TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction: O’Connor, McPherson, Berendt and the Literary Nature of Uncertain Times 1
BOOK ONE
Days of Midnight Madness 9
Antique Photo Album 55
BOOK TWO
On Exile, Genius, and James Alan McPherson 65
BOOK THREE
Greeting Flannery O'Connor at the Back Door of My Mind 87
Original Introduction Now an Afterword: Sensibilities of an Uncanny Nature 159
Acknowledgments 163
Appendix: Hitch Village and Us 165
Notes and Sources 171
Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind is a book written in the style of memoir essays for which the author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah has become well known. This literary approach allows him to share with readers compelling stories in which he explores the impact of works by celebrated authors James Alan McPherson, John Berendt, and Flannery O’Connor upon himself and American culture. The first Special Edition (ISBN 978-1-71668-481-4) of the title also features on its front and back covers original artwork by Aberjhani.
The stories pose timely questions which have come to be associated with what many are calling “America’s Reckoning” with its past and with citizens’ hopes for the country’s future. In particular, among other topics, they tackle these queries:
1) Does what many interpret as overt racism in writings by classic authors like O’Connor detract from the writings’ value as world literature for contemporary readers?
2) To what degree are such characterizations of O’Connor’s classic works accurate or erroneous?
3) Why did America’s first African-American winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction exile himself from his hometown of Savannah, Georgia, and what does that say about the complex nature of race relations in the city?
4) How and why did “Midnight madness” come to have such a powerful effect on Savannah following the publication of John Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil?
Various observers have presented some provocative thoughts on the above issues. A major difference between them and Aberjhani, however, is the latter’s connection to the subject authors not only as someone––like O’Connor and McPherson––born in Savannah, but as a fellow author included with them and Berendt in the celebrated travel anthology Literary Savannah. While seeking answers over a period of decades across America and around the world, he draws inspiration from some unexpected sources. They include: an “intuited conversation” with O’Connor herself, reggae music pioneer Bob Marley, Sufi educator and poet Jalaluddin Rumi, and authors Alice Walker, George Dawes Green, Ntozake Shange, and Toni Morrison.
The publication of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind comes at a time when citizens of the U.S. are reevaluating the roles which concepts of race, gender, and nationality have played in America’s history and are likely to play in its future. The three authors on which this volume focuses each addressed these subjects in their own stylistic ways long before the United States arrived at the boiling point it reached in 2020. And which also, arguably, spilled over into 2021 with the infamous attempted “insurrection” on January 6.
