Image by Jesse Hamm
In this excerpt, from from Mystery and Manners—a collection of O'Connor's unpublished essays and lectures—the writer is specifically addressing novelists with "Christian concerns" though the application is universal. This is from the essay The Fiction Writer & His Country (1957). Says she:
The novelist...will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may well be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When yo can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal means of talking to it; when you have to assume that it does not, then you have to make your vision apparent by shock—to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.
Unless we are willing to accept our artists as they are, the answer to the question, "Who speaks for America today?" will have to be: The advertising agencies.
Later, she quotes St. Cyril of Jerusalem:
The dragon sits by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon.
The creative field is not a place where safety and innovation go together. Fear is something we should push up against in order to stay fresh.
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