No One Was Paying Any Attention to the Sky

<p class=ql-align-justify><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Although Flannery O'Connor is famously known as the hillbilly Thomist her love of the medieval did not take the form of a nostalgic refuge from the modern. O'Connor's vision of modernity relied heavily on three twentieth century thinkers who had a profound influence on her view of modernity: Romano Guardini Étienne Gilson and Gabriel Marcel. Ference walks us through four major problems Flannery O'Connor finds in the modern world: </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>the self as center of existence</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>a disregard for mystery</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>a general distrust of the concrete</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> and </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>the subordination of reason</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>. Ference brings these four problems and three thinkers to bear on O'Connor's weird and wonderful first novel </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Wise Blood </em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>helping us to make sense of a strange book and by extension the estranged world we all now inhabit. </span></p><p class=ql-align-justify></p><p class=ql-align-justify><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Father Ference (like O'Connor) excels at explaining complex ideas succinctly for non-specialists. You may not be familiar with some of the philosophers who shaped O'Connor's thinking and whom Father Ference explores here; others-Aquinas Descartes Spinoza-will be more familiar. Regardless you will come away from this work with a deeper understanding of the intellectual framework undergirding O'Connor's art and her protests against modernity. Ference's keen concluding analysis of her first novel </span><em style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Wise Blood</em><span style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> makes clear that O'Connor's interest in philosophy was more than dilettantism: she melded it seamlessly into her creative vision.</span></p><p class=ql-align-justify><strong style=background-color: rgba(0 0 0 0); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>-Christopher Scalia</strong></p><p></p>