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Kinney provides an indexed, annotated bibliographic guide to Flannery O'Connor's personal library...
Kinney provides an indexed, annotated bibliographic list of books and other items included in Flannery O'Connor's personal library. The Library was given to the Ina D. Russell Library at Georgia College & State University by her mother, Regina Cline O'Connor.

Bibliographic annotations include: whether the book is in hardcover or paperback; publication and series information; publication or copyright date; and, whether editorial information is included.

The annotations are followed by descriptive acknowledgements of markings in the book contents, including: whether O'Connor had signed or dated the book; and, whether any marginal linings, marinalia, underlining, check-marks, or asterisks are visible. (States that O'Connor's original form and spelling were preserved.)

Notes that her magazines and journals are listed separately.

Also includes references to reviews that she wrote on a particular book and whether any mention of the book, "its preparation, publication, reception, or the ideas in it and O'Connor's evaluation of it," are in any of O'Connor's letters published in The Habit of Being, edited by Sally Fitzgerald.

Provides insight into O'Connor's reading interests from excerpts of letters to "A" [Elizabeth "Betty" Hester] and Janet McKane. Reports how she acquired the volumes included, notes significant gaps in the collection, and suggests titles of more than thirty books that the compiler (Kinney) is certain that she would have used extensively.

Suggests that the contents of the Library reflects O'Connor's "staunch Catholicism" and supports those who view her as a "keen amateur theologian." Focuses on marginalia and various other underlined and penciled portions of text that serve as "direct signposts" to help readers map out O'Connor's "aesthetic theory."

R. Neil Scott / Middle Tennessee State University
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Informally instructed as a young man by Southern author, Flannery O'Connor, Macleod, a young Presbyterian minister, was also a pall bearer at O'Connor's funeral. O'Connor was a devout Catholic. The two of them often had theological discussions and went over religious ideas as well as writing ideas and methods.

.. In these theological and doctrinal discussions, some topics they agreed on, while some they did not. The two felt that where they did not agree doctrinally, nevertheless, discussing the topics helped deepen their understanding of the topics and of each other. (O'Connor, a loyal Catholic, invariably stayed within the bounds of the Church but was very much aware of the common ground of Christianity shared by both of them.)

O'Connor was very much for ecumenical dialogue and discussion. She wanted the author, a Presbyterian minister, to be pall bearer at her funeral not only as a friend but as a Protestant minister. She felt this helped to give out the right ecumenical signals without compromising the faith..

A foreword to this book contains some remarks and quotes from O'Connor to the young author. The book was done as a memorial tribute to O'Connor in 1983. ... Read more

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Return to Good and Evil: Flannery O'Connor's Response to Nihilism is a superb guide to the works of Flannery O'Connor; and like O'Connor's stories themselves, it is captivating, provocative, and unsettling. Edmondson organizes O'Connor's thought around her principal concern, that with the nihilistic claim that _God is dead_ the traditional signposts of good and evil have been lost. Edmondson's book demonstrates that the combination of O'Connor's artistic brilliance and philosophical genius provide the best response to the nihilistic despair of the modern world--a return to _good and evil_ through humility and grace. ... Read more

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Flannery O'Connor scholars will find this book relevant and useful --
With the enormous influence that Flannery O'Connor's works have had on students, scholars and other writers, this volume is a welcome addition to O'Connor scholarship.

The teaching role of Edmondson's discussions of O'Connor's perspectives on good and evil and of her views of the intervention of God's grace in the affairs of humankind, are especially insightful. His views on the pervasiveness of humankind's descent into nihilism are very thought-provoking.

Readers of this book--just like readers of Flannery O'Connor's works--may find themselves affected by the content far more than they might imagine. ... Read more

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Every word pure protein, no filler
She's good, one of those sardonic southern writers who couldn't write a bad sentence if you held her feet to the fire or offered a bribe.She's got that fine ear that condenses our common language and turns it into near poetry. Every word pure protein, no filler. She fuses voice to people to place, like Grace Paley only Hood's people live in rural Georgia, tend to hunt, and Church sends its long shadow. So, imaginecross between Grace Paley and Flannery O'Connor. THrow in the terse existentialism of the blues.Richer language than Raymond Carver, or Tobias Wolfe but part of that short story renaissance that started in the Eighties.She's one of the best. ... Read more

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My book aims to help readers understand and appreciate O'Connor's novels and short stories.It weaves together her "place"-Milledgeville, Georgia; her purpose-to write a good story; and her preoccupations-belief, death, grace, and the devil. I explicate the influences that give depth to her fiction:her understanding and respect for the mores of the South ( including relationships between races), the books she read and marked that reveal links to her own philosophy and literary skill, and her deep religious convictions.Today, our encounters with the "other," the different one, elicit fear and lead to violence from us, as individuals and as nations.For O'Connor, the "other" is a distorted image of God.Her stories show how this distortion calls forth God's grace, and the violence in her stories enables her characters to discover their true selves.Her unique blend of talent and convictions allows her to create stories with long extensions of meaning.In our era of "quick reads," O'Connor's fiction leads us to a more contemplative mode of reading.When we finish one of her stories, we have experienced the intellectual pleasure of a finely-wrought artifact, and we also have much to think about: belief, death, grace, and the devil. Not a bad combination, that! ... Read more

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Flannery O'Connor was working on Everything That Rises Must Converge at the time of her death. This collection is an exquisite legacy from a genius of the American short story, in which she scrutinizes territory familiar to her readers: race, faith, and morality. The stories encompass the comic and the tragic, the beautiful and the grotesque; each carries her highly individual stamp and could have been written by no one else.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (28)

Jewish Mothers in the Protestant South
Some of these stories feature mothers who out of love and ambition destroy their sons. You might marvel that so many southern mothers were secretly Jewish!
The best stories are ALL THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE and REVELATION in which southern social attitudes are subjected to Christian analyses.

from the greatest short-story author ever
This is exactly why Flannery O'Conner is my all-time favorite short story author. After completing each of her amazing stories, the reader gets a feeling of having witnessed literary genius, of being washed over with the most brilliant and fascinating of symbols, the truest view of human character, and the feeling that one has touched the sacred. The collection has many similar themes, including the arrogance of the young meeting the idiocy of the old, the meeting of the generations, the epic battle of the family, the challenge of race and a changing world, religion and myth--carrying warped and confusing truth and depth--made into reality, always done with a beautiful and horrific meeting of the sacred and profane, of the grotesqueness of the ordinary, of the extraordinary, the truth, the wisdom, and the beauty that somehow exists in this pathetic existence. And, of course, always imbued with O'Connor's unique brand of dark comedy. Grade: A+

LOST fans! Read this!
"What lies in the shadow of the statue?" LOST fans! Get a hold of the copy of the book Jacob was reading when Locke fell out of the window. Pay attention to the story "The Lame Shall Enter First" where a doctor named 'Sheppard' must fix patients - to a fault and at great personal cost.
O'Connor has a unique voice that is timeless. She focuses on irony and on a characters' flaws, accentuating the circumstances that could have brought change, if they were humble enough to look at their lives honestly. Nine short stories.

There's More Here than Southern Catholicism
According to most critical opinion, Flannery O'Connor was one of the greatest writers of fiction that America has ever produced.When it comes to Southern writers, they say, she's right up there with the Nobel prizewinner William Faulkner, and if she had lived there's no telling what brilliance might have come from her.

I don't necessarily doubt any of this.The thing that bugs me is that those same critical opinions spend all kinds of time reflecting on the fact that O'Connor's stories, being the work of a Southern Catholic, are all about God and His grace, although her notion of grace is more scary than anything else.This leaves a strong temptation to read her work, including the stories in "Everything That Rises Must Converge", looking for the religious elements.You can find yourself altogether missing whatever else might be in the work that way.

So excuse me for a moment if I back up and cover the work on the page.We'll get back to the discomforts of grace later.

What struck me most about these characters is how angry and/or frightened they are, partly because their society is changing under their feet and partly for more personal reasons.Some seek to take a less patronizing attitude toward blacks and poor whites, others want to pretend that nothing has changed.Some resist urbanization, others embrace it.Some cleave to the old-time religion and others find substitutes.Parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren, husbands and wives struggle with their roles.Eventually, it seems, everyone in these stories crashes headlong into his or her opposite number and the result is usually violent.

The title story is a good example - a woman on the far side of middle age takes a bus to the YMCA for a reducing class and brings her adult son along because she's uneasy about traveling alone.The son finds this a horrible imposition, as he finds most of his mother's actions and demands; he has had a college education and her class consciousness drives him crazy, especially since the family no longer has the means it once did.A black woman wearing the same hat as the mother gets on the bus, a circumstance that the son tries to use to embarrass the mother.She doesn't seem to notice.Instead, she allows herself to be charmed by the black woman's little boy and tries to give him a coin.I'll leave the upshot of all this for you to find out, but although the events are pretty simple, the underlying meaning of it all goes very deep.

As a matter of fact, that very depth may have been O'Connor's greatest gift.Her narrative, even when describing the character's inner lives, remains simple and mostly declarative (so much for the comparison with Faulkner), and this very simplicity sets off amazing echoes in your mind.Many of her titles do the same - "The Endless Chill," "The Lame Shall Enter First," and of course "Everything That Rises Must Converge".That last phrase comes from a writing by the turn-of-the-century Catholic writer Teilhard de Chardin, a notion he offered as a sort of alternative to evolution.It signifies that any being reaching toward consciousness approaches a single point as it does so, that point being God.Which seems like a rather hopeful process, except that if everything does converge on God, there are bound to be a few bumps.

This is a good place to return to O'Connor's religious angle on her stories and on life.She said that a serious writer would consider a story in which everything is explained - in which the characters have sufficient motivation for what they do - to be too simple to bother with, and that it's only after an author has seen to character motivation, plot structure, language, description and all such virtues that a story has a chance of revealing any of that necessary sense of mystery.When it comes to life, she said that although we are only saved by grace (undeserved favor), grace changes us and change is always uncomfortable or even frightening.These ideas certainly explain the bumps mentioned above, not to mention the violence.In other words, whether you agree that a good story leaves some matters unexplained, or that grace is necessary for salvation, or any of O'Connor's other ideas, at the very least she worked to express herself as completely as she could in the short time she had.The rest of us could do worse than emulate her.

But what about the stories themselves?Someone once said that whereas some stories go down smooth and contribute little, like cotton candy, other stories must be thoroughly chewed and nourish us well, like steak.By now it's pretty clear where Flannery O'Connor lands on that continuum.Her characters find humiliation, disappointment, fear and sometimes death.They lose homes, self-respect, parents and even children.These stories are hard to take.Then again, whatever they go through, these people sometimes learn something valuable even if they're not always aware of it.

This is where that critical emphasis or the author's religious beliefs comes in handy.If her great theme is, as it seems to be, the hidden workings of grace in human life, it makes a certain amount of sense that neither the characters nor the reader can perceive it right away.If nothing else, finding the meaning here is an intriguing intellectual exercise, but of course it's also a challenge to have more respect for these characters than your prejudices might otherwise allow.

For all her virtues, Flannery O'Connor is emphatically not for everyone - I haven't quite figured out whether she's for me.I'm nevertheless grateful that there was someone out there who dared me to make up my mind about that.It's kind of nice to run across a writer who doesn't beg for your approval.

Benshlomo says, Good friends will fight with you if necessary.

I wish the stories didn't end
These exceptional stories--full of memorable characters, rich with memorable relationships--seem to me [just an amateur reader "(one) who just reads and runs"]--to wreck at the end. One doesn't need the murder or the stroke or the suicide that tries to tidy up each ending. The real stuff--what ordinary people tragically do to ordinary people in an ordinary day--tells everything. ... Read more

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"Lord, I'm glad I'm a hermit novelist," Flannery O'Connor wrote to a friend in 1957. Sequestered by ill health, O'Connor spent the final thirteen years of her life on her isolated family farm in rural Georgia. During this productive time she developed a fascination with fourth-century Christians who retreated to the desert for spiritual replenishment and whose isolation, suffering, and faith mirrored her own. In Flannery O'Connor, Hermit Novelist, Richard Giannone explores O'Connor's identification with these early Christian monastics and the ways in which she infused her fiction with their teachings. Surveying the influences of the desert fathers on O'Connor's protagonists, Giannone shows how her characters are moved toward a radical simplicity of ascetic discipline as a means of confronting both internal and worldly evils while being drawn closer to God. Artfully bridging literary analysis, O'Connor's biography, and monastic writings, Giannone's study explores O'Connor's advocacy of self-denial and self-scrutiny as vital spiritual weapons that might be brought to bear against the antagonistic forces she found rampant in modern American life. ... Read more

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Super, Anne Panning!
Anne Panning explores American life from all points of view: estranged tourist, new widow, an ovulating hopeful, budding entrepreneur, a college-aged victim of his broken family.It is not only the American life that Panning divulges, but the tiny tragedies and tiny victories of life itself.It is a refreshing read.Her characters are real, but in strange situations: riding in a car with a mini-horse and a lemur, frog-leg hunting with husband and sister.There is a real sense of displacement and loneliness, but not without the naturally-occuring humor that comes with life.It wasn't just the interesting props that kept me reading, it was the emotion.In a word: poignant! ... Read more

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Flannery O'Connor's deep Catholic faith permeated her writing, sometimes in unexpected ways. Indeed, her very imaginative and sometimes grotesque characters were often searching for redemption, many seeking God's grace through unusual, even bizarre means. Flannery O'Connor used many tools in crafting her work, especially the use of irony and the darker dimensions of humor. She strongly opposed the increased secularism of the modern world, and what she saw as its pervasive nihilism.

George Kilcourse, Jr., uses Flannery O'Connor's correspondence with her friends and associates to help define her approach to writing, and to give insight into her literary characters. Her roots in the deep South color much of her work.

This book provides important insights into the life, work, and faith of Flannery O'Connor. It will be ideal for use in college theology or literature classes, although the general reader will also benefit from it. Indeed, anyone wishing to explore the religious dynamic in O'Connor's writing will appreciate this fascinating book. ... Read more

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Provides a photographic context to O'Connor's art and life...
Offers eighty-nine black-and-white photographs intended to provide readers with a visual perspective of O'Connor's fictional world.

The photographs present typical middle-Georgia scenes, including: house trailers, signs with fundamentalist slogans, junk yards, "articial niggers," Stone Mountain, old barns, country stores and a "pig parlor."

Features a number of photographs of O'Connoresque individuals relaxing, socializing, worshipping, or working in agricultural settings along with photographs of the interior and exterior of O'Connor's homes in Milledgeville and on the nearby family farm, Andalusia.

Includes a twenty-page introduction to O'Connor's life preceding the main body of photographs, along with an additional twenty-one photographs of Flannery, her parents and friends.

R. Neil Scott / Middle Tennessee State University
... Read more

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According to Sykes, the fiction of Flannery O Connor and Walker Percy provides occasions for divine revelation. He traces their work from its common roots in midcentury southern and Catholic intellectual life to show how the two adopted different theological emphases and rhetorical strategies O Connor building to climactic images, Percy striving for dialogue with the reader as a means of uncovering the sacramental foundation of the created order. Through sustained readings of key texts, Sykes focuses on the intertwined themes of revelation, sacrament, and community. By disclosing how O Connor and Percy made aesthetic choices based on their Catholicism and their belief that fiction by its very nature is revelatory, Sykes demonstrates that their work cannot be seen as merely a continuation of the historical aesthetic that dominated southern literature for so long. ... Read more

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Flannery O'Connor has been studied and lauded under many labels: the Southern author whose pen captured the soul of a proud region struggling to emerge out of racism and poverty, the female writer whose independent spirit and tragically short life inspired a generation of women, the Catholic artist whose fiction evokes themes of sin and damnation, mercy and redemption. Now, and for the first time, The Abbess of Andalusia affords us an in-depth look at Flannery O'Connor the believer. In these pages you will come to know Flannery O'Connor not only as a writer and an icon, but as a theologian and apologist; as a spiritual director and a student of prayer; as a suffering soul who learned obedience and merited grace through infirmity; and truly, as the Abbess of her own small, but significant, spiritual house. For decades Flannery O'Connor the author has touched her readers with the brilliance of her books. Now be edified and inspired by the example of her life. ... Read more

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A gem of a book
This is a gem of a book on Flannery O'Connor's "Spiritual Journey" that will energize one's own spiritual quest.Lorraine V. Murray's referring to O'Connor as "The Abbess of Andalusia" is truly inspired.Like an abbess shepherding her nuns, O'Connor has a genuine concern for the spiritual growth of her readers as they react to her tumultuous stories of redemption.She is compassionately involved in corresponding with her followers seeking greater spiritual depth.Visitors to her farm at Andalusia where she lives with her mother come into the presence of honesty, integrity, and faithfulness to her Catholic beliefs. Murray movingly explores all facets of O'Connor's life and interests, and in the process the reader will be treated to wonderful spiritual insights on such topics as the Communion of Saints and grace in suffering.What ismost amazing is that in spite of being handicapped by the debilitating disease of lupus from which she died at age thirty-nine, Oj'Connor lived a fully abundant life as Christ promised.This is a portrait of a life that truly shows the wonders and beauty of being made in the image of God.

A great help in understanding Flannery O'Connor and making me interested in her fiction
Lorraine Murray has done a splendid job of giving us a view of Flannery O'Connor which skillfully reveals the author's spiritual journey through her writing and life. Most of us are at least vaguely aware that O'Connor wrote what is often called Southern gothic stories. As such, her stories often feature the uncomfortable and grotesque, although O'Connor insisted that her stories always have a very Catholic core.

I must admit that I am one of the many who has merely dipped my toe into O'Connor's work and after finding it both difficult and uncomfortable had determined to let it strictly alone. However, this book has changed my mind. Murray does enough explication of various stories as she traces O'Connor's career that I was left interested despite myself in exploring her stories again. Believe me, this is no small accomplishment.

The only thing I was missing in this book was the recommendation of a book that would help in tapping into O'Connor's stories, especially for those of us who are uninitiated into the world of critical reading and symbolism that they seem to require. However, Murray does use some key stories (with spoilers) to make points about O'Connor's spirituality and perhaps that is guide enough.

Highly recommended. ... Read more

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To read Curled in the Bed of Love is to feel the incessant tug between devotion and desire that can unmake even the closest couple. These eleven stories are set in the San Francisco Bay Area, and in true Left Coast style, Catherine Brady's characters are as resolute in evading middle-class conformity as they are in clinging to their illusions about love. And while they never shy from paying their dues, they can't help but wonder sometimes if their choices have at last accrued too high a cost. What lies in the bed of love, with women and men curled sometimes in repose, sometimes in a defensive knot, are failed dreams, reproofs, ambitions, and stubborn beliefs. Always, mortality threatens the lovers' embrace. In the title story, Jim and his HIV-positive partner contend with an illness that has fueled their love but also threatens to consume it. In some stories, an outsider exposes the frailty of a relationship. Claire, who's opted for a steady marriage in "The Loss of Green," is both stirred and repelled by the advances of her former mate Sam, a radical environmentalist with a predatory need to reassert his claim on her. And in "Behold the Handmaid of the Lord," Debbie, compelled to translate a brief affair with her cousin's fiancé into a profound transgression, comes clean on a sleazy national talk show.

All of Brady's stories are gritty and unflinching in their gaze, yet lyrical and rich in the imagery of stasis and change--an empty house too long on the market, a pair of kayakers riding out a patch of rough sea, a greenhouse in which the orchid blooms only suggest the darting vitality of butterflies and birds. There is much to learn in these tales of flawed but good people working hard to hold their lives together. ... Read more

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Flannery O'Connor is one of the great American short story writers whose subjects are the duality of the Deep South and her Catholic faith. O'Connor once referred to A Good Man is Hard to Find as 'nine stories about original sin'. Combining a deft comic sensibility with the grotesque and tragic, they are stories in which characters lead lives of brutal poverty and fierce cruelty; where ordinary events can tip over into misfortune, violence and despair. ... Read more

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Tough Issues About Tough People Addressed in Tough Time [61]
A candid warning must be delivered: this is not a book for the timid. These stories resonate with horror and violence.

The concepts of violence are the common thread.Thankfully, O'Connor spares us the detailing of the violent acts.The ruminations about the same are as far as the reader must go.

In the first story - "A Good Man is Hard to Find" -innocent women and children are murdered without explanation or reason. The second and sixth stories- "The River" and "The Artificial Nigger" - delve with humiliation of the young and naive. The third and ninth stories- "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" and "Good Country People" - deal with mistrust and theft of the not-so-young and naive. And, then the losers of Darwinism are outlined in the fifth, eighth and tenth stories - "A Temple of the Holy Ghost", "A Late Encounter With The Enemy", and "The Displaced Person" - where adults are mistreated by societal norms.

Harsh results for those who "did nothing to deserve it" are too common in these stories.Trickling with southern dialect - much like Faulkner, Morrison or many of the other 20th century southern greats - this book phonetically spells their spokenwords so as to deliver the reader to the point where one can almost taste the collard greens and grits.

After reading the first book, I ran to the internet to see who was first - "Deliverance" or this book as each depicts southern white men in a worst light - ignorant (maybe illiterate) murderers without reason who jump out of the woods with shotguns in hand. In "Deliverance", Dickey allowed good to prevail. O'Connor does quite the contrary. O'Connor's story precedes Dickey's novel by 15 years.

To those who prefer romance novels and lighter reading, this is not the cluster of stories which I would recommend. These stories do not touch uponlight reading which concern fun concepts.
I like some harsh issues in literature.But, even these stories may have been more than I had bargained for.

But, I love southern literature - so I am biased to decry how much I enjoyed these stories. And, even those who less adore southern culture or literature would have to acknowledge this author's literary skill or talent.

If you have not the time for Faulkner in the immediate future, read a few of these stories.If you like them, you will probably enjoy Faulkner.

Oddball prophets caught in the web they wove themselves.
They are misfits, wanderers, and souls searching for faith and absolution. Many of them are, to one extent or another, hypocrites; others are almost unbelievably naive. All of them are Southerners -- and yet, even the most outlandish among Flannery O'Connor's protagonists come across as entirely believable, complex characters whom, regardless of location, you might expect to come across in your own travels, too; and there is no telling how such an encounter would turn out.

Of course, you would hope it does not prove quite as disastrous as the title story's chance meeting of a family taking a wrong turn (on the road as much as figuratively) and the self-proclaimed Misfit haunting that particular area of Georgia; which culminates in a bizarre conversation, the failure of communication underneath which only adds to the reader's growing feeling of helplessness in view of impending doom. And such a sense of irreversible destiny pervades many a story in this collection; yet, while as in O'Connor's writing in general, her and her protagonists' Catholic faith plays a dominant role in the course of the events, that course is not so much brought about by the hand of God as by the characters' own acts, decisions, judgments and prejudices.

Freakish as they are, O'Connor's (anti-)heroes are meant to be prophets, messengers of a long forgotten responsibility, as she explained in her 1963 essay "The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South:" their prophecy is "a matter of seeing near things with their extensions of meaning and thus of seeing far things close up." Often, she uses names, titles and items of every day life and imbues them with a new meaning in the context of her stories; this collection's title story, for example, is named for a blues song popularized by Bessie Smith in the late 1920s, and a cautionary road sign commonly seen in the 1950s ("The Life You Save May Be Your Own") becomes the title and motto of a story about a wanderer's encounter with a mother and her handicapped daughter who take him in, only to use that purported charity to their own advantage - at the end of which, predictably, nobody is the better off. Indeed, the endings of O'Connor's stories are as far from your standard happy ending as you can imagine; and while you cannot help but develop, early on, a premonition of doom, most of the time the precise nature of that doom is anything but predictable.

"A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories" was Flannery O'Connor's first published collection of short stories; yet, by the time these stories appeared (nine of the ten were published in various magazines between 1953 and 1955 before their inclusion in this 1955 collection) she was already an accomplished writer, with not only a novel under her belt ("Wise Blood," 1952) but also, and significantly, a master's thesis likewise consisting of a collection of short stories, entitled "The Geranium and Other Stories" (1947; first published as a collection in 1971's National Book Award winning "The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor," although several of those stories had likewise been published individually before). Two of the stories included in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" count among O'Connor's six winners of the O'Henry Award for Short Fiction ("The Life You Save May Be Your Own" and "The Circle in the Fire," again an exploration of insincerity, half-hearted charity and its exploitation); and the collection as a whole, even more than her first novel, quickly established her as a masterful storyteller, endowed with vision, an unfailing sense for language and a supreme feeling for the use of irony; all of which have long since placed her firmly in the first tier of 20th century American authors.

Flannery O'Connor died, at the age of 39, of lupus, an inflammatory disease which in less severe forms may not be more than an (albeit substantial) nuisance, but which proved fatal in her case as well as that of her father before her. Her literary career, almost the sole focus of her life from the moment that she was diagnosed onwards, was thus cut short way before her time. Yet, to this day her writing holds a unique position in contemporary literature; and "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" is an excellent place to start exploring her work.

Also recommended:
Eudora Welty : Stories, Essays & Memoir (Library of America, 102)
Eudora Welty : Complete Novels: The Robber Bridegroom, Delta Wedding, The Ponder Heart, Losing Battles, The Optimist's Daughter (Library of America)
Flannery O'Connor : Collected Works : Wise Blood / A Good Man Is Hard to Find / The Violent Bear It Away / Everything that Rises Must Converge / Essays & Letters (Library of America)
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter/Reflections in a Golden Eye/The Ballad of the Sad Cafe/The Member of the Wedding/The Clock Without Hands (Library of America)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Perennial Modern Classics)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Universal Legacy Series) ... Read more

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Winner of the 1986 Flannery O Connor Award for Short Fiction

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Wilbur Gray Falls in Love with an Idea: Working with Story Time
Philip F. Deaver's short story about a midlife crisis and one man's profound self-doubt, "Wilbur Gray Falls in Love with an Idea," is unified by a technique, or narrative structure, that juxtaposes a series of sequential present actions with a series of equally sequential memories; a basic flashback construction. What is interesting and unique is how Deaver reinforces the technique by employing alternating patterns of verb tense shifts; from the present tense of the story's "now" to simple past, then back to present, and so on. Exploring how the story world of Wilbur Gray is constructed, and then how the story begins to unfold, uncovers Deaver's mastery of controlling time in narrative. The analysis is of particular significance for students of narrative art.
The opening sentence, delivered in present tense, inserts the reader directly into the protagonist's thoughts; and, knowing any two facts clustered around a pronoun begin to generate character in a reader's mind (Delany 77), Deaver writes: "When I run, like now, I head down Court Street because of its grassy boulevard" (213). The next two sentences in the story are descriptive, and longer to deliberately contrast with the first. They are sprinkled with concrete, specific nouns, which serve to solidly ground readers in a vivid sense of place; a quiet, small town in central Illinois, perhaps a University town.
Paragraph two begins with the revelation of Wilbur Gray's state of mind. "I've been battling depression this whole summer" (213). An excellent "hook line." Readers ask immediately, why? The answer is not delayed. "It's the price I pay in middle life for living lies and harboring secrets" (213). This is the "through line" of the story. The theme is now set, the conflict defined. What is Wilbur Gray doing about it? "I've waged the battle with daydreams ..." (213). And, "... I've learned to depend on the ... helpful practice of running six miles a day, rain or shine" (213).
The third paragraph slips readers into the first flashback, and first verb shift. "I remember, for instance, Ann Hollander, in church nearly twenty years ago ..." (213). "Ann sat in the stained-glass shadows of her father ..." (214).
Deaver approaches the creation of story as a problem to be solved. The discerning reader/writer will spot the particular problem in this story, and Deaver's ingenious solution, by the end of paragraph three.
To illustrate the technical story problem, consider how a less talented writer might have begun this tale before running into a brick wall. Suppose the less talented writer is somewhat conventional in thought, as the less talented usually are. Wanting to write the exact same story he begins tapping away on the laptop:
When I ran, like then, I headed down Court Street because of its grassy boulevard. Our blinkered young author is perfectly happy with this first line. After all, most stories use the simple past as the story now. He taps a couple of descriptive sentences, then begins paragraph two. I'd been battling depression that whole summer. It was the price I'd paid for living lies and harboring secrets. I'd waged the battle with daydreams .... I'd learned to depend on the ... helpful practice of running six miles a day, rain or shine.
Ready for paragraph three - Bam! Our novice writer slams into the brick wall. He writes: I remembered, for instance Ann Hollander, in church twenty years ago ... Ann had sat in the stained-glass shadows of her father ....
The impediment is the awkward use of the past perfect tense, the word "had," which is the customary technique of introducing flashback. Throw a couple of "hads" in the prose and then return to simple past. The reader gets it. Sure. Yet, in the example above all the texture of Deaver's story has just been ripped to shred. The essence destroyed. Were the neophyte writer to continue alternating the present action with flashback in past perfect all immediacy would be lost, the story would be completely flat. Uninspired. In order for the scenes to play right, for the time sequences to work, this story has to be written in present tense!
Deaver's technique of employing alternating patterns of verb tense shifts, from present tense to simple past, gives this story texture and depth, tightly braids the various themes (e.g. the loss of youth, marital failure, and dysfunctional relationships to name a few) and demonstrates how a master writer confronts a time problem in story structure, thinks it through, and delivers the perfect, near invisible solution.

Arcola Girls.... Award Winner. Truthful and could be any Midwest Town
OK... This hits close to home.The author grew up in my home town.I dated Arcola Girls too... Two of them to be exact. The author, grew up and graduated high school with my mom so I can almost taste and smell these stories in my mind.On the verge of another "Cola War", I always love to read these stories.Central Illinois is wonderful place to grow up.Deaver captures what it is to grow up and flourish in the flat lands of the Embrass River valley.He can tell the tale and make me feel just like I am there.I have driven those same roads....American Grafitti for the Midwest!

Ingrum

This book should not be out of print
In Silent Retreats, Philip Deaver shows us what so few writers can: the sometimes delicate, sometimes harrowing, shifting of real emotion beneath the everyday.With deft turns of phrase and a sharp eye for tellingdetail, Deaver's haunted runners, love-struck teens, andoverstressedbusinessmen seeking serenity reflect to us things about ourselves we havealways known, but never stated.In the early-60s, small Illinois townsetting of "Arcola Girls", an O Henry Award winning story, Deaverdepicts with tenderness teenage love, longing, and loss.Why this book isout of print is beyond me. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Explores the mystery and religious vision that O'Connor presents to her readers and critics of her fiction...
John May discusses, in the Introduction, how O'Connor's "sense of tradition in both literature and religion has caused a revolution of sorts in the American literary world." States that because she forced "contemporary criticism to witness a seemingly anachronistic wedding of art and belief," critics have had to wrestle with whether or not they "strip O'Connor's art of its distinctive meaning if ... [they] fail to comprehend its grasp of mystery."

Suggests that, "in addition to the aesthetic problem posed by the currently disturbing religious vision that O'Connor dramatizes, she has raised the practical question of the very validity of our interpretation of fiction." Uses as an example, the scholarly dialogue among biblical scholars -- from a wide variety of denominational beliefs -- which has produced an enormous body of objective exegetical literature, and sees an opportunity for similar approach among literary scholars. Views her work as fertile ground for such efforts and urges that the "critical dialogue" found in the body of criticism surrounding her writings be used to produce a similar objective consensus regarding its interpretation as well. Follows with a description of the phases that such an objective consensus might require; then indicates the phases various scholarly efforts to interpret her fiction might fit.

Focuses in the first chapter, on reading O'Connor's fiction from the perspective that "the New Hermeneutic's understanding of 'word' [serves] as interpreter of human existence." Contends that her fiction "achieves its distinctive dramatic impact through the power of language to interpret its listener rather than through its need to be interpreted by him." Uses examples from her story, "Revelation," to point out how she uses words and gestures to articulate the meaning she intends for the reader to understand. Sees in O'Connor's work, a technique similar to that of Jesus's use of parables; readers extract -- from scenes of ordinary life in her fiction -- meaning and wisdom relevant to their "universal human existence."

Recognizes that O'Connor, like Jesus, conveys her themes "through a new configuration of existing language" that forces readers to take a fresh look at their world because it makes reality live for them in a new way. Proposes that, as a result, her readers not only read her work but participate in it as well.

Devotes the remainder of the text to readings and discussion of hermeneutic patterns seen in O'Connor's fiction which demonstrate and articulates opportunities for readers to participate in her depiction of reality. Considers, in the second chapter, her "uncollected stories," including: "The Geranium"; "The Barber"; "Wildcat"; "The Crop"; "The Turkey"; "The Train"; "The Peeler"; "The Heart of the Park"; "Enoch and the Gorilla"; "You Can't Be Any Poorer Than Dead"; "The Partridge Festival"; and "Why Do the Heathen Rage."

Follows, in the third chapter, with explications of stories in her two collections, Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man Is Hard to Find. The fourth chapter is devoted to a discussion of "hermeneutic patterns in [her novels] Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away."

The text includes bibliographic notes; a "Selected Bibliography of Textual Analyses"; and, a subject index.

Dr. May completed his Ph.D. at Emory University in Atlanta where he wrote his dissertation, "Apocalypse in the American Novel," in 1971. He also contributed numerous articles on O'Connor in such journals as "Religion & Literature," "The New Orleans Review," "Renascence," "New Catholic World," "The Flannery O'Connor Bulletin," and "Horizons."

R. Neil Scott / Middle Tennessee State University

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