![]() ![]() ![]() There was something about ‘teen’ attached to anything that was repulsive to me. “I don’t remember how I meant to stop it. “When I was twelve I made up my mind absolutely that I would not get any older,” O’Connor wrote in 1956 to her friend Betty Hester, who had pointed out a childlike quality in her. He needed the people I guess and got them. Needing people badly and not getting them may turn you in a creative direction, provided you have the other requirements. He wrote all the time, one thing or another, mostly speeches and local political stuff. “My father wanted to write but had not the time or money or training or any of the opportunities I have had….Anyway, whatever I do in the way of writing makes me extra happy in the thought that it is a fulfillment of what he wanted to do himself.” In a month-long series of exchanges – a rare expression of her tender feelings towards her father – she stressed his likeability: “I suppose what I mean about my father is that he would have written well if he could have. ![]() “She said that she always wrote about ducks and chickens and she said she never wanted to hear about another duck or a chicken.” “When we were in the third grade, Sister Consalata used to give Mary Flannery a real hard time about her compositions,” recalled a classmate. ![]() Her self-confidence was clear in her bold act of calling her parents by their first names – they were “Regina” and “Ed” to her from early on. As far as pressuring went, she was quite capable of digging in her heels. There is no evidence that O’Connor’s childhood was troubled. ![]()
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