The U.S. Postal Service on Friday began issuing the most recent addition to its Literary Artist series: A stamp honoring Iowa Writers' Workshop graduate Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964).
It's the second such honor for a writer who appears on Iowa City's Literary Walk — the first being a 32-cent stamp that was released in 1995 to honor playwright and Workshop graduate Tennessee Williams.
"(O'Connor) played a significant role in the history of the (Writers' Workshop)," said Loren Glass, a professor of English at the University of Iowa. "She mastered the short story, which then became the lodestar — or the standard — to which all creative writing students aspired."
But not all fans are happy with how the stamp visually depicts the author of such unsettling and darkly comic stories and novels.
New York Times editorial writer Lawrence Downes wrote a column earlier this week bemoaning how the image on the stamp — based on a photograph of O'Connor as a 20-year-old college student — looks more like Betty Crocker than like the literary powerhouse who died of lupus at age 39.
Glass said the image on the stamp is "not an inaccurate depiction of (O'Connor's) face," and the peacock feathers that surround the image definitely have come to be associated with the author's legacy.
Moreover, Glass said, given the complexity of O'Connor's work, there equally may have been complaints raised if the post office had chosen a more darkly comic — or, in O'Connor's words, "grotesque" — depiction of the author.
"She also was a deeply pious, religious, Catholic person," Glass said. "Her grotesques often had spiritual and revelatory meaning that were not always obvious to (readers.)."
"I'm thrilled that she is being recognized," said Iowa City novelist Larry Baker, "and the fact that she is being glamourized doesn't bother me."
Baker said his novel, "A Good Man," was heavily influenced by O'Connor — with its main character being based on the protagonist of O'Connor's short story, "The River."
"Everybody looks good on their stamp," Baker said. "That's the role of the post office. They want to sell stamps. ... If they wanted verisimilitude, they would take a photo and slap the number of it. ... If they make a stamp of me, I want it to show me looking better than I ever looked in life."
The O'Connor stamp costs 93 cents but, like a Forever stamp, it will always be equal in value to the price of a stamp for three-ounce piece of mail.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/st...ce-new-stamp-university-iowa-writer/28547325/
