Last week I was with some friends in Savannah. Again I went through O’Connor’s childhood home and imbibed more of O’Connor’s history and literary genius.

This week I reread her marvelous book Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose. In it are many gems, but here was one that is so revealing of O’Connor’s keen mind. She was addressing the dumbing-down and democritization of literary excellence:

The Christian writer will feel that in the greatest depth of vision, moral judgment will be implicit, and that when we are invited to represent the country according to survey, what we are asked to do is to separate mystery from manners and judgment from vision, in order to produce something a little more palatable to the modern temper. We are asked to form our consciences in the light of statistics, which is to establish the relative as absolute . . . . He will feel that any long-continued service to it will produce a soggy, formless, and sentimental literature, one that will provide a sense of spiritual purpose for those who connect the spirit with romanticism and a sense of joy for those who confuse that virtue with satisfaction. The storyteller is concerned with what is; but if what is is what can be determined by survey, then the disciples of Dr. Kinsey and Dr. Gallup are sufficient for the day thereof (30-31).

Boom!