In the summer of 1948, twenty-three year old Flannery O'Connor
(1925-1964) arrived at Yaddo. She had just earned her M.F.A from the University of Iowa, where she was considered quiet, provincial, and extremely talented. That summer at Yaddo she proved to be every bit as talented as expected, but perhaps less shy. She befriended writer
Robert Lowell, who introduced her to the man who would become her
agent. But Lowell also introduced her to trouble. In February 1949,
Lowell charged that Executive Director Elizabeth Ames knowingly
harbored Communists at Yaddo, and demanded she be removed from office.
O'Connor joined Lowell, and their accusations unleashed a maelstrom in
New York City literary circles. Somehow, O'Connor managed to
disentangle herself from the ensuing fracas, seemingly unscathed. But
the short stories she penned in its immediate aftermath, such as "Enoch
and the Gorilla" and "A Good Man is Hard to Find," labored over themes
of morally ambiguous or flawed action, and the thirst for celebrityâor
at least, notorietyâthat comes with self-determination.Perhaps, then,
the ending to her chapter at Yaddo was not so clean as was imagined.