Books, Arts & Manners: The Hen, the Goose, and the Wren

The Correspondence of Flannery O’Connor and the Brainard Cheneys, edited by C. Ralph Stephens (Mississippi, 220 pp., $24.95)

This book’s title is cumbersome and slightly misleading, too. The book contains an almost complete set of the letters Flannery O’Connor wrote to the Cheneys and the ones Brainard Cheney wrote to her; but the letters from Frances Neel Cheney are missing, since she did not keep copies of her own correspondence. Thus, even though more than half of Miss O’Connor’s 117 letters are addressed either solely to Fannie or to both husband and wife, Mrs. Cheney, a professional librarian, remains on the periphery of this exchange. And, even though the bulk of the 188 letters are written by Flannery O’Connor, the major figure in this correspondence, which spanned the last 11 years of Miss O’Connor’s life, is Brainard—or Lon—Cheney, a member of the Nashville literary circle who was also a reporter, political advisor, and speechwriter. It is his interests, his activities, and his personality that predominate.

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Loxley F. Nichols

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The Correspondence of Flannery O’Connor and the Brainard Cheneys, edited by C. Ralph Stephens (Mississippi, 220 pp., $24.95)

This book’s title is cumbersome and slightly misleading, too. The book contains an almost complete set of the letters Flannery O’Connor wrote to the Cheneys and the ones Brainard Cheney wrote to her; but the letters from Frances Neel Cheney are missing, since she did not keep copies of her own correspondence. Thus, even though more than half of Miss O’Connor’s 117 letters are addressed either solely to Fannie or to both husband and wife, Mrs. Cheney, a professional librarian, remains on the periphery of this exchange. And, even though the bulk of the 188 letters are written by Flannery O’Connor, the major figure in this correspondence, which spanned the last 11 years of Miss O’Connor’s life, is Brainard—or Lon—Cheney, a member of the Nashville literary circle who was also a reporter, political advisor, and speechwriter. It is his interests, his activities, and his personality that predominate.