Flannery O’Connor: Pals Do not Let Pals Learn Ayn Rand

In a let­ter dat­ed Might 31, 1960, Flan­nery O’Con­nor, the creator best possible identified for her clas­sic sto­ry, “A Just right Guy is Onerous to To find” (lis­ten to her learn the sto­ry right here) penned a let­ter to her buddy, the play­wright Mary­at Lee. It starts reasonably abrupt­ly, like­ly as it’s reply­ing to a couple­factor Mary­at mentioned in a pre­vi­ous let­ter:

I am hoping you don’t have pals who rec­om­mend Ayn Rand to you. The fic­tion of Ayn Rand is as little as you’ll be able to get re fic­tion. I am hoping you picked it up off the ground of the sub­method and threw it within the close to­est rubbish pail. She makes Mick­ey Spillane seem like Dos­to­evsky.

The let­ter, which you’ll be able to read online or in finding within the e book The Habit of Being, then turns to oth­er mat­ters.

O’Con­nor’s crit­i­cal appraisal of Ayn Rand’s books is pret­ty instantly­for­ward. However right here’s one fac­toid value know­ing. Mick­ey Spillane (ref­er­enced in O’Con­nor’s let­ter) was once an enormous­ly pop­u­lar mys­tery author, who bought some 225 mil­lion books dur­ing his lifestyles­time. Accord­ing to his Wash­ing­ton Post obit, “his spe­cial­ty was once tight-fist­ed, sadis­tic revenge sto­ries, incessantly fea­tur­ing his alco­holic gumshoe Mike Ham­mer and a solid of evil­do­ers.” Crit­ics, appalled through the intercourse and vio­lence in his books, dis­overlooked his writ­ing. However Ayn Rand shield­ed him. In pub­lic, she mentioned that Spillane was once underneath­rat­ed. In her e book The Roman­tic Man­i­festo, Rand put Spillane in some unex­pect­ed com­pa­big apple when she wrote: “[Vic­tor] Hugo offers me the texture­ing of input­ing a cathedral–Dostoevsky offers me the texture­ing of input­ing a cham­ber of hor­rors, however with a pow­er­ful information–Spillane offers me the texture­ing of lis­ten­ing to a mil­i­tary band in a pub­lic park–Tolstoy offers me the texture­ing of an unsan­i­tary again­backyard which I don’t care to go into.”

All of this is going to turn that _____. We’ll permit you to fill within the clean.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Why Must We Learn Flan­nery O’Connor? An Ani­mat­ed Video Makes the Case

When Ayn Rand Col­lect­ed Social Secu­ri­ty & Medicare, After Years of Oppos­ing Ben­e­have compatibility Professional­grams

Christo­pher Hitchens Dis­pass over­es the Cult of Ayn Rand: There’s No “Want to Have Essays Advo­cat­ing Self­ish­ness Amongst Human Beings; It Calls for No Rein­power­ment”

Ayn Rand Helped the FBI Iden­ti­fy It’s A Received­der­ful Existence as Com­mu­nist Professional­pa­gan­da

Listen Flan­nery O’Connor Learn “A Just right Guy is Onerous to To find” (1959)

Ayn Rand Problems 13 Com­mand­ments to Movie­mak­ers for Mak­ing Just right Cap­i­tal­ist Films (1947)

Flan­nery O’Connor’s Satir­i­cal Automotive­toons: 1942–1945

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