Sep 21, 2020
Amy Alznauer is a polymath: she is a writer, arts collaborator, and an instructor of calculus and number theory at Northwestern University. Amy and Elise’s conversation touches on all of these things. Amy tells us about why she started writing picture-book biographies and what the genius of childhood can teach grown-up readers. She and Elise dive into Flannery O’Connor’s unpublished early novel, the grief that motivated O’Connor’s writing, and the recent controversy surrounding a New Yorker piece on O’Connor and racism. They wrap up the conversation by investigating what makes infinity simultaneously compelling and terrifying and the relationship between math and love.
Publishing in a pandemic
The work of imagination in biography writing
Reinvestigating childhood books
Grief, staring, and the grotesque in the work of Flannery O’Connor
Flannery O’Connor and racism
The difference between moral vision and piety
Thinking about the infinite
Mathematics and love
Links:
The Strange Birds of Flannery O’Connor by Amy Alznauer
The Boy Who Dreamed of Infinity by Amy Alznauer
The Zhou Brothers: A Story of Revolution and Art by Amy Alznauer
Mystery and Manners by Flannery O’Connor (includes the essay “The King of the Birds”)
“On Flannery O’Connor and Race: A Response to Paul Elie” by Amy Alznauer
“How Racist Was Flannery O’Connor?” by Paul Elie
“This Lonesome Place” by Hilton Als
“A South Without Myths” by Alice Walker
Benny Andrews illustrations and afterword for “Everything That Rises Must Converge”