i try to limit my intake of news but i figure art news is ok and i read about flannery o'conner being a racist and how the new documentary is at pains to cover for her and cite her greatness. i guess i did that reading her, i always thought she was reflecting racism, exposing racism, being ironic, as she seemed to be on religion. we read according to our own unconscious prejudices and or sensibilities, or humanity perhaps. anyway she was in the deep south racist country raised on racism. she could still be anti-racist, as people become ant-war. but what she said in a letter—

About the Negroes, the kind I don’t like is the philosophizing prophesying pontificating kind, the James Baldwin kind. Very ignorant but never silent. 

that's just stupid and hateful and a lie. 

well i read her so i don't have to now. it's disappointing anyway. now i know she was a racist. it doesn't matter too much because there are many many more books and writers to read, and we can read even racist ones, but as they are, not as they pretend or are pretended to be.