Customer Reviews (1)

Spivey explores the life and work of his friend, Flannery O'Connor...
Spivey describes meeting Flannery O'Connor in 1958 and offers impressions and details of their correspondence. Notes the belief she shared with T.S. Eliot and William Butler Yeats, that "a new dark age was about to descend upon mankind," and supports this view with Sally Fitzgerald's comment that, O'Connor "was, at times, a kind of modern sibyl." Remarks on her "profound emotional and visionary quality" and her "pessimism" rooted in "a Southern stoicism" adopted by pre-Civil War Southern gentry.

Explores, Flannery O'Connor's "intellectual life in the context of her life in the South." Identifies the three intellectual viewpoints O'Connor adhered to: "that of Southern Agrarianism, of a strictly orthodox Thomism, and of an apocalyptic Catholicism." Compares O'Connor to Walker Percy and finds her "both a profounder thinker and artist."

Notes O'Connor's attraction to "religious existentialists," such as Martin Buber and Gabriel Marcel and her use of the "rebellious individual" character in Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away.

Discusses her status as "a woman of letters" and comments on her portrayal as "a kind of recluse." States that James Joyce meant more to O'Connor "than any other writer," and that she turned to his and Hemingway's work "for inspiration."

Ties her work to Joyce's in "her first chief theme: the individual who cannot free himself from Jesus," and in her "profound concern with art in all its manifestations." Includes a lengthy explication and discussion of Wise Blood showing links with Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Argues that even though O'Connor "was a gifted critic, thinker, artist and even woman of letters, she was primarily a literary visionary not unlike Joyce or even Dostoevsky."

Reads "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" and "The Displaced Person" as O'Connor's "profoundest visions of the destruction of paralyzed worlds."

Offers, as well, explications of "The River," "Good Country People," and "The Artificial Nigger." Praises her deep visionary insight in her novel, The Violent Bear It Away, especially in "her characterization of old Tarwater in terms of his suffering, his prophetic insights and actions, his alienation in an unbelieving world, and his fraternal association with several blacks ... who make up a cadre of believing Christians."

Considers O'Connor's "vision of the growth of a new communal association of humanity," based upon influences of Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Merton. Discusses how this theme is evidenced in "Revelation" and "The Enduring Chill." Contends that de Chardin served as "only" an inspiration for her, "not a revered master like Saint Thomas Aquinas."

Notes similarities between the works of O'Connor and Thomas Merton, and illustrates how she labored through her work to show "how, through suffering and evil, human beings learn to realize the essential human core in themselves and others."

Concludes with discussion of several stories from O'Connor's second collection, including: "The Lame Shall Enter First," "The Enduring Chill," "Greenleaf," "The Comforts of Home," "A View of the Woods," "Parker's Back," and "Judgement Day."

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

Product Description

Customer Reviews (1)

Clear, extremely well-crafted, dry, humorous
I loved the story "Chocolate Footballs." However, for the most part I felt a certain sameness throughout the stories, as though the characters were essentially reapeated, but the names had been changed. I felt a middle-class blandness throughout. Besides the tick in"Chocolate Footballs," nothing memorable happens; no lastingimpact. Still, it was a good read and I enjoyed the stories. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
In Narrating Knowledge in Flannery O’Connor’s Fiction, Donald E. Hardy examines themes in Flannery O'Connor's fiction concerning the limitations of human knowledge. He argues that attending to O'Connor's stylistic strategies allows the best access to her views about knowledge in all its manifestations—spiritual, rational, and emotional—whether the knowledge is that of the narrator, the narratee, or the characters of her narratives. It also, he maintains, allows readers to appreciate the mysteries she sought to underscore.

Surveying O'Connor's fiction, early as well as late, Hardy concludes that the writer's differentiation between grades of knowledge, along with the intimations she offered of what lies behind knowledge—of the ineffable behind the rational—finds only partial expression in the content of her narratives and in her narrative summings-up. For a thorough understanding it is necessary to turn to her employment of certain linguistic devices open to analysis. These include dependent clauses, for rendering presuppositions explicit; negations, for blocking suppositions; and participials describing what is seen, for bringing out implications.

In a study completely accessible to readers of O'Connor who possess no background in stylistics, Hardy undertakes analyses that are both qualitative and quantitative, both comparative and statistical. By illuminating convictions of O'Connor's that are latent in but constitutive of her fiction, his exploration enlarges not only her readers’ comprehension but their enjoyment as well. It also suggests refinements of linguistic hypotheses with consequences for the revision of interpretive and analytic models applicable to the investigation of a wide range of literature. ... Read more

Product Description
"Susan Srigley's Flannery O'Connor's Sacramental Art is a wonderful and critically important book, the first to explore O'Connor's ethic of responsibility. In taking up this new topic, Srigley's spirited study gives fresh evidence of O'Connor as a subtle moral thinker and mindful artist." —Richard Giannone, Fordham University

"Susan Srigley's book is a masterful integration of O'Connor's anthropology, her Catholic theological and philosophical beliefs, and her unique storyteller's art. Concentrating on O'Connor's belief in an ethic of communal responsibility, Srigley convincingly demonstrates how O'Connor's fiction witnesses to the invisible forces of love and charity that unite us to God and to each other. Her analysis is orginial, powerfully-written, and rich in discernment and wisdom—a major contribution to O'Connor studies." —John F. Desmond, author of Risen Sons: Flannery O'Connor's Vision of History

"Although O'Connor once declared that 'compassion' was a word 'which no book jacket can do without,' Susan Srigley's Flannery O'Connor's Sacramental Art demonstrates that it was indeed a well-earned virtue of O'Connor's art. Srigley shows how her fiction enacts an ethic of responsibility that summons characters from their isolation and autonomy and directs them toward a heartfelt responsiveness to the needs of others. Compassion, too, underwrites Srigley's book. It is not the kind of hazy sentimentality that O'Connor exposed in her fiction but the far more demanding form that she described as a readiness to be 'in travail with and for creation in its subjection to vanity.' Srigley provides sensitive readings of O'Connor's eogtists, judges them wihtout self-righteousness, and subtly responds to the way they may discover their wide-ranging accountability." —Gary Ciuba, Kent State University

"At last, the book on Flannery O'Connor so many of us have been waiting for. It's erudite, sensitive to literary values, beautifully written . . . and theologically profound. Excellent."—Graham Ward, University of Manchester.

"Susan Srigley has written a book on O’Connor like no other. In this gracefully written and massively researched work, she lays out the distinctively Catholic character of O’Connor’s artistry as no one else has done." —Ralph Wood, Baylor University

The writings and life of Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) have enjoyed considerable attention both from admirers of her work and from scholars. In this distinctive book, Susan Srigley charts new ground in revealing how O’Connor’s ethics are inextricably linked to her role as a storyteller, and how her moral vision is expressed through the dramatic narrative of her fiction. Srigley elucidates O'Connor's sacramental vision by showing how it is embodied morally within her fiction as an ethic of responsibility. In developing this argument Srigley offers a detailed analysis of the Thomistic sources for O’Connor’s understanding of theology and art.

Srigley contends that O’Connor’s ethical vision of responsibility opens a fruitful path for understanding her religious ideas as they are expressed in the lives and loves of her fictional characters. O’Connor’s characters show that responsibility is a living moral action not an abstract code of behavior. For O’Connor, ethical choices are not dictated by religious doctrine, but rather are an engagement with and response to reality.

Srigley further argues that O’Connor’s ethics are not systematic, formulaic, or prescriptive. As a storyteller, she explores the moral complexities of life in their most concrete and dramatic form. Behaviors that appear in her fiction such as racism, sexism, or nihilism are exposed as inherently irresponsible. Approaching O’Connor’s fiction from a moral perspective often better illuminates the dramatic struggle of a story, not because it offers a religious solution to a particular issue, but because the choices each character makes reveal a vision of reality that is either meaningful and sustainable or narrow and destructive.

Flannery O'Connor's Sacramental Art reveals O’Connor’s role as a prophetic novelist whose moral questions speak to the modern world with rare force. It will be welcomed by anyone who appreciates the moral or religious dimensions of her writing. ... Read more

Product Description
Despite Flannery O'Connor's brief life, her work, comprising novels, short stories, essays, and articles, has had a great impact on American literature and to some extent popular culture, of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Her writing has become well loved, well read, and often studied. This book reprints complete book reviews and excerpts from review essays on the works of Flannery O'Connor that appeared in newspapers and periodicals during the author's writing life (1945-64) and after her early death. The more than four hundred edited reviews are prefaced with a substantial Introduction that situates O'Connor within the critical milieu of post-war American letters and Southern literary tradition, and provides an overview of contemporary critical responses to her collected stories, novels, and occasional pieces. An important resource for scholars of O'Connor and of Southern literature generally, this volume reveals much about her early reception and the continuing relevance of her work. ... Read more

Product Description
In this groundbreaking study, Gary M. Ciuba examines how four of the South's most probing writers of twentieth-century fiction—Katherine Anne Porter, Flannery O'Connor, Cormac McCarthy, and Walker Percy—expose the roots of violence in southern culture. Ciuba draws on the paradigm of mimetic violence developed by cultural and literary critic René Girard, who maintains that individual human nature is shaped by the desire to imitate a model. Mimetic desire may lead in turn to rivalry, cruelty, and ultimately community-sanctioned —and sometimes ritually sanctified—victimization of those deemed outcasts. Ciuba offers an impressively broad intellectual discussion that gives universal cultural meaning to the southern experience of desire, violence, and divinity with which these four authors wrestled and out of which they wrote. In a comprehensive analysis of Porter's semiautobiographical Miranda stories, Ciuba focuses on the prescribed role of women that Miranda imitates and ultimately escapes. O'Connor's The Violent Bear It Away reveals three characters whose scandalous animosity caused by religious rivalry leads to the unbearable stumbling block of violence. McCarthy's protagonist in Child of God, Lester Ballard, appears as the culmination of a long tradition of the sacred violence of southern religion, twisted into his own bloody faith. And Percy's The Thanatos Syndrome brings Ciuba's discussion back to the victim, in Tom Moore's renunciation of a society in which scapegoating threatens to become the foundation of a new social regime. From nostalgia for the old order to visions of a utopian tomorrow, these authors have imagined the interrelationship of desire, antagonism, and religion throughout southern history. Ciuba's insights offer new ways of reading Porter, O'Connor, McCarthy, and Percy as well as their contemporaries who inhabited the same culture of violence—violence desired, dreaded, denied, and deified.AUTHOR BIO: Gary M. Ciuba is the author of Walker Percy: Books of Revelations and numerous articles on modern southern fiction.He is a professor of English at Kent State University. ... Read more

Product Description
This book reconsiders Flannery O'Connor, known primarily for her Catholicism.By recovering the historical circumstances in which Flannery O'Connor wrote her fiction, Jon Lance Bacon reveals an artist concerned with the cultural effects of the conflict that dominated American political discourse after 1945: the Cold War. O'Connor resisted the consensus that demanded uncritical celebration of American life - including consumerism. Bacon relates her fiction to political texts, sociological studies, advertisements, movies, television programmes, paintings, editorial cartoons and comic books. This interdisciplinary approach transforms O'Connor from a regional writer, with a religious message that transcends social and political questions, into a national figure, with a secure place in literary histories that address such questions. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent compilation of essays on Flannery O'Connor's fiction...
Friedman and Clark include twenty-eight reviews and critical essays related to Flannery O'Connor's life and work, all reprints except for selections by Irving Malin and Janet Egleson Dunleavy.

Selections are arranged into three sections: the first, offering twelve reviews dealing with O'Connor's two novels, and her collections of short stories and essays; the second, provides "tributes and reminiscences"; and, the third, includes "a chronological record of the critical response to the writing ..."

Contents of the volume include:

Asals, Frederick. "[The Limits of Explanation]," Rpt. from "Flannery Row," Novel 4.1 (1970).

Bleikasten, Andre. "The Heresy of Flannery O'Connor," Rpt. from Les Americanistes by Ira D. and Christiane Johnson. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1978.

Burns, Marian. "O'Connor's Unfinished Novel," Rpt. from Flannery O'Connor Bulletin 11 (1982).

Clark, Beverly Lyon and Caroline M. Brown "A Review of O'Connor Criticism."

Coffey, Warren. "Flannery O'Connor," Rpt. from Commentary 8 (Nov. 1965).

Duhamel, P. Albert. "Flannery O'Connor's Violent View ofReality," Rpt. from Catholic World 190.1139 (Feb. 1960).

Dunleavy, Janet Egleson. "A Particular History: Black and White in Flannery O'Connor's Short Fiction."

Ferris, Sumner J. "The Outside and the Inside: Flannery O'Connor's The Violent Bear It Away," Rpt. from Critique 3.2 (1960).

Friedman, Melvin. "Flannery O'Connor: The Canon Completed, the Commentary Continuing," Rpt. from Southern Literary Journal 5.2 (1973).

Friedman, Melvin J. "Flannery O'Connor in France: An Interim Report," Rpt. from Revue des Langues Vivantes 43 (1977).

Gordon, Caroline. "With a Glitter of Evil," Rpt. from New York Times Book Review 12 June 1955.

Gresset, Michel. "The Audacity of Flannery O'Connor," Rpt. from La Nouvelle Revue Francaise 216 (Dec. 1970).

Hawkes, John. "Flannery O'Connor's Devil," Rpt. from Sewanee Review 70 (1962).

Kahane, Claire. "Flannery O'Connor's Rage of Vision," Rpt. from American Literature 46.1 (1974).

Kazin, Alfred. "Flannery O'Connor: The Complete Stories," Rpt. from New York Times Book Review, 28 Nov. 1971.

Malin, Irving. "Singular Visions: 'The Partridge Festival.'"

Maloff, Saul. "On Flannery O'Connor," Rpt. from Commonweal, 8 Aug. 1969.

Merton, Thomas. "Flannery O'Connor: A Prose Elegy," Rpt. from Raids on the Unspeakable. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1983.

Poirier, Richard. "If You Know Who You Are You Can Go Anywhere," Rpt. from New York Times Book Review, 30 May 1965.

Porter, Katherine Anne. "Gracious Greatness," Rpt. from Esprit 8 (1964).

Rubin, Louis D., Jr. "Two Ladies From the South," Rpt. from Sewanee Review 63 (1955).

Schleifer, Ronald. "Rural Gothic: The Stories of Flannery O'Connor."

Simons, John W. "A Case of Possession," Rpt. from Commonweal, 27 June 1952.

Sonnenfeld, Albert. "Flannery O'Connor: The Catholic Writer as Baptist," Rpt. from Contemporary Literature 13 (1972).

Stallings, Sylvia. "Young Writer with a Bizarre Tale to Tell," Rpt. from New York Herald Tribune Book Review, 18 May 1952.

Tate, Allen. "Platitudes and Protestants," Rpt. from Esprit 8 (1964).

Walker, Alice. "Beyond the Peacock: The Reconstruction of Flannery O'Connor," Rpt. from In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens. San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1983.

Warnke, Frank J. "A Vision Deep and Narrow," Rpt. from New Republic, 14 March 1960.

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

Product Description
Dr. Martin's keen analysis, informed by a life's work as literary critic and theologian, reveals the central action of O'Connor's stunning fiction - the violent breaking-in of grace into lives barren of the awareness of God. He links this consistent theme of her work tothe shape of her own faithful and cross-filled life.

Usually seen as a preeminent Catholic fiction writer of the twentieth century, O'Connor's work has set the standard for how serious writers must address God's salvific actions while maintaining the highest standards for literature. A kind of faithful Catholic counterpoint to James Joyce, O'Connor's work is of enduring even classic value.

Dr. Martin's larger argument points out that only fiction with a passionate religious vision has a chance of enduring, thus consigning, as Lionel Trilling once did, most liberal fiction to the remainders table. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Unmasking the Devil..Flannery O'connor story review
this book is well worth the read.It gives you a portrait of what Flannery was all about when it came to her characters.As she has said, in order to get a point across to a deaf and dying world(my take on her statement) she has to shout and enlarge her stories so we can hear. the author of this book understood her gift of insight and down to earthness.This book gives you a chance to go beyond just an interesting southern story to the soul ofall concerned.

Very Helpful
Unless you can appreciate the Christian view of The Fall and Redemption, Flannery O'Connor's works may be just too over the top, too senseless and too depressing.In his small, very readable book, Dr. Martin not only shows how O'Connor unmasked the devil but also helps left the vale from the reader's eyes. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (3)

Superb Contemporary SHort Fiction
I was recommended Darrel Spencer by my Creative Writing Professor at Brigham Young University. His writing style is filled with details without being verbose. He captures scenes with the word economy of a poet but the attention to detail of nonfiction.

Very easy, enjoyable reading and a great look at the intermountain west (from Utah to Nevada and beyond).

I recommend "It's a Lot Scarier If You Take Jesus Out of It". It's the story of a young man who's ex commits suicide and he falls for a clerk at a store who looks like her. Touching, funny, and makes a good point about human nature

Punchy
The best word I can think of to describe this writing is punchy.Spencer artfully packs so much into quick and lovely sentences.His stories evoked much thought for me about his characters.I wasn't always sure I liked them (the characters), but they were always real.I'd definitely recommend this book.

A writer who deserves more fame
No one writes with more pathos about modern life than Darrell Spencer.His characters are brave but muddled, and the troubles about which they must be brave are generally too absurd (the sign painter whose employeemisspells "entertainment" and provokes a cranky Las Vegas mobboss, or the ex-Mormon jogger whose devout neighbor wants to pray for hishamstring in the temple) to find much comfort--or nobility--in their lives. What's remarkable about Spencer, though, is that he finds nobility in themundane, mostly by giving voice to the perplexed Mormons (and faithless butstill looking-for-faith Mormons), puzzled husbands,fabric store clerks,trailer park host, and deaf people who suffer, joke, and survive in thesestories. If you like short stories, you absolutely must read"Late-Night TV" and "It's a Lot Scarier if You Take JesusOut." ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (1)

Considers the roles expected of Southern women and how they influenced the art and lives of O'Connor, Welty and Carson McCullers
Westling examines the roles expected of Southern women and suggests how these roles may have shaped the lives and art of Eudora Welty, Carson McCullers, and Flannery O'Connor.

Discusses how each reacted to the expected place of women, using evidence found in their letters, fiction, and lives. Sees each as having countered an "ambiguous" inheritance "by creating [her] own rich matriarchal traditions" through art. Contends that, collectively, their fiction serves as a denial of "the patriarchal version of Southern life" presented by such authors as William Faulkner, John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, and William Styron.

Concentrates on their concerns as women, specifically "their treatment of the problems of identity, on attitudes toward the mother, on the ways in which men are perceived, and on the distinctly female uses of place and symbol in their stories." Argues that whereas Welty celebrates womankind, O'Connor and McCullers struggle against it.

Sees Flannery O'Connor's "sour and resentful" children "as emblems of their mothers' debilitating power" who "set themselves at odds" with them "in resistance to femininity." Observes that, of all the daughters O'Connor created through her art, only the retarded Lucynell Crater is "at ease with her feminine self."

Includes careful explications of "A Temple of the Holy Ghost" (with comparisons to McCuller's The Member of the Wedding and "Good Country People"; a discussion of the "sexual dimension" of O'Connor's stories and her use of religious solutions "to the problem of feminine identity"; differences between O'Connor's male ("aggressive and vindictive") and female ("rendered passive by punishment") characters; and, the influence of the hostile legal and business environment faced by post-Civil War Southern widows on O'Connor's portrayal of them.

Characterizes O'Connor's mother-daughter relationships in discussions of O'Connor's "The Life You Save May Be Your Own," "Why Do the Heathen Rage," "A Circle in the Fire," "Revelation," and "A Stroke of Good Fortune."

Notes Flannery O'Connor's familiarity with Thomas Bulfinch's Mythology, comparative mythology, and Greek tragedy (through Robert Fitzgerald's work), and suggests that this knowledge influenced her fictional landscapes and her depiction of groves, meadows, pastures, and the protective woods surrounding farms ruled by women.

Ties men's incursions onto these farms to sexual imagery and seduction patterns, arguing that the "pattern and tone of action in O'Connor's farm stories" is close to "the archetypal rape images of Greek mythology." Discusses "Greenleaf" and "A Circle in the Fire" to illustrate why the persistent appearance of fertility myths "creates tensions in the stories which O'Connor's craft cannot resolve."

Concludes that while O'Connor's fiction "is an achievement of the first order in literary terms, she also wrote stories "where problems of female sexual identity twist plots away from their intended shapes and where feminine assertion is continually punished by masculine assaults which distort ancient mythic patterns associating women with the landscape."

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

Product Description
"An excellent guide to O'Connor, both as an introduction for new readers and a source of supplemental information for those more familiar with her oeuvre." Booklist ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Discusses Flannery O'Connor's place in 20th-century literature: as a Southerner, Catholic, and woman writer
Grimshaw, a former Director of the English Honor's program at the US Air Force Academy and visiting Instructor at Georgia College & State University (invited to teach the Flannery O'Connor course), provides summaries of Flannery O'Connor's twenty-five short stories and two novels.

Details plot, characters, themes and symbolism. Includes a catalogue of the 200 characters in her published canon with each reference identified along with the characters' "appearances, mannerisms, and singularly descriptive expressions."

Offers synopses of her essays designed to "draw readers' attention to their applicability [to] her fiction." Discusses O'Connor's place in 20th-century literature: as a Southerner, Catholic, and woman writer.

Provides two appendices: Appendix One provides paragraph-long biographical sketches of selected "Catholics and existentialists whose works were known to O'Connor and whose ideas gave her cause to reflect on her own theological concerns. And, reprints, in Appendix Two, O'Connor's Introduction to "A Memoir of Mary Ann" as it appeared in "Mystery and manners" edited by Sally Fitzgerald.

An excellent critical source that is a forefather of Greenwood Press' "Student Companion to Classic Writers Series" (of which there is not -- at present -- an O'Connor volume). This book is now 28 years old -- as such, an O'Connor scholar reading this review should consider writing a volume of this nature that would incorporate the enormous and varied O'Connor criticism of the past two-and-a-half decades. Or, even better, tap into the expertise of these scholars by editing a "Companion" whereby O'Connor scholars that have written about a particular O'Connor story or book would contribute a critical essay on the story or novel for the volume.

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

Product Description

Customer Reviews (1)

Argues for linguistic analyses of Flannery O'Connor's fiction and explores her use of negation and Christian imagery...
McMullen contends that while a linguistic analysis of Flannery O'Connor's fiction reveals -- more than other critical approaches -- the depth of her talent, readers "must be explicitly coached if [their] interpretations are to match O'Connor's explications."

Explores her literary style of using simple sentences, meaningful grammatical construction, and "naming techniques that obscure or minimize personal worth." Addresses her use of symbols and suggests that her inconsistent use of symbolic "hats, sunglasses, eyes, eyeglasses, colors, wood, animals, and machinery" pose problems for her readers.

Discusses the negation present in O'Connor's fictional world signaled by her use of "negative words, negative verbs, anagrams, the concept of suffering, mysterious concealments, and directional metaphors," which tend to "negate the action of grace presumably available to her characters."

Suggests as well, that O'Connor's "images of the Georgia landscape, familial relationships, the Christ figure, inanimate objects, death, and Christian humanism take on unexpected meanings, and on close inspection appear not to support her stated Catholic views." Outlines the "Catholic concept of a sacramental marriage, the Church's stance on birth control, and the sanctity of the family," and compares these positions to O'Connor's conflicting "private comments."

McMullen completed her Ph.D. at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Her 1991 dissertation was titled "Writing Against God: Language and Flannery O'Connor's Literature." Readers may also be interested in her article discussing the linear and circular patterns seen in O'Connor's depictions of time: "The Verbal Structure of Infinity," in Language and Literature 21 (1996): 45-64.

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

Product Description
The eleven stories in Wendy Brenner's debut story collection concern people who are alone or feel themselves to be alone: survivors negotiating between logic and faith who look for mysterious messages and connections in everyday life, those sudden transformations and small miracles that occur in mundane, even absurd settings.

Brenner's stories range in setting from the rural and southern (a rotating country music bar, a dog track/jai alai compound, a grocery store, a natural cold springs sinkhole) to the urban and high-tech (absurdly bureaucratic companies and academic departments and a food irradiation plant). Often young and tough women seeking to hone their survival sensibilities, Brenner's characters are a mix of the everyday and the fantastic: frustrated secretaries and scientists, a young supermodel, precocious children, fierce plumbers and mechanics, a psychic grandmother, an unhappy lottery winner, a desperate grocery-store mascot in an animal suit. And then there are the animals--real ones of all kinds who turn up at unlikely moments and often seem to be trying to help. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

one-line summaries of characters are not supported
This book was an excellent companion. I barely noticed my surroundings.I read this volume of short stories backed up against a wall in an overheated train compartment on an hour-long commute home.Ms. Brenner's descriptions of many of the types of people I have encountered are strikingly imaginative and accurate.However, full sympathy with her main characters was killed by her omniscient narrator.Main characters are often described as being special in some way: intelligent or over-educated, but nothing in their behavior bears this out.I'm not saying that all people who are intelligent or have had the advantage of being well-trained should have remarkable stories told about them, it is just that, if no evidence is presented by anything they say or do to indicate they are intelligent or talented which would affect the action, of what use are such statements as, "Helene is young, brown-haired, and intelligent."?Helene seemed pretty dim.As the fascinating and moving story about Helene proceeded, I was bugged by that one comment.Let Helene be of average intelligence.It had no bearing on the outcome.The conclusions and emotions that were assigned to the lady at the end of the story could be attributed to anyone.This was also the case with the first story "The Round Bar."The narrator states, "Though I was expected to develop into a successful practicing artist....."It had no bearing on the outcome.Ms. Brenner probably has some things to work out regarding her background, but just slumming in the territory of the misbegotten does not bring her heroes home for the reader.Her set pieces are so imaginative, her absolute ability to capture the guest character with one phrase is so astute, I hope that, in the future, the starring characters will have less baggage to carry.

A wonderous exploration of the human condition.
Review written by Ron McGuire, rmcguire@arches.uga.edu Though the phrase "never judge a book by its cover" is an overworked cliche', it is, like most, absolutely true. Especially when applied to the new collection of short stories, Large Animals in Everyday Life by Wendy Brenner. Don't be fooled by the day-glow daisies and cute photo on the pastel pink cover. This collection, by the winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, is a tough-as-nails exploration of the heartaches and minor miracles of the human condition.

Brenner's stories are set in mundane places and populated by an assortment of slightly neurotic men and women. All are bound up in everyday struggles and little victories that only they know and understand, but are somehow a part of everyone's life. Characters like the prematurely washed-up young artist, whose unhealthy obsession for a married country & western singer leads to a bizarre menage in a Nashville hotel room. Or the lonely, insecure woman who chances to meet the older man who will teach her, through his absolute nonchalance, how to see life as one small miracle after another.

But not all of her characters are people. Brenner brings even the lowly oyster to life in order to ponder the meaning of existence. Her stories, as the title implies, are populated with a menagerie of animals, big and small - each in their own way trying to help the hapless people that surround them. There is the horse that nearly crushes a young woman, but in so doing delivers to her the man of her dreams. Or the strawberries that contribute their lives to the science od irradiation only to grow resentful of the fact that they are never considered to be alive in the first place. These creatures that haunt her stories help illuminate the struggles, triumphs, and failures of their human counterparts and caretakers, and bring meaning and understanding to seemingly empty lives.

Brenner is a versatile writer whose characters and settings vary widely, but her stories in this collection have a continuity of voice that binds them together. Just when a situation seems predictable, events and actions occur which propel the story in a new direction. Her characters are always searching, always wanting more from life, but all too often afraid to take the risks necessary to make any meaningful gains. Like the little girl so obsessively afraid of everything, keeping her parents and grandparents constantly in orbit around her as they try to see and not see the little bits of themselves alive in her. Or the young woman fleeing an abusive relationship, remembering bits and pieces of her life and wondering how it ever went so wrong. And there is the young man fighting to fit in and succeeding only in alienating everyone he meets, leaving him to crash through life alone and only partially aware of the living going on all around him.

Brenner's stories are filled with such characters, but they are not entirely without hope. Their lives have meaning - they simply haven't discovered it yet. They exalt in the miracles and joys that come their way, and face tragedy and heartbreak with stoic resignation. They are, animals and people alike, survivors in a dangerous and beautiful world, struggling to find peace and security, and often finding each other. Brenner's voice is strong and her words flow from page to page at a pace that allows the her stories to unfold in their own good time. She takes the reader on a journey into the realm of ordinary existence, only to reveal the extraordinary at every turn - the miracles we so often miss.

Large Animals in Everyday Life though filled with angst and sorrow, is ultimately a finely crafted collection and a joy to read. It illuminates and teaches in a subtle way, and demands your attention long after you put it down. Brenner's stories probably won't change the world, but they might change the way you look at it. ... Read more

Product Description
In her short life, the prolific Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) authored two novels, thirty-two stories, and numerous essays and articles. Although her importance as a twentieth-century southern writer is unquestionable, mainstream feminist criticism has generally neglected O'Connor's work.

In Revising Flannery O'Connor, Katherine Hemple Prown addresses the conflicts O'Connor experienced as a "southern lady" and professional author. Placing gender at the center of her analytical framework, Prown considers the reasons for feminist critical neglect of the writer and traces the cultural origins of the complicated aesthetic that informs O'Connor's fiction, both published and unpublished.

O'Connor's relationship with her mentor Caroline Gordon, and its eventual disintegration, played a significant role in her development. As Prown shows, it underlines the shift from the relatively "feminine" authorial voice of O'Connor's earliest drafts toward the decidedly masculinized tone of her final, published works. Incorporating an insightful examination of the author in relation to the Fugitive/Agrarian and New Critical movements, Prown provides an original exploration of O'Connor's changing gender perspectives. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A masterwork in O'Connor Literary Criticism!
Dr. Prown explores a whole new approach to O'Connor. She displays a rare understanding of the place of O'Connor in modern Southern and feminist literature.Dr. Prown goes far beyond the usual realm of literary criticism to place O'Connor into the thread of our everyday lives. I highly recommend this book to scholars, laypersons, and all readers interested in O'Connor, Southern literature, and feminist writers. ... Read more

Product Description

Winner of the 1990 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction