Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964)


--FO’C is considered to be one of the sternest, most independent, and most powerful visions of all American writers.
--Stricken with lupus, she published two novels and two collections of stories during her life. Her Collected Stories, published posthumously in 1971, won the National Book Award for fiction.
--FO’C is known for her uncompromising perspective on an individual’s relationship with God. A staunch Catholic, she viewed the modern world as having turned away from the doctrines of faith and salvation. In their place she believed people had adopted superficial and commercial values, worrying more about their appearance and profits than their souls. FO’C not only viewed the modern world as a spiritual wasteland, but she also believed that people were complacent in their distorted and selfish values. They are blinded by sin, ignorance, and selfish pride.
--FO’C used her fiction to attack complacency. She used violent and grotesque characters and situations to shock and unsettle readers.
--Her writing is theological at its center, but the characters and plots are often secular. Yet FO’C claimed that she wrote about extraordinary moments of God’s grace, when even the most grotesque characters confront the possibilities of their salvation.

“When I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it’s because we are still able to recognize one.”
--Flannery O’Connor

“Everywhere I go, I am asked if the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.”
--Flannery O’Connor

“Writing is a good example of self-abandonment. I never completely forget myself except when I am writing and I am never more completely myself than when I am writing.”
--Flannery O’Connor

“No matter what form the dragon may take, it is of this mysterious passage past him, or into his jaws, that stories of any depth will always be concerned to tell, and this being the case, it requites considerable courage at any time, in any country, not to turn away from the storyteller.”
--Flannery O’Connor