Writers in The Habit of Being

There are lots of writers and books in The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor, selected and edited by Sally Fitzgerald (The Noonday Press, 1979; 1988). Most are the usual subjects of American literature: Henry James, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Katherine Anne Porter, Carson McCullers, Allen Tate, Eudora Welty. There are British, French, and other authors, too. One of the French authors is Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), who was an inspiration for the old priest in The Exorcist, written by William Peter Blatty. I won't cover very many authors here. Instead I'll just write about those who are of interest to readers and fans of weird fiction, science fiction, and fantasy--plus one more.

Hugh B. Cave (1910-2004) wrote for Weird Tales. In a letter to Robert Giroux (Sept. 29, 1960; p. 409), Flannery O'Connor mentioned that the Sister Superior of a Dominican congregation of nuns had written to "a man named Hugh Cave," asking him to write about the life a twelve-year-old girl who had died of cancer. He declined, saying that a Catholic author ought to do it, and so the Sister Superior approached Flannery to edit a manuscript that they had developed on their own. Where things went from there, I don't know. But it's interesting that a teller of weird tales is in her letters.

In a letter to Elizabeth McKee, dated July 16, 1952, Flannery O'Connor wrote: "A man named Martin Greenberg from the American Mercury wrote and asked me if I have any stories. I referred him to you." (p. 42) With Gunther Stuhlmann, Martin Greenberg worked as an associate editor at the American Mercury. The editor was William Bradford Huie. In the summer of 1952, the magazine changed hands, selling to a businessman named Russell Maguire. The editorial staff seems to have stayed on for a time. I have gone into this detail because there was a science fiction editor and publisher named Martin Greenberg (1918-2013). However, I haven't found anything to indicate that these two men were one and the same.

In her letters, Flannery O'Connor wrote about Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe. She was especially influenced by her reading of The Humorous Tales of Edgar Allan Poe. (pp. 98-99) The problem for me now is that there doesn't seem to have been a book by that title.

Her opinion of Ayn Rand is too good to pass up. On May 31, 1960, she wrote to Marryat Lee: "I hope you don't have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickie Spillane look like Dostoevsky." (p. 398)

Tennessee Williams is in The Habit of Being. He wrote one story for Weird Tales. So is Philip Wylie. He didn't, not even one. Wylie wrote science fiction, though, including an episode of The Name of the Game entitled "L.A. 2017," about a dystopian future. (The protagonist dreams rather than sleeps his way into the future.) I remember The Name of the Game and would like to see it again. I'm not sure that I ever will. Five hundred channels to look at and no Name of the Game.

The one more is Hollis Summers (1916-1987). As far as I know, he never wrote any works of fantasy, science fiction, or weird fiction. He did, however, write a crime novel called The Case of the Bludgeoned Teacher (originally Teach You a Lesson, 1956) under a pseudonym, Jim Hollis. Summers was a novelist, short story writer, poet, and teacher. He was one of a group of authors who taught at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, in the 1960s and afterwards. In addition to Hollis Summers, they included Jack Matthews (1925-2013), Daniel Keyes (1927-2014), Walter Tevis (1928-1984), and Cecil Hemley (1914-1966). I have a friend who lives outside of Athens on the site of an old strip-mine operation. When she was young, her parents would have people over to the house. I asked her about some of the Ohio University authors. She remembers meeting Hollis Summers. "What kind of a person was he?" I asked. "Oh, he was a fantastic person," she said. By the way, Cecil Hemley was the director of the Noonday Press, which published The Habit of Being years after his premature death.

Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) knew Hollis Summers. In a letter to John Hawkes, dated September 10, 1963, she wrote: "I remember Hollis Summers and his wife very well and always liked them. They usually send me a poem at Christmastime with no return address on it but I think they are somewhere like Kentucky or Ohio." (pp. 537-538) At the time she wrote, Summers was not only "somewhere like . . . Ohio," he was actually in Ohio, teaching at Ohio University.

I received The Habit of Being as a Christmas gift. I backtracked from the index in search of the letter to Betty Hester. But I also looked for other authors, and I was pleased to find mention of Hollis Summers. I read his novel City Limit (1948) last year and enjoyed it. But I was even more pleased to read that he sent Christmas cards to Flannery O'Connor, for I have some of his Christmas cards, too, or at least the verse from his Christmas cards. I found them in copies of his books that I bought at a boutique in Athens. What a strange and wonderful thing it is to find these connections, especially when you can talk to a person who knew an author, or find something in your own life that was once in a book, or something in a book that is part of your own life. (My exact birthdate is in a book by Frederick Forsyth. I have never encountered such a thing before.) I suppose books and reading will one day go by the wayside as we rush into our illiterate and idiotic future. But at least we still have these things now. They of the future will have no idea what they missed.

Original text copyright 2026 Terence E. Hanley