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August 9, 2009

lannery O’Connor was a pious woman

lannery O’Connor was a pious woman who lived with her mother on a farm in Georgia.

You’d never know it, though, from reading one of her short stories.

Written in Southern Gothic style, her 32 short stories and two novels (“Wise Blood” and “The Violent Bear It Away”) focus on life in the decaying South and highlight morally flawed characters.

“She treats fiction as an extreme sport,” said Kingston native Brad Gooch, author of what’s been touted as the first major or definitive biography of O’Connor, who died of lupus at age 39. “She was kind of a riddle.”

That’s what attracted Gooch to O’Connor’s writings when he was a teenager.

O’Connor’s characters included a religious enthusiast who seeks to establish a church without Christ, an escaped criminal who shoots a grandmother and a grandfather who kills his granddaughter with a rock.

“Her mind was wild,” Gooch said. “Her aunt Mary said ‘I don’t know where she found the characters she wrote about, but certainly not in this house!’ ”

The 57-year-old Wyoming Valley West High School graduate (class of 1969) has written more than 10 books as well as articles for various magazines since moving to New York City to attend Columbia University after his high-school graduation.

Gooch spent six years researching O’Connor for his book ‘Flannery,’ which was published in February by Little, Brown Book Group. He made trips to her hometown as well as the places in Connecticut and New York where she studied writing. He interviewed college classmates, family members and friends.

“What I always say with biographies is that the important thing is going to the places where the (person) you’re writing about lived.”

As a graduate student, Gooch wrote to O’Connor’s friend Sally Fitzgerald to discuss writing a biography on her.

“She wrote back and said, ‘Forget it. I’m doing it,’ ” he recalled.

But, when Fitzgerald died in 2000, no book was written.

Gooch got hold of O’Connor’s old letters and set out to define the novelist, who, if she were alive today, would be 84.

Besides O’Connor, Gooch wrote a biography about Frank O’Hara, a flamboyant poet who also died early, at 40.

“When I was a teenager in my early 20s, they were my two favorite writers,” he said.

But Gooch, who is also a poet, hasn’t focused his literary career on biographies.

His first novel, “Scary Kisses,” was based on his time as a model in Europe, which he says was a “dizzying experience.”

Another novel, “Finding the Boyfriend Within,” encourages gay men to find love within themselves and not necessarily search for a partner.

“Zombie 00” profiles a young man from Northeastern Pennsylvania heading to New York City to find his destiny.

And “Dating the Greek Gods” offers empowering messages on sex, love, creativity and wisdom.

“I was always attracted to doing different kinds of things rather than the same thing over and over,” Gooch said the day before leaving for a cruise to England on the “Queen Mary 2” ship to speak about his book.

In February, a review of “Flannery” ran on the front of the New York Times Sunday Book Review page.

“I wanted to write it in almost a novelistic fashion,” he said. “I think it’s readable. O’Connor was certainly very readable.”

“She became an iconic American literary figure,” Gooch said.

He says he fostered a love for writing early, recalling an Advanced Placement English class he took in high school.

“He would suggest paper topics to me and was very encouraging in that way,” Gooch said of his teacher at the time, Andrew Marko. “In retrospect, it was so advanced, what we were reading.”

Growing up in Kingston, Gooch worked at the Hoyt Library and was a member of his high school’s newspaper and yearbook staffs. “It was a very active time,” he said.

Nowadays, the author keeps busy teaching writing courses, writing novels and participating in Century Club activities.

The son of John Glenn and Bette Gooch, the author still returns to Northeastern Pennsylvania for visits, especially to see his mother, who now resides in Pittston. But he hasn’t forgotten about growing up on the West Side.

“Kingston is very much in my imagination and in my dreams,” he said.

Mike McGinley, a Times Leader staff writer, may be reached at 829-7127.

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