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From On Being-
There’s a common emotional vocabulary in the writings of Catholic women, a fierce devotion strangely coupled with a startling humility. This is ever-so-present in Flannery O'Connor's A Prayer Journal, recently published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
It's a wonderful book: unflinchingly honest, unfailingly wise, and immensely funny:
"What I am asking for is really very ridiculous. Oh Lord, I am saying, at present I am a cheese, make me a mystic, immediately. But then God can do that — make mystics out of cheeses."
Ms. O'Connor wrote this collection of prayers — letters really — to God as a student attending the Iowa Writers' Workshop in her twenties, around the time that her first short story was published in Accent magazine. She struggles with doubt and uncertainty, afraid that she will not produce another work worthy of publication, and asks God: "Please help me dear God to be a good writer and to get something else accepted."More here-
http://www.onbeing.org/blog/make-me-a-mystic-the-profound-honesty-of-flannery-oconnor/6143v
From The Telegraph-
Aldous Huxley and CS Lewis, both distinguished writers, died on November 22 1963; few took note of their passing. The assassination that day of President Kennedy overshadowed all other news. Commemoration of JFK on the 50th anniversary of the assassination next month will have the same effect, wall-to-wall coverage in the newspapers, on TV, radio and the social media. Huxley and Lewis may again struggle to get a look-in.
Of the two, Lewis is the better-known now, and so the more likely to receive media attention. This is a reversal of how it was once. In the Twenties Huxley was one of the brightest stars of English literature, Lewis a don scarcely known to anyone outside Oxford. Huxley’s early novels – Crome Yellow, Antic Hay, Those Barren Leaves, Point Counter Point – were witty, stimulating, provocative, and successful. In the Thirties he was better known and more admired than Evelyn Waugh. His dystopian novel, Brave New World, offered a nightmare vision of the future.
He was unusual among English novelists in being fascinated by ideas and by science – not surprisingly, because he was the grandson of the great Victorian scientist T H Huxley, known as “Darwin’s Bulldog”. He was also the author of sparkling and wide-ranging essays, and his reputation was international. The veteran French novelist, Michel Déon, says that, when he was young, Huxley was his “idol” . If at any time before the Second World War you had put Huxley and Lewis at either end of a see-saw, Huxley would have soared aloft, while Lewis remained grounded.
More here-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10406518/Why-Aldous-Huxleys-novels-could-outlast-those-of-CS-Lewis.html
