World Famous Comics: 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)
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)
Product Description: Flannery O'Connor, a unique and important figure in the Southern literary tradition, was one of the finest writers of the twentieth century. This volume, containing her two novels, short stories, essays and letters, is the only complete collection of her works.
O'connor's work is astonishly misunderstood & overrated ^ O'Connor once explained that she wouldn't write (deeply) about Black folk because she "only knows them from the outside." What escapes readers & critics is that she also did not know the characters she wrote about, except "from the outside."
Her characters are, without exception, poor, white, uneducated, & Protestant--completely unlike her, her family, and the social and academic circles she traveled in. When you read her work with this understanding, all the puzzling & mysterious aspects of it suddenly make sense. All the clap-trap in lit crit-light, and in her own essays, that her work encompasses a glimpse into unfathomable but crucial religious concerns.... is just nonsense.
Readers' and critic concerns about nihilism are legitimate, because no one is saved, or reborn, or transformed, or otherwise bestowed with any of the blessings that are promised and/or merely implied by O'Connor's brand of Catholicism. In fact, her abject, monstrous characters are punished with violence and death (not to mention insulted by her one dimensional portraits). I am arguing that the REASON her characters come to bad ends is because they are guilty of being poor or working class, Protestant, and/or Black.
The fact that her tidy White Supremacy--in her work & letters--continues to be elided and downplayed by her readers, is odious to me. But truly, these other matters I bring to light--that her work is fundamentally an excoriation of people who had the nerve not to be born into her class and her religion--it just shocks me to see O'Connor criticism that fails to address the intensity of class & religious hostility in her work, and that writes off her latent racism as a minor glitch.
Doubt my points? Then re-read any of her work by placing yourself completely inside any of the "monstrous" characters, while abstaining from aligning yourself with the Om Narrator. Do that, and you shall see that the only living, breathing, believable person in her work is her narrator--herself. This kind of writing is not artful, and will only stand the test of time within the larger history of literary criticism dominated by Bourgeois white supremacists, because it will illustrate the endurance of class & race privilege--how long a class of people insist on being blind to how their privileges distort their readings of lit & of the world. O'Connor's disgust and disdain for her characters gives me chills--and THERE lies the true horror in her work.
PS: I couldn't figure out how to give the book 0 stars! Ooops-
A Marvelous Talent ^ But for the final episode of the TV Series, Lost, this season, I would never have read Flannery O'Connor. She died in 1964, and I thought of her as one of those boring writers whom only the literary elitist types found engaging. But boy was I wrong. Every single short story was packed with strong, interesting characters, a clever plot with surprising twists that stays with one far after the story is finishes. Try reading "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," or "Everything that Rises Must Converge," and not being effected. She has moved up to near the top of my pantheon of authors. I only regret she did not survive her Lupus affliction. She would have been only 84 years old, and the best writer alive.
There is no one else like her ^ Flannery O'Connor--either you love her stories or you think her work is a about the strangest writing in American Literature. It is great to have her collected works in one volume to read and re-read and try and understand the underlying meaning she put into her work. To her fans and supporters she was a genius, there is no other name for Flannery. What a shame that she only had 39 years with us. We have to wonder what else she might have contributed to the world of literature. We have these stories from this shy woman who struggled with health problems, loved to be with her peacocks and who has to be the world champion of re-write because she was never satisfied she had it like she wanted it, this is a treasured volume.
Classic ^ Now that I've read everything by O'Connor (including works that were part of her thesis for her degree in writing) I am still amazed and inspired by her work. I'm not from the south or Catholic and I was not alive during the eras of which she wrote, but her writing transcends region and time. My favorites remain A Good Man is Hard to Find, Everything That Rises Must Converge, and Revelation, but I love all her stories, although I find the novels a bit more challenging - I think short story was her finest form. Her ability to mix desperation and violence with comedy is amazing, and often when I read her I think: "I shouldn't be laughing at that." I often wonder what additional work she would have produced if she had not died so young. Highly recommended.
Great literature in great binding ^ I am thoroughly enjoying this authoritative collection of O'Connor's writings. The writing speaks for itself as truly great and unique. This particular book is very classy and well put together; an excellent choice for someone with a significant interest in O'Connor.
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