Brad Gooch

Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964) was a Southern Writer and lifelong devout Roman Catholic, both of which characteristics were food for her body of work - two novels and many short stories.

Flannery's creativity emerged early and was recognized at both graduate school at the Iowa Writer's Workshop at University of Iowa and at Yaddo, a writer's retreat in upstate NY. During this period she wrote what was to become her first novel, Wise Blood. Once she was established as a writer with a body of published work, she often gave lectures on writing fiction.

O'Connor had many supporters and detractors. Despite the misunderstood subject matter of her stories, often containing violence and cruelty, she remained true to her faith and morality, saying in one of her many presentations on writing "If the writer is as an artist, his moral judgment will coincide with his dramatic judgment. It will be inseparable from the very act of seeing." For Flannery morality meant conveying a vision. She spent hours editing her stories in order to convey that vision.

She kept up a lively correspondence with friends and colleagues. But also served as a mentor to aspiring writers, many of whom made the initial overture addressed to her simply at Milledgeville, GA, and only some of whom she met in person. To one, a student at the time but later a poet and critic, and who admitted to a crisis of faith, she wrote of "mystery," which had become an important theological concept for her: "Where you have absolute solutions ... you have no need of faith...Mystery isn't something that is gradually evaporating. It grows along with knowledge."

She was a contemporary of many southern writers, including William Faulkner, Carson McCullers and Katherine Porter, all of whom knew her and held her in high regard.

Diagnosed with lupus in 1951, she carried on most of her literary career with deteriorating health. Her life was cut short in 1964 at age 39. Some accolades at her death, regarding her writing, attest to the impact she made in that short life:

Thomas Merton: I write her name with all honor, for all the truth and all the craft with which she shows man's fall and his dishonor.

Robert Giroux, her publisher, spoke of her "clear vision" that "not only burns brighter than ever but it burns through the masks of what she called 'blind walls and low dodges of the heart' "

When asked why she wrote about freaks, she replied, displaying her considerable wit, "...because we are still able to recognize one."

Many articles and books have been written about her and her work. This is but one. It tells of her career, but also gives glimpses of her personal life: her immediate family and extended relations, her school days, and her love of birds, especially peacocks which she kept on her farm. A good overview and introduction to to an iconic writer.… (mehr)