Flannery O'connor in Her Letters: "a Refugee from Deep Thought".

ONCE UPON A TIME, I spent a winter alone in a small, poorly heated apartment in Kyoto, Japan. My classes were over, students and colleagues had dispersed, and I had no friends and no place to go. When I awoke in the morning, it was 38 degrees inside the apartment. During the day, it rose to 45, with all three electric heaters going full blast. That winter I spent many days and every evening lying on my stomach on an old futon, wrapped in a cocoon of thick blankets and sweaters. I listened to French language tapes, read Faulkner and Dostoevsky and classical philosophy, but my greatest joy was reading Flannery O'Connor's letters. They are just right for dark, cold, and lonely nights abroad. Reading through the record of a truly noble life, the autobiography of an author whose deep humility would have prevented her from ever writing one as such, I was heartened and sustained by O'Connor's strength, humor, and vision. Although I never met or corresponded with her--I was 15 when she died--I felt that I had become one of her intellectual companions and, in some sense, a correspondent. Though hardly desperate, I was in rather dire straits. Like O'Connor, I came to see my life anew with each day that passed, as I think she did: continually, through her daily existence, her art, and her letters, she found new challenges and new depths of faith. As the record of a steadfast and heroic life of discovery and insight, O'Connor's letters brought me delight during that miserable time.