Understanding Flannery O'Connor

by Margaret Earley Whitt

Manners, mystery, and maniacs in O'Connor's unforgettable fiction

Describing Flannery O'Connor's fiction as "violent, grotesque, and horribly funny, with a twist," Margaret Earley Whitt explores the canon of the Georgia writer whose work has long haunted and harassed its readers. In a comprehensive survey that encompasses O'Connor's short stories, novels, essays, and letters, as well as the body of criticism that has proliferated since her death in 1964, Whitt illumines the religious themes and bizarre characters that make O'Connor's prose so strikingly different from that of other American writers.

Whitt discusses the components that drive the writer's work―her southernness and her Roman Catholicism―and contends that the blend of these two enabled O'Connor to deliver orthodox Christian themes through the code of southern etiquette.

259 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1995

Reviews

[Julie Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gives just enough about each of O'Connor's works to point the way for people like me, who grasp some of the symbolism and meaning, but know there is more they are just not seeing. I really love this book.