t have a lot of books in my house but we did have the complete Poe,” said Hardwick, of her childhood in Kentucky. “I bet they had the same edition. I remember sitting on the front porch in Lexington and reading ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue.’ I’ve often looked back and thought, ‘How did that happen?’ You have nothing to read when you’re twelve and you’re reading Poe.” For O’Connor, Poe continued to haunt: showing up in the coffins and “walling up cats” of
Wise Blood,
and as an inspiration for the Misfit’s spectacles for sizing up the grandmother in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” and for Hulga’s unscrewed wooden leg in “Good Country People.” Most immediately, though, the tales were grist for “Recollections of My Future Childhood,” in which Aunt Bertha locked her fiancé in her left bureau drawer and “never opened it.”
During the spring of 1941, Mary Flannery completed writing and illustrating three books of her own, all about geese — “Elmo,” “Gertrude,” and “Mistaken Identity.” “She wrote these books about her animals when she was growing up,” says fellow Peabodite Deedie Sibley (known in high school as Frances Binion). “I remember them being pink cardboard. They had spiral binding and you just flipped them open. There was a picture of a duck, and then some little sentence or something she wanted to say about the duck.” Impressed by the mechanics of publishing by her father, she was quite professional about these handmade books. “M.F. has finished three books on her geese, and put each in a box,” Aunt Gertie informed Aunt Agnes in March 1941. “Nearly all who have seen them think they are good. She is thinking about having them copyrighted if she just finds the right way of going about it. Louis seems to think he knows a party in Atlanta who could put her on the right track.”
She paid the most attention to “Mistaken Identity,” her seventeen-page poem, with colored illustrations, about a case of gender confusion among geese. The poem was occasional, based on the true incident of her pet gander Herman laying an egg and hatching a brood of eight goslings, leading to the conclusion that “Herman’s HENRIETTA.” In December 1941, the
Peabody Palladium
picked up the story of her foiled attempts to find a publisher for the three books in a piece titled “Peabodite Reveals Strange Hobby.” The
After “the Slop period,” she became absorbed, “for years,” with a ten-volume “commemorative” edition of Poe’s work she found on the family bookshelf. She enjoyed
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym,
a short lyric novel about a stowaway on a whaling ship whose survivors resorted to cannibalism. But her favorite was volume eight, the
Humorous Tales,
including “The Spectacles,” “The Man That Was Used Up,” and “The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether.” She later recalled, “These were mighty humerous — one about a young man who was too vain to wear his glasses and consequently married his grandmother by accident; another about a fine figure of a man who in his room removed wooden arms, wooden legs, hair piece, artificial teeth, voice box, etc. etc.; another about the inmates of a lunatic asylum who take over the establishment and run it to suit themselves.” She added, “I’m sure he wrote them all while drunk too.”
According to Elizabeth Hardwick, who met O’Connor at Yaddo, the Poe collection was a staple in many educated homes of the period. “We didn’t have a lot of books in my house but we did have the complete Poe,” said Hardwick, of her childhood in Kentucky. “I bet they had the same edition. I remember sitting on the front porch in Lexington and reading ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue.’ I’ve often looked back and thought, ‘How did that happen?’ You have nothing to read when you’re twelve and you’re reading Poe.” For O’Connor, Poe continued to haunt: showing up in the coffins and “walling up cats” of
Wise Blood,
and as an inspiration for the Misfit’s spectacles for sizing up the grandmother in “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” and for Hulga’s unscrewed wooden leg in “Good Country People.” Most immediately, though, the tales were grist for “Recollections of My Future Childhood,” in which Aunt Bertha locked her fiancé in her left bureau drawer and “never opened it.”
During the spring of 1941, Mary Flannery completed writing and illustrating three books of her own, all about geese — “Elmo,” “Gertrude,” and “Mistaken Identity.” “She wrote these books about her animals when she was growing up,” says fellow Peabodite Deedie Sibley (known in high school as Frances Binion). “I remember them being pink cardboard. They had spiral binding and you just flipped them open. There was a picture of a duck, and then some little sentence or something she wanted to say about the duck.” Impressed by the mechanics of publishing by her father, she was quite professional about these handmade books. “M.F. has finished three books on her geese, and put each in a box,” Aunt Gertie informed Aunt Agnes in March 1941. “Nearly all who have seen them think they are good. She is thinking about having them copyrighted if she just finds the right way of going about it. Louis seems to think he knows a party in Atlanta who could put her on the right track.”
She paid the most attention to “Mistaken Identity,” her seventeen-page poem, with colored illustrations, about a case of gender confusion among geese. The poem was occasional, based on the true incident of her pet gander Herman laying an egg and hatching a brood of eight goslings, leading to the conclusion that “Herman’s HENRIETTA.” In December 1941, the
Peabody Palladium
picked up the story of her foiled attempts to find a publisher for the three books in a piece titled “Peabodite Reveals Strange Hobby.” The
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