Creating Flannery O’Connor: Her Critics, Her Publishers, Her Readers
Daniel Moran
The University of Georgia Press (September 2016)

“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
Flannery O’Connor

All authors pose challenges to those who write their biographies. Major authors pose major challenges. Presumably this is what Jenn Shapland had in mind when describing attempts to recreate the life of Carson McCullers: “Biographers broke into the house and rearranged the furniture to their liking.” She objects to the the kind of facile-seeming connections made by literary scholars between an author’s life and her writing.

I was reminded of Shapland’s comments as I began to work my way through Daniel Moran’s discussion of Flannery O’Connor (March 25, 1925 – August 3, 1964) and her critics, her publishers, and her readers. I believe that all creative writing is inevitably autobiographical to some extent but readers (even biographers) often make the same mistake as those who watch films: they identify authors and actors with characters and situations as well as with geographic locations, in print or on film. For whatever reasons, those who attend live theater do not, although some performers are associated with specific roles such as Carol Channing with Dolly Levi and Laurence Olivier with Hamlet.

Identification can go far beyond association to limitation and even distortion. For example, as O’Connor began a creative process that eventually produced two novels and thirty-two short stories, early references to her noted where she was born and raised (rural Georgia), her religious faith (Roman Catholic), and her interest in odd characters (“grotesques”). These terms suggest hers was only a regional talent with a religious bias who was fascinated by rence Olivieroddballs and misfits.

Consider these comments by Moran: “A number of factors affect an author’s reputation, beyond the ways in which he or she manipulates language and holds a mirror up to nature. This book examines and evaluates these factors, telling the story of the understanding and misunderstanding, the reading and misreading, the attacks on and eventual canonization — in the literary sense — of Flannery O’Connor. [begin italics] Why [end italics] O’Connor matters is one story; this story is about [begin italics] how [end italics]  she has mattered to publishers, readers, and other artists.”

For me, the best way to understand a great writer’s work is to read it rather than read about it. However, some great writers are less accessible than others. Miran cites this brief portion of  Matt Hanson’s review of “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”:

“This stuff is twisted, sparse, clipped, dark, doomy, funny, dramatic, angry, sexy, super Catholic, death-haunted, maniacal, bizarre, possibly racist, Southern, apparently desperate, fatalistic, existential, dreary, ugly, fetid, frenzied, morbid, lax, stern, prepossessing, unforgiving, unrelenting,  anti-everything, aged, ‘retro,’ haunting, parabolic, anecdotal, moral, redemptive, sublime, reasoned, feverish, dreamlike, unsparing, sparse, I said that one already, seductive, craftsmanlike, worried, extremely well-conceived, taut, brooding, polarizing, scary, and powerful.”

That’s quite a sentence, isn’t it? If you have already read O’Connor’s most famous short story,  I think you will agree that Hanson’s terms are appropriate. In fact, they are also appropriate for many of her other works — notably Wise Blood — and help to explain why she is so highly regarded.

I recommend The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor. Amazon now sells a paperbound edition for only $10.99.

Creating Flannery O’Connor [colon] Her Critics [comma] Her Publishers [comma] Her Readers, Daniel Moran, The University of Georgia Press, “The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it”,