News and other items in the press of our favored land were always a solace to her. She turned eagerly for years to the testimonial ads for a patent medicine called HADACOL, and these she would often pass on, especially after we moved to Europe late in '53 and were cut off from the savor of American life. Early that year, when she began to receive her fellowship money, she reported a mild change in the interest shown her work by the countryside. "My kinfolks think I am a commercial writer now and really they are very proud of me. My uncle Louis is always bringing a message from somebody at the King Hdw. Co. who has read Wise Blood. The last was: ask her why she don't write about some nice people. Louis says, I told them you wrote what paid I am doing fairly well these days, though I am practically baldheaded on top and have a watermelon face "
In another letter of about the same time I find: "The Maple Oats really send me. I mean they are a heap of improvement over salt less oatmeal, horse biscuit, stewed Kleenex, and the other delicacies that I have been eating The novel seems to be doing very well. I have a nice gangster in it named Rufus Florida Johnson " Disappearing from the novel, he turned up a long time later in one of the stories in this volume. Dr. Merrill, whom she liked and called "the scientist," told her in the summer that she was "doing better than anybody else has that has what I got," and she flew up to see us in August. It was our last meeting as a family for five years.
The correspondence for 1954 begins: "I got word the other day that I had been reappointed a Kenyon Fellow, so that means the Rockefellers [the Foundation supplied funds for the fellowships] will see to my blood and ACTH for another year and I will have to keep on praying for the repose of John D.'s soul Today I got a letter from one Jimmie Crum of Los Angeles, California, who has just read Wise Blood and wants to know what happened to the guy in the ape suit I am also corresponding with the secretary of the Chef's National Magazine, the Culinary Review " She was acquiring what she called a "great" reading public. She would soon have enough short stories for a collection.
And her disease had apparently been checked. Late in the year, however, we heard of a new ailment in a letter to my wife: "I am walking with a cane these days which gives me a great air of distinction I now feel that it makes very little difference what you call it. As the niggers say, I have the misery." In the same letter: "I have finally got off the ms. for my collection and it is scheduled to appear in May. Without your kind permission I have taken the liberty of dedicating (grand verb) it to you and Robert. This is because you all are my adopted kin Nine stories about original sin, with my compliments..
The misery referred to in this letter turned out to be disheartening enough. Either her disease or the drug that controlled it, or both, caused a softening or deterioration of the bones, her jaw bones and also her leg bones at the hip. Finally, a year later, the doctor put her on crutches. At more or less the same time, though, she was able-thank God-to switch from ACTH to a new wonder drug, taken in tablets, in tiny doses, and "for the first time in four years don't have to give myself shots or conserve on salt." Meanwhile her book of stories, A Good Man Is Hard To Find, went into a third printing. Early in '56 she learned that Gallimard was publishing Wise Blood in Paris in an expert translation by Maurice Coindreau. She found herself now and henceforward a woman-of-letters. And in fact she and her devoted and keen witted mother, who learned thoroughly to understand what Flannery was up to, became an effective team. Regina ran the farm and guarded Flannery's limited strength and saw to it that she had her mornings free for writing. At noon they would drive in to town for the mail and most often have lunch at the Sanford House, where behind the white pillars there is excellent cooking, and over the mantel there is a photograph of General Lee. In the afternoon Flannery could take the air on her crutches and feed her various fowl. She wrote that she had sixteen peachickens and her sense of well-being was at its height.
The new drug and the crutches increased Flannery's mobility so much that she began to accept invitations to give talks and readings at relatively distant points. After the isolated life in Connecticut and the confinement of her illness, these trips-and in the next six or seven years she made a score of them-brought her into the world again and gave her a whole new range of acquaintances. In her talks she had wonderful things to say. I didn't quite realize this- I just wanted to see her-when I got her to come to Notre Dame in the spring of '57 (I was working there on temporary leave, self-accorded, from the job I had in hand in Italy). I met her in Chicago and flew down with her to South Bend. She seemed frail but steady, no longer disfigured by any swelling, and her hair had grown long again. She managed her light crutches with distaste but some dexterity. Her audience that evening was already instructed in a number of topics of concern to her, but it was better instructed when she finished. I have this paper before me now, and can remember my pleasure as she read it out, intent upon it, hanging on her crutches at the lectern, courteous and earnest and dissolvent of nonsense.
"I doubt if the texture of Southern life is any more grotesque than that of the rest of the nation, but it does seem evident that the Southern writer is particularly adept at recognizing the grotesque; and to recognize the grotesque, you have to have some notion of what is not grotesque and why..
"Southern culture has fostered a type of imagination that has been influenced by Christianity of a not too unorthodox kind and by a strong devotion to the Bible, which has kept our minds attached to the concrete and the living symbol..
"The Catholic sacramental view of life is one that maintains and supports at every turn the vision that the story teller must have if he is going to write fiction of any depth..
"The Church, far from restricting the Catholic writer, generally provides him with more advantages than he is able or willing to turn to account; and usually, his sorry productions are a result, not of restrictions that the Church has imposed, but of restrictions that he has failed to impose on himself. Freedom is of no use without taste and without the ordinary competence to follow the particular laws of what we have been given to do "
Toward the end of the year she wrote to us (we were living in Liguria) that Cousin Katie in Savannah wished to give her and her mother a trip to Lourdes with a company of pilgrims from Savannah. Dr. Merrill permitted this on condition that she depart from the "tour" to rest with us for a week. So in April I brought her and Mrs. O'Connor down to our place from Milan, and after the visit my wife went along to Lourdes to help with the languages and details of travel. Flannery dreaded the possibility of a miracle at Lourdes, and she forced herself to the piety of the bath for her mother's sake and Cousin Katie's; she also accompanied the pilgrims to Rome for an audience with Pope Pius XII, who received her with interest and gave her a special blessing. On May 11, home again, she wrote: "I enjoyed most seeing you all and the Pope.. There was no miracle but what seemed a small favor: her bone trouble got no worse.