Flannery O'Connor, in the preface to the second edition of her first novel, "Wise Blood" (1952), described herself as "an author congenitally innocent of theory, but with certain preoccupations." The preoccupation she refers to is religion. O'Connor was a Catholic writer,...
[more]Flannery O'Connor, in the preface to the second edition of her first novel, "Wise Blood" (1952), described herself as "an author congenitally innocent of theory, but with certain preoccupations."
The preoccupation she refers to is religion. O'Connor was a Catholic writer, and her work was perpetually concerned with the mysteries of grace and the challenge of being a believer. Fully aware that her audience was largely secular, O'Connor developed a style that she felt both expressed her art and called to her readers. Vehemently non-evangelical, her stories and two novels explore the themes of spirituality and freedom in a manner that is honest, real, and often fairly grotesque. The poet Elizabeth Bishop wrote that O'Connor's books are "narrow, possibly, but they are clear, hard, vivid, and full of bits of description, phrases, and an odd insight that contains more real poetry than a dozen books of poems."
One of the most respected and treasured writers of the twentieth century, O'Connor worked extremely hard, revising up until the moment of publication. Her confidence as a writer approached arrogance (which she readily admitted), but she was quite shy in person: while working toward her master's degree at the University of Iowa, she always insisted that her stories be read anonymously to the class. O'Connor identified strongly with her Southern heritage, and her Georgian accent was almost incomprehensible to Northerners (including, at first, her publisher Robert Giroux).
In 1950, O'Connor was stricken with lupus, and although she continued to write her gem-like stories, she never fully recovered from the disease. She died in 1964 at the age of 39.
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