In a letter to Dr. Ted R. Spivey, a Georgia State University English professor with whom she carried on a thoughtful scholarly correspondence, Flannery O’Connor questions the moral integrity of the emerging beat movement and shares some of her own religious beliefs.
21 June 59
I haven’t read the article in PR or the beat writers themselves. That seems about the most appalling thing you could set yourself to do—read them. But reading about them and reading what they have to say about themselves makes me think that there is a lot of ill-directed good in them. Certainly some revolt against our exaggerated materialism is long overdue. They seem to know a good many of the right things to run away from, but to lack any necessary discipline. They call themselves holy but holiness costs and so far as I can see they pay nothing. It’s true that grace is the free gift of God but in order to put yourself in the way of being receptive to it you have to practice self-denial. I observe that Baron von Hügel’s most used words are derivatives of the word cost. As long as the beat people abandon themselves to all sensual satisfactions, on principle, you can’t take them for anything but false mystics. A good look at St. John of the Cross makes them all look sick.
You can’t trust them as poets either because they are too busy acting like poets. The true poet is anonymous, as to his habits, but these boys have to look, act, and apparently smell like poets.
I am reviewing a book…on Zen and Japanese culture. I took it up as a burden but I find it very interesting and it’s easy to see what attracts the beat people to Zen and where it leads them astray. If you took Christ, the Church, law and dogma out of Christianity, you would have something like Zen left. The beat people’s need for it witnesses to their need for the contemplative life. Do you think it would be possible for Protestantism ever to come up with a form of monasticism? I asked a divine from Mercer that and he said No. In any case if there could be such a thing in Protestantism, a lot of these people could be salvaged from Zen.
I don’t believe that if God intends for the world to be spared He’ll have to lead a few select people into the wilderness to start things over again. I think that what He began when Moses and the children of Israel left Egypt continues today in the Church and is meant to continue that way. And I believe all this is accomplished in the patience of Christ in history and not with select people but with very ordinary ones—as ordinary as the vacillating children of Israel and the fishermen apostles. This comes from a different conception of the Church than yours. For us the Church is the body of Christ, Christ continuing in time, and as such a divine institution. The Protestant considers this idolatry. If the church is not a divine institution, it will turn into an Elks Club…
FURTHER READING
To learn more about how contemporary writers and critics responded to beat poetry, click here.
To listen to a reading by Flannery O’Connor from the year this letter was written, click here.