Flannery O'Conner 'The Complete Stories', 09 Oct 2007
Every sentence so very rich. What a loss to the literary world when O'Conner died at a relatively young age. A thousand thanks to Robert Giroux for his enlightening introduction which enhances the book and helps the reader know a little more about Flannery O'Conner.

Anne forrest

Recommended by The Independent newspaper today., 05 Jan 2007
Just thought you'd like to know, this book just got a glowing write-up by Dean Koontz in "The Independent" newspaper today, describing it as a "book in a lifetime" and his inspiration. Good enough to make me want to read it.

Some of the most essential short fiction of the 20th century, 03 Apr 2000
Flannery O'Connor was a genius. Her prose is beautifully restrained, powerful, frightening and, disturbingly, often hilarious. I haven't encountered a writer of short fiction yet who hasn't doffed their cap to O'Connor. This collection takes the reader from slightly scrappy early writings to the faultless work of her final years. The stories here are so essential that I am giving this book five stars despite its revolting 1980s conceptual jacket, which depicts a baldie with a triangular penis standing in what can only be described as a Drama Space.

Flannery O'Conner 'The Complete Stories', 09 Oct 2007
Every sentence so very rich. What a loss to the literary world when O'Conner died at a relatively young age. A thousand thanks to Robert Giroux for his enlightening introduction which enhances the book and helps the reader know a little more about Flannery O'Conner.

Anne forrest

Recommended by The Independent newspaper today., 05 Jan 2007
Just thought you'd like to know, this book just got a glowing write-up by Dean Koontz in "The Independent" newspaper today, describing it as a "book in a lifetime" and his inspiration. Good enough to make me want to read it.

Some of the most essential short fiction of the 20th century, 03 Apr 2000
Flannery O'Connor was a genius. Her prose is beautifully restrained, powerful, frightening and, disturbingly, often hilarious. I haven't encountered a writer of short fiction yet who hasn't doffed their cap to O'Connor. This collection takes the reader from slightly scrappy early writings to the faultless work of her final years. The stories here are so essential that I am giving this book five stars despite its revolting 1980s conceptual jacket, which depicts a baldie with a triangular penis standing in what can only be described as a Drama Space.

The Best Book I Have Ever Read, 20 Jan 2002
Wise Blood will draw you in, make you laugh and make you think with its darkly humourous description of one man's struggle to make sense of his own existence. From the moment we meet Hazel Motes to the moment he leaves us behind, we travel to the heart of what it is to be human and live in a world that provides inadequate answers.

Puts Hannibal Lecter In His Place - The Dustbin, 26 Jun 1999
I am completely new to Flannery O'Connor although I have been aware of her through citations in articles and books. 'Wise Blood' was portrayed as a 'comic novel' and while there were some very funny passages it certainly was not a humorous book.

A plot summary is simple enough. The central character, Hazel Motes, returns home after a spell in the army during the second world war. His time is only alluded to in an elliptical manner which is confusing - deliberately so on the part of O'Connor. He has been the son of a preacher and he sets out to preach the Church of the Unrisen Christ. There follow a series of misadventures - none of which are especially comic aside from a wonderful chapter wherein a competitor preacher sets up opposite Hazel on the street to preach a 'true' (although corrupt) message.

Hazel ends up discredited and blinds himself after which he becomes dependant on the landlady where he lodges. He eventually dies and there the novel ends.

If this sounds uninspiring it may be in part because the novel is indeed a strange, disconnected narrative.

However, the great strength of the book is the character of Enoch Emery and his disturbed psyche. He latches onto Hazel who rejects him. (Thus O'Connor inverts one of our expectations, that the misfits will form a duo. They never do, after she sets up the expectation that they WILL.) In one of the strangest things I've ever read, Enoch kills a man who is in a gorilla suit at the promotion of a 'Tarzan' like film. The build-up to this is quite compelling, and the violence - never described in detail - nevertheless issues from the description of one of the most deranged minds I've ever read about.

The strange things is - after this crime we never see Enoch again, he is dropped from the narrative and there is no police investigation. (Likewise, Hazel kills towards the end of the book and this to passes unnoticed.) These narrative dislocations are very unsettling, and I suspect they are there to throw these bizarre acts into relief, as if they are utterly removed from what we normally take to be 'ordinary life'.

If it sounds like I did not like the book then you are probably right. However, the depiction of Enoch is absolutely compelling because his irrational violence and strange compulsions are presented as having their own internal logic, but a logic we cannot enter into in. Severe violence comes out of nowhere - either 'evil' (if, like O'Connor, you are a Catholic) or the 'irrational'.

For anybody who has read 'Hannibal' this is a far superior read. Oh, it is not slick or well-plotted, it is often strange and downright annoying (too many narrative dislocations and you start to wonder if the lady can even tell a story). However, the ridiculous character of Lecter - this mix of Lord Byron, Glenn Gould, Louis Pasteur and Raffles or James Bond - does not just glamourize violence, it trivializes it. Extreme violence is not aesthetically pleasing, and it does not issue from highly cultured 'supermen'. (Which is not to say that wealthy and sophisticated people have not been known to kill.)

'Wise Blood' portrays violence and psychic disorder with power and rawness.

P. S. - The chapter about Enoch killing the man was originally a short story 'Enoch And The Gorilla' and can be found in the short stories. It is worth reading on its won.

Flannery O'Conner 'The Complete Stories', 09 Oct 2007
Every sentence so very rich. What a loss to the literary world when O'Conner died at a relatively young age. A thousand thanks to Robert Giroux for his enlightening introduction which enhances the book and helps the reader know a little more about Flannery O'Conner.

Anne forrest

Recommended by The Independent newspaper today., 05 Jan 2007
Just thought you'd like to know, this book just got a glowing write-up by Dean Koontz in "The Independent" newspaper today, describing it as a "book in a lifetime" and his inspiration. Good enough to make me want to read it.

Some of the most essential short fiction of the 20th century, 03 Apr 2000
Flannery O'Connor was a genius. Her prose is beautifully restrained, powerful, frightening and, disturbingly, often hilarious. I haven't encountered a writer of short fiction yet who hasn't doffed their cap to O'Connor. This collection takes the reader from slightly scrappy early writings to the faultless work of her final years. The stories here are so essential that I am giving this book five stars despite its revolting 1980s conceptual jacket, which depicts a baldie with a triangular penis standing in what can only be described as a Drama Space.

The Best Book I Have Ever Read, 20 Jan 2002
Wise Blood will draw you in, make you laugh and make you think with its darkly humourous description of one man's struggle to make sense of his own existence. From the moment we meet Hazel Motes to the moment he leaves us behind, we travel to the heart of what it is to be human and live in a world that provides inadequate answers.

Puts Hannibal Lecter In His Place - The Dustbin, 26 Jun 1999
I am completely new to Flannery O'Connor although I have been aware of her through citations in articles and books. 'Wise Blood' was portrayed as a 'comic novel' and while there were some very funny passages it certainly was not a humorous book.

A plot summary is simple enough. The central character, Hazel Motes, returns home after a spell in the army during the second world war. His time is only alluded to in an elliptical manner which is confusing - deliberately so on the part of O'Connor. He has been the son of a preacher and he sets out to preach the Church of the Unrisen Christ. There follow a series of misadventures - none of which are especially comic aside from a wonderful chapter wherein a competitor preacher sets up opposite Hazel on the street to preach a 'true' (although corrupt) message.

Hazel ends up discredited and blinds himself after which he becomes dependant on the landlady where he lodges. He eventually dies and there the novel ends.

If this sounds uninspiring it may be in part because the novel is indeed a strange, disconnected narrative.

However, the great strength of the book is the character of Enoch Emery and his disturbed psyche. He latches onto Hazel who rejects him. (Thus O'Connor inverts one of our expectations, that the misfits will form a duo. They never do, after she sets up the expectation that they WILL.) In one of the strangest things I've ever read, Enoch kills a man who is in a gorilla suit at the promotion of a 'Tarzan' like film. The build-up to this is quite compelling, and the violence - never described in detail - nevertheless issues from the description of one of the most deranged minds I've ever read about.

The strange things is - after this crime we never see Enoch again, he is dropped from the narrative and there is no police investigation. (Likewise, Hazel kills towards the end of the book and this to passes unnoticed.) These narrative dislocations are very unsettling, and I suspect they are there to throw these bizarre acts into relief, as if they are utterly removed from what we normally take to be 'ordinary life'.

If it sounds like I did not like the book then you are probably right. However, the depiction of Enoch is absolutely compelling because his irrational violence and strange compulsions are presented as having their own internal logic, but a logic we cannot enter into in. Severe violence comes out of nowhere - either 'evil' (if, like O'Connor, you are a Catholic) or the 'irrational'.

For anybody who has read 'Hannibal' this is a far superior read. Oh, it is not slick or well-plotted, it is often strange and downright annoying (too many narrative dislocations and you start to wonder if the lady can even tell a story). However, the ridiculous character of Lecter - this mix of Lord Byron, Glenn Gould, Louis Pasteur and Raffles or James Bond - does not just glamourize violence, it trivializes it. Extreme violence is not aesthetically pleasing, and it does not issue from highly cultured 'supermen'. (Which is not to say that wealthy and sophisticated people have not been known to kill.)

'Wise Blood' portrays violence and psychic disorder with power and rawness.

P. S. - The chapter about Enoch killing the man was originally a short story 'Enoch And The Gorilla' and can be found in the short stories. It is worth reading on its won.

A literary voice silence way too early., 21 Jul 2003
Flannery O'Connor did not even live to see her 40th birthday; she died, in 1964, of lupus, the same inflammatory disease which had killed her father when she was a mere teenager and which all too soon began to cripple her as well. A graduate of the Iowa State University's journalism and writing program, she had started to write her first stories, poems and other pieces when she was still in high school, and had submitted a collection of six short stories entitled "The Geranium" as her master's thesis in university. (Most of the stories contained in that collection were published individually in various magazines and anthologies around the time of their inclusion in the thesis; the collection as a whole, however, was first published only posthumously in the National Book Award winning "Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor.") Only a few years after having obtained her master's degree, and after a prolonged residence at Yaddo artists' colony in upstate New York, O'Connor began to spend time in hospitals and, in due course, was diagnosed with lupus. From that moment on, she focused on her writing even more than she had before - and the result were two novels, two short story collections, several stand-alone short stories, essays and other pieces of occasional prose, as well as a barrage of letters. The majority of that work product, including twenty-one previously unpublished letters, is reproduced in this collection published in the Library of America series; notably, the fiction part also includes, as one piece, O'Connor's master's thesis, "The Geranium: A Collection of Short Stories."

A native of Georgia, Flannery O'Connor defined herself as much as a Catholic writer as a Southerner; and she commented on the impact that regional influences on the one hand and her religion on the other hand had had on her writing in the 1963 essays "The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South" and "The Regional Writer." Yet, while religion (and more specifically, Catholicism) certainly plays a big part in her writing, from the "Christian malgre lui," as she herself characterized the hero of her first novel "Wise Blood" in the Author's Note to book's 1962 second edition, to the "odd folks out" and searching souls populating her short stories, and to her frequent biblical references, it would not do her writing justice to limit her to that realm, nor to that of "Southern" fiction. (No matter for which specific dramatic purpose a writer employed a Southern setting, he would still be considered to be writing about the South in general, and was thus left to get rid off the label of a "Southern writer ... and all the misconceptions that go with it" as best he could, she quipped in her 1960 essay "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction." Rather, she added three years later in "The Regional Writer," location matters to an author insofar as any author "operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet," and it is up to him to find that precise spot and apply it to his writing.) Similarly, while her heroes are certainly not the kind of people you expect to meet on your daily errands (or do you?), it would shortchange them were we to succumb to the temptation of merely defining them as some particularly colorful examples of grotesque fiction. For one thing, "[t]o be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man," as O'Connor noted in "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction." More fundamentally, however, she saw her calling - and that of any Southern author treading the same ground as William Faulkner and trying not to have their "mule and wagon stalled on the same track the Dixie Limited is roaring down" - as an attempt to reach below the surface of the human existence to that realm "which is the concern of prophets and poets," and to strike a balance between realism on the one hand and vision, poetry and compassion on the other; to recognize the expectations of his readers without making himself their slave.

Thus, the famously unexpected endings of Flannery O'Connor's narratives are more than merely weird plot twists, the encounter between the grandmother and The Misfit in the title story of her first published short story collection "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" (1955) is the result of a wrong turn in the road as much as that of a series of wrong choices, coincidences and essential miscommunications, and the title story of her second, posthumously published collection of short stories "Everything That Rises Must Converge" (1965) truly does indicate more than a physical proposition and indeed, a situation applicable to the entire world, as O'Connor wrote in a 1961 letter regarding the initial publication of the collection's title story in New World Writing.

A six-time winner of the O. Henry Award for Short Fiction and winner of the posthumously awarded 1972 National Book Award for her Collected Short Stories, in her short career as a writer Flannery O'Connor left an indelible mark on American literature, far transcending the borders of her native South. We can only speculate what she would have contributed had illness and death not intervened - and in a time when, as O'Connor wrote so prophetically in "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction," too many writers abandon vision and instead contend themselves with satisfying their readers' more pedestrian expectations, her contributions would doubtless be invaluable. Alas, we are left with a body of work that fits neatly into this marvelously edited single-volume entry in the "Library of America" series - but the content of this one book alone is worth manifold that of the much ampler output of many a writer of recent years.

Excellent collection, 24 Nov 1999
A handsome edition of the complete fiction of this marvellous writer, plus several essays and a generous selection of her letters, which are amongst the best of the century - by turns acute, brilliant, catty and self-deprecating. Only doesn't get the extra crown because of the omission of some of her best short pieces on the craft of writing, collected elsewhere in Mystery and Manners. But with that book and this one, you'll have most of what you'll ever need by one of the toughest and darkest of American writers.

Flannery O'Connor-Pillar Of Southern Writing, 28 Apr 1999
This is must read for anyone with literary interest. O'Connor's grotesque style grabs the reader and transports him or her into a version of the south that is all to true. Excellent author.

A great artist, a noble soul!, 19 Feb 1999
This is perhaps the most beautiful edition of the collected works of Flannery O'Connor. And it contains not only her incomparable stories--with those unforgettable characters!--but her magnificent letters. Her stories can both shock and shine. Her letters have made me both laugh and cry. Her stories never grow old--I've read them over many years now and am always finding something new and fresh and am always in awe of her consummate artistry. And her letter reveal, at least in part, the secret of her art and the power of her stories: they reveal a noble soul. Humble, honest, caring, suffering, and always, a valiant woman of faith. Her lupus stimied her activity; but it deepened her spirit and heart. I am sure those peacocks she loved so much missed her. And they're not fortunate enough, like us, to be able to read her relatively slim, but always enriching, literary legacy. GET THIS BOOK!

Flannery O'Conner 'The Complete Stories', 09 Oct 2007
Every sentence so very rich. What a loss to the literary world when O'Conner died at a relatively young age. A thousand thanks to Robert Giroux for his enlightening introduction which enhances the book and helps the reader know a little more about Flannery O'Conner.

Anne forrest

Recommended by The Independent newspaper today., 05 Jan 2007
Just thought you'd like to know, this book just got a glowing write-up by Dean Koontz in "The Independent" newspaper today, describing it as a "book in a lifetime" and his inspiration. Good enough to make me want to read it.

Some of the most essential short fiction of the 20th century, 03 Apr 2000
Flannery O'Connor was a genius. Her prose is beautifully restrained, powerful, frightening and, disturbingly, often hilarious. I haven't encountered a writer of short fiction yet who hasn't doffed their cap to O'Connor. This collection takes the reader from slightly scrappy early writings to the faultless work of her final years. The stories here are so essential that I am giving this book five stars despite its revolting 1980s conceptual jacket, which depicts a baldie with a triangular penis standing in what can only be described as a Drama Space.

The Best Book I Have Ever Read, 20 Jan 2002
Wise Blood will draw you in, make you laugh and make you think with its darkly humourous description of one man's struggle to make sense of his own existence. From the moment we meet Hazel Motes to the moment he leaves us behind, we travel to the heart of what it is to be human and live in a world that provides inadequate answers.

Puts Hannibal Lecter In His Place - The Dustbin, 26 Jun 1999
I am completely new to Flannery O'Connor although I have been aware of her through citations in articles and books. 'Wise Blood' was portrayed as a 'comic novel' and while there were some very funny passages it certainly was not a humorous book.

A plot summary is simple enough. The central character, Hazel Motes, returns home after a spell in the army during the second world war. His time is only alluded to in an elliptical manner which is confusing - deliberately so on the part of O'Connor. He has been the son of a preacher and he sets out to preach the Church of the Unrisen Christ. There follow a series of misadventures - none of which are especially comic aside from a wonderful chapter wherein a competitor preacher sets up opposite Hazel on the street to preach a 'true' (although corrupt) message.

Hazel ends up discredited and blinds himself after which he becomes dependant on the landlady where he lodges. He eventually dies and there the novel ends.

If this sounds uninspiring it may be in part because the novel is indeed a strange, disconnected narrative.

However, the great strength of the book is the character of Enoch Emery and his disturbed psyche. He latches onto Hazel who rejects him. (Thus O'Connor inverts one of our expectations, that the misfits will form a duo. They never do, after she sets up the expectation that they WILL.) In one of the strangest things I've ever read, Enoch kills a man who is in a gorilla suit at the promotion of a 'Tarzan' like film. The build-up to this is quite compelling, and the violence - never described in detail - nevertheless issues from the description of one of the most deranged minds I've ever read about.

The strange things is - after this crime we never see Enoch again, he is dropped from the narrative and there is no police investigation. (Likewise, Hazel kills towards the end of the book and this to passes unnoticed.) These narrative dislocations are very unsettling, and I suspect they are there to throw these bizarre acts into relief, as if they are utterly removed from what we normally take to be 'ordinary life'.

If it sounds like I did not like the book then you are probably right. However, the depiction of Enoch is absolutely compelling because his irrational violence and strange compulsions are presented as having their own internal logic, but a logic we cannot enter into in. Severe violence comes out of nowhere - either 'evil' (if, like O'Connor, you are a Catholic) or the 'irrational'.

For anybody who has read 'Hannibal' this is a far superior read. Oh, it is not slick or well-plotted, it is often strange and downright annoying (too many narrative dislocations and you start to wonder if the lady can even tell a story). However, the ridiculous character of Lecter - this mix of Lord Byron, Glenn Gould, Louis Pasteur and Raffles or James Bond - does not just glamourize violence, it trivializes it. Extreme violence is not aesthetically pleasing, and it does not issue from highly cultured 'supermen'. (Which is not to say that wealthy and sophisticated people have not been known to kill.)

'Wise Blood' portrays violence and psychic disorder with power and rawness.

P. S. - The chapter about Enoch killing the man was originally a short story 'Enoch And The Gorilla' and can be found in the short stories. It is worth reading on its won.

A literary voice silence way too early., 21 Jul 2003
Flannery O'Connor did not even live to see her 40th birthday; she died, in 1964, of lupus, the same inflammatory disease which had killed her father when she was a mere teenager and which all too soon began to cripple her as well. A graduate of the Iowa State University's journalism and writing program, she had started to write her first stories, poems and other pieces when she was still in high school, and had submitted a collection of six short stories entitled "The Geranium" as her master's thesis in university. (Most of the stories contained in that collection were published individually in various magazines and anthologies around the time of their inclusion in the thesis; the collection as a whole, however, was first published only posthumously in the National Book Award winning "Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor.") Only a few years after having obtained her master's degree, and after a prolonged residence at Yaddo artists' colony in upstate New York, O'Connor began to spend time in hospitals and, in due course, was diagnosed with lupus. From that moment on, she focused on her writing even more than she had before - and the result were two novels, two short story collections, several stand-alone short stories, essays and other pieces of occasional prose, as well as a barrage of letters. The majority of that work product, including twenty-one previously unpublished letters, is reproduced in this collection published in the Library of America series; notably, the fiction part also includes, as one piece, O'Connor's master's thesis, "The Geranium: A Collection of Short Stories."

A native of Georgia, Flannery O'Connor defined herself as much as a Catholic writer as a Southerner; and she commented on the impact that regional influences on the one hand and her religion on the other hand had had on her writing in the 1963 essays "The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South" and "The Regional Writer." Yet, while religion (and more specifically, Catholicism) certainly plays a big part in her writing, from the "Christian malgre lui," as she herself characterized the hero of her first novel "Wise Blood" in the Author's Note to book's 1962 second edition, to the "odd folks out" and searching souls populating her short stories, and to her frequent biblical references, it would not do her writing justice to limit her to that realm, nor to that of "Southern" fiction. (No matter for which specific dramatic purpose a writer employed a Southern setting, he would still be considered to be writing about the South in general, and was thus left to get rid off the label of a "Southern writer ... and all the misconceptions that go with it" as best he could, she quipped in her 1960 essay "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction." Rather, she added three years later in "The Regional Writer," location matters to an author insofar as any author "operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet," and it is up to him to find that precise spot and apply it to his writing.) Similarly, while her heroes are certainly not the kind of people you expect to meet on your daily errands (or do you?), it would shortchange them were we to succumb to the temptation of merely defining them as some particularly colorful examples of grotesque fiction. For one thing, "[t]o be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man," as O'Connor noted in "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction." More fundamentally, however, she saw her calling - and that of any Southern author treading the same ground as William Faulkner and trying not to have their "mule and wagon stalled on the same track the Dixie Limited is roaring down" - as an attempt to reach below the surface of the human existence to that realm "which is the concern of prophets and poets," and to strike a balance between realism on the one hand and vision, poetry and compassion on the other; to recognize the expectations of his readers without making himself their slave.

Thus, the famously unexpected endings of Flannery O'Connor's narratives are more than merely weird plot twists, the encounter between the grandmother and The Misfit in the title story of her first published short story collection "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" (1955) is the result of a wrong turn in the road as much as that of a series of wrong choices, coincidences and essential miscommunications, and the title story of her second, posthumously published collection of short stories "Everything That Rises Must Converge" (1965) truly does indicate more than a physical proposition and indeed, a situation applicable to the entire world, as O'Connor wrote in a 1961 letter regarding the initial publication of the collection's title story in New World Writing.

A six-time winner of the O. Henry Award for Short Fiction and winner of the posthumously awarded 1972 National Book Award for her Collected Short Stories, in her short career as a writer Flannery O'Connor left an indelible mark on American literature, far transcending the borders of her native South. We can only speculate what she would have contributed had illness and death not intervened - and in a time when, as O'Connor wrote so prophetically in "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction," too many writers abandon vision and instead contend themselves with satisfying their readers' more pedestrian expectations, her contributions would doubtless be invaluable. Alas, we are left with a body of work that fits neatly into this marvelously edited single-volume entry in the "Library of America" series - but the content of this one book alone is worth manifold that of the much ampler output of many a writer of recent years.

Excellent collection, 24 Nov 1999
A handsome edition of the complete fiction of this marvellous writer, plus several essays and a generous selection of her letters, which are amongst the best of the century - by turns acute, brilliant, catty and self-deprecating. Only doesn't get the extra crown because of the omission of some of her best short pieces on the craft of writing, collected elsewhere in Mystery and Manners. But with that book and this one, you'll have most of what you'll ever need by one of the toughest and darkest of American writers.

Flannery O'Connor-Pillar Of Southern Writing, 28 Apr 1999
This is must read for anyone with literary interest. O'Connor's grotesque style grabs the reader and transports him or her into a version of the south that is all to true. Excellent author.

A great artist, a noble soul!, 19 Feb 1999
This is perhaps the most beautiful edition of the collected works of Flannery O'Connor. And it contains not only her incomparable stories--with those unforgettable characters!--but her magnificent letters. Her stories can both shock and shine. Her letters have made me both laugh and cry. Her stories never grow old--I've read them over many years now and am always finding something new and fresh and am always in awe of her consummate artistry. And her letter reveal, at least in part, the secret of her art and the power of her stories: they reveal a noble soul. Humble, honest, caring, suffering, and always, a valiant woman of faith. Her lupus stimied her activity; but it deepened her spirit and heart. I am sure those peacocks she loved so much missed her. And they're not fortunate enough, like us, to be able to read her relatively slim, but always enriching, literary legacy. GET THIS BOOK!

"Some fun," said Bobby Lee., 25 Jun 1998
Flannery O'Connor is a wonderfully honest person. If you would know her, read her letters.

Flannery O'Conner 'The Complete Stories', 09 Oct 2007
Every sentence so very rich. What a loss to the literary world when O'Conner died at a relatively young age. A thousand thanks to Robert Giroux for his enlightening introduction which enhances the book and helps the reader know a little more about Flannery O'Conner.

Anne forrest

Recommended by The Independent newspaper today., 05 Jan 2007
Just thought you'd like to know, this book just got a glowing write-up by Dean Koontz in "The Independent" newspaper today, describing it as a "book in a lifetime" and his inspiration. Good enough to make me want to read it.

Some of the most essential short fiction of the 20th century, 03 Apr 2000
Flannery O'Connor was a genius. Her prose is beautifully restrained, powerful, frightening and, disturbingly, often hilarious. I haven't encountered a writer of short fiction yet who hasn't doffed their cap to O'Connor. This collection takes the reader from slightly scrappy early writings to the faultless work of her final years. The stories here are so essential that I am giving this book five stars despite its revolting 1980s conceptual jacket, which depicts a baldie with a triangular penis standing in what can only be described as a Drama Space.

The Best Book I Have Ever Read, 20 Jan 2002
Wise Blood will draw you in, make you laugh and make you think with its darkly humourous description of one man's struggle to make sense of his own existence. From the moment we meet Hazel Motes to the moment he leaves us behind, we travel to the heart of what it is to be human and live in a world that provides inadequate answers.

Puts Hannibal Lecter In His Place - The Dustbin, 26 Jun 1999
I am completely new to Flannery O'Connor although I have been aware of her through citations in articles and books. 'Wise Blood' was portrayed as a 'comic novel' and while there were some very funny passages it certainly was not a humorous book.

A plot summary is simple enough. The central character, Hazel Motes, returns home after a spell in the army during the second world war. His time is only alluded to in an elliptical manner which is confusing - deliberately so on the part of O'Connor. He has been the son of a preacher and he sets out to preach the Church of the Unrisen Christ. There follow a series of misadventures - none of which are especially comic aside from a wonderful chapter wherein a competitor preacher sets up opposite Hazel on the street to preach a 'true' (although corrupt) message.

Hazel ends up discredited and blinds himself after which he becomes dependant on the landlady where he lodges. He eventually dies and there the novel ends.

If this sounds uninspiring it may be in part because the novel is indeed a strange, disconnected narrative.

However, the great strength of the book is the character of Enoch Emery and his disturbed psyche. He latches onto Hazel who rejects him. (Thus O'Connor inverts one of our expectations, that the misfits will form a duo. They never do, after she sets up the expectation that they WILL.) In one of the strangest things I've ever read, Enoch kills a man who is in a gorilla suit at the promotion of a 'Tarzan' like film. The build-up to this is quite compelling, and the violence - never described in detail - nevertheless issues from the description of one of the most deranged minds I've ever read about.

The strange things is - after this crime we never see Enoch again, he is dropped from the narrative and there is no police investigation. (Likewise, Hazel kills towards the end of the book and this to passes unnoticed.) These narrative dislocations are very unsettling, and I suspect they are there to throw these bizarre acts into relief, as if they are utterly removed from what we normally take to be 'ordinary life'.

If it sounds like I did not like the book then you are probably right. However, the depiction of Enoch is absolutely compelling because his irrational violence and strange compulsions are presented as having their own internal logic, but a logic we cannot enter into in. Severe violence comes out of nowhere - either 'evil' (if, like O'Connor, you are a Catholic) or the 'irrational'.

For anybody who has read 'Hannibal' this is a far superior read. Oh, it is not slick or well-plotted, it is often strange and downright annoying (too many narrative dislocations and you start to wonder if the lady can even tell a story). However, the ridiculous character of Lecter - this mix of Lord Byron, Glenn Gould, Louis Pasteur and Raffles or James Bond - does not just glamourize violence, it trivializes it. Extreme violence is not aesthetically pleasing, and it does not issue from highly cultured 'supermen'. (Which is not to say that wealthy and sophisticated people have not been known to kill.)

'Wise Blood' portrays violence and psychic disorder with power and rawness.

P. S. - The chapter about Enoch killing the man was originally a short story 'Enoch And The Gorilla' and can be found in the short stories. It is worth reading on its won.

A literary voice silence way too early., 21 Jul 2003
Flannery O'Connor did not even live to see her 40th birthday; she died, in 1964, of lupus, the same inflammatory disease which had killed her father when she was a mere teenager and which all too soon began to cripple her as well. A graduate of the Iowa State University's journalism and writing program, she had started to write her first stories, poems and other pieces when she was still in high school, and had submitted a collection of six short stories entitled "The Geranium" as her master's thesis in university. (Most of the stories contained in that collection were published individually in various magazines and anthologies around the time of their inclusion in the thesis; the collection as a whole, however, was first published only posthumously in the National Book Award winning "Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor.") Only a few years after having obtained her master's degree, and after a prolonged residence at Yaddo artists' colony in upstate New York, O'Connor began to spend time in hospitals and, in due course, was diagnosed with lupus. From that moment on, she focused on her writing even more than she had before - and the result were two novels, two short story collections, several stand-alone short stories, essays and other pieces of occasional prose, as well as a barrage of letters. The majority of that work product, including twenty-one previously unpublished letters, is reproduced in this collection published in the Library of America series; notably, the fiction part also includes, as one piece, O'Connor's master's thesis, "The Geranium: A Collection of Short Stories."

A native of Georgia, Flannery O'Connor defined herself as much as a Catholic writer as a Southerner; and she commented on the impact that regional influences on the one hand and her religion on the other hand had had on her writing in the 1963 essays "The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South" and "The Regional Writer." Yet, while religion (and more specifically, Catholicism) certainly plays a big part in her writing, from the "Christian malgre lui," as she herself characterized the hero of her first novel "Wise Blood" in the Author's Note to book's 1962 second edition, to the "odd folks out" and searching souls populating her short stories, and to her frequent biblical references, it would not do her writing justice to limit her to that realm, nor to that of "Southern" fiction. (No matter for which specific dramatic purpose a writer employed a Southern setting, he would still be considered to be writing about the South in general, and was thus left to get rid off the label of a "Southern writer ... and all the misconceptions that go with it" as best he could, she quipped in her 1960 essay "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction." Rather, she added three years later in "The Regional Writer," location matters to an author insofar as any author "operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet," and it is up to him to find that precise spot and apply it to his writing.) Similarly, while her heroes are certainly not the kind of people you expect to meet on your daily errands (or do you?), it would shortchange them were we to succumb to the temptation of merely defining them as some particularly colorful examples of grotesque fiction. For one thing, "[t]o be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man," as O'Connor noted in "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction." More fundamentally, however, she saw her calling - and that of any Southern author treading the same ground as William Faulkner and trying not to have their "mule and wagon stalled on the same track the Dixie Limited is roaring down" - as an attempt to reach below the surface of the human existence to that realm "which is the concern of prophets and poets," and to strike a balance between realism on the one hand and vision, poetry and compassion on the other; to recognize the expectations of his readers without making himself their slave.

Thus, the famously unexpected endings of Flannery O'Connor's narratives are more than merely weird plot twists, the encounter between the grandmother and The Misfit in the title story of her first published short story collection "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" (1955) is the result of a wrong turn in the road as much as that of a series of wrong choices, coincidences and essential miscommunications, and the title story of her second, posthumously published collection of short stories "Everything That Rises Must Converge" (1965) truly does indicate more than a physical proposition and indeed, a situation applicable to the entire world, as O'Connor wrote in a 1961 letter regarding the initial publication of the collection's title story in New World Writing.

A six-time winner of the O. Henry Award for Short Fiction and winner of the posthumously awarded 1972 National Book Award for her Collected Short Stories, in her short career as a writer Flannery O'Connor left an indelible mark on American literature, far transcending the borders of her native South. We can only speculate what she would have contributed had illness and death not intervened - and in a time when, as O'Connor wrote so prophetically in "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction," too many writers abandon vision and instead contend themselves with satisfying their readers' more pedestrian expectations, her contributions would doubtless be invaluable. Alas, we are left with a body of work that fits neatly into this marvelously edited single-volume entry in the "Library of America" series - but the content of this one book alone is worth manifold that of the much ampler output of many a writer of recent years.

Excellent collection, 24 Nov 1999
A handsome edition of the complete fiction of this marvellous writer, plus several essays and a generous selection of her letters, which are amongst the best of the century - by turns acute, brilliant, catty and self-deprecating. Only doesn't get the extra crown because of the omission of some of her best short pieces on the craft of writing, collected elsewhere in Mystery and Manners. But with that book and this one, you'll have most of what you'll ever need by one of the toughest and darkest of American writers.

Flannery O'Connor-Pillar Of Southern Writing, 28 Apr 1999
This is must read for anyone with literary interest. O'Connor's grotesque style grabs the reader and transports him or her into a version of the south that is all to true. Excellent author.

A great artist, a noble soul!, 19 Feb 1999
This is perhaps the most beautiful edition of the collected works of Flannery O'Connor. And it contains not only her incomparable stories--with those unforgettable characters!--but her magnificent letters. Her stories can both shock and shine. Her letters have made me both laugh and cry. Her stories never grow old--I've read them over many years now and am always finding something new and fresh and am always in awe of her consummate artistry. And her letter reveal, at least in part, the secret of her art and the power of her stories: they reveal a noble soul. Humble, honest, caring, suffering, and always, a valiant woman of faith. Her lupus stimied her activity; but it deepened her spirit and heart. I am sure those peacocks she loved so much missed her. And they're not fortunate enough, like us, to be able to read her relatively slim, but always enriching, literary legacy. GET THIS BOOK!

"Some fun," said Bobby Lee., 25 Jun 1998
Flannery O'Connor is a wonderfully honest person. If you would know her, read her letters.

Oddball prophets caught in the web they wove themselves., 28 Feb 2005
They are misfits, wanderers, and souls searching for faith and absolution. Many of them are, to one extent or another, hypocrites; others are almost unbelievably naive. All of them are Southerners - and yet, even the most outlandish among Flannery O'Connor's protagonists come across as entirely believable, complex characters whom, regardless of location, you might expect to come across in your own travels, too; and there is no telling how such an encounter would turn out.

Of course, you would hope it does not prove quite as disastrous as the title story's chance meeting of a family taking a wrong turn (on the road as much as figuratively) and the self-proclaimed Misfit haunting that particular area of Georgia; which culminates in a bizarre conversation, the failure of communication underneath which only adds to the reader's growing feeling of helplessness in view of impending doom. And such a sense of irreversible destiny pervades many a story in this collection; yet, while as in O'Connor's writing in general, her and her protagonists' Catholic faith plays a dominant role in the course of the events, that course is not so much brought about by the hand of God as by the characters' own acts, decisions, judgments and prejudices.

Freakish as they are, O'Connor's (anti-)heroes are meant to be prophets, messengers of a long forgotten responsibility, as she explained in her 1963 essay "The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South:" their prophecy is "a matter of seeing near things with their extensions of meaning and thus of seeing far things close up." Often, she uses names, titles and items of every day life and imbues them with a new meaning in the context of her stories; this collection's title story, for example, is named for a blues song popularized by Bessie Smith in the late 1920s, and a cautionary road sign commonly seen in the 1950s ("The Life You Save May Be Your Own") becomes the title and motto of a story about a wanderer's encounter with a mother and her handicapped daughter who take him in, only to use that purported charity to their own advantage - at the end of which, predictably, nobody is the better off. Indeed, the endings of O'Connor's stories are as far from your standard happy ending as you can imagine; and while you cannot help but develop, early on, a premonition of doom, most of the time the precise nature of that doom is anything but predictable.

"A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories" was Flannery O'Connor's first published collection of short stories; yet, by the time these stories appeared (nine of the ten were published in various magazines between 1953 and 1955 before their inclusion in this 1955 collection) she was already an accomplished writer, with not only a novel under her belt ("Wise Blood," 1952) but also, and significantly, a master's thesis likewise consisting of a collection of short stories, entitled "The Geranium and Other Stories" (1947; first published as a collection in 1971's National Book Award winning "The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor," although several of those stories had likewise been published individually before). Two of the stories included in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" count among O'Connor's six winners of the O'Henry Award for Short Fiction ("The Life You Save May Be Your Own" and "The Circle in the Fire," again an exploration of insincerity, half-hearted charity and its exploitation); and the collection as a whole, even more than her first novel, quickly established her as a masterful storyteller, endowed with vision, an unfailing sense for language and a supreme feeling for the use of irony; all of which have long since placed her firmly in the first tier of 20th century American authors.

Flannery O'Connor died, at the age of 39, of lupus, an inflammatory disease which in less severe forms may not be more than an (albeit substantial) nuisance, but which proved fatal in her case as well as that of her father before her. Her literary career, almost the sole focus of her life from the moment that she was diagnosed onwards, was thus cut short way before her time. Yet, to this day her writing holds a unique position in contemporary literature; and "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" is an excellent place to start exploring her work.

Flannery O'Conner 'The Complete Stories', 09 Oct 2007
Every sentence so very rich. What a loss to the literary world when O'Conner died at a relatively young age. A thousand thanks to Robert Giroux for his enlightening introduction which enhances the book and helps the reader know a little more about Flannery O'Conner.

Anne forrest

Recommended by The Independent newspaper today., 05 Jan 2007
Just thought you'd like to know, this book just got a glowing write-up by Dean Koontz in "The Independent" newspaper today, describing it as a "book in a lifetime" and his inspiration. Good enough to make me want to read it.

Some of the most essential short fiction of the 20th century, 03 Apr 2000
Flannery O'Connor was a genius. Her prose is beautifully restrained, powerful, frightening and, disturbingly, often hilarious. I haven't encountered a writer of short fiction yet who hasn't doffed their cap to O'Connor. This collection takes the reader from slightly scrappy early writings to the faultless work of her final years. The stories here are so essential that I am giving this book five stars despite its revolting 1980s conceptual jacket, which depicts a baldie with a triangular penis standing in what can only be described as a Drama Space.

The Best Book I Have Ever Read, 20 Jan 2002
Wise Blood will draw you in, make you laugh and make you think with its darkly humourous description of one man's struggle to make sense of his own existence. From the moment we meet Hazel Motes to the moment he leaves us behind, we travel to the heart of what it is to be human and live in a world that provides inadequate answers.

Puts Hannibal Lecter In His Place - The Dustbin, 26 Jun 1999
I am completely new to Flannery O'Connor although I have been aware of her through citations in articles and books. 'Wise Blood' was portrayed as a 'comic novel' and while there were some very funny passages it certainly was not a humorous book.

A plot summary is simple enough. The central character, Hazel Motes, returns home after a spell in the army during the second world war. His time is only alluded to in an elliptical manner which is confusing - deliberately so on the part of O'Connor. He has been the son of a preacher and he sets out to preach the Church of the Unrisen Christ. There follow a series of misadventures - none of which are especially comic aside from a wonderful chapter wherein a competitor preacher sets up opposite Hazel on the street to preach a 'true' (although corrupt) message.

Hazel ends up discredited and blinds himself after which he becomes dependant on the landlady where he lodges. He eventually dies and there the novel ends.

If this sounds uninspiring it may be in part because the novel is indeed a strange, disconnected narrative.

However, the great strength of the book is the character of Enoch Emery and his disturbed psyche. He latches onto Hazel who rejects him. (Thus O'Connor inverts one of our expectations, that the misfits will form a duo. They never do, after she sets up the expectation that they WILL.) In one of the strangest things I've ever read, Enoch kills a man who is in a gorilla suit at the promotion of a 'Tarzan' like film. The build-up to this is quite compelling, and the violence - never described in detail - nevertheless issues from the description of one of the most deranged minds I've ever read about.

The strange things is - after this crime we never see Enoch again, he is dropped from the narrative and there is no police investigation. (Likewise, Hazel kills towards the end of the book and this to passes unnoticed.) These narrative dislocations are very unsettling, and I suspect they are there to throw these bizarre acts into relief, as if they are utterly removed from what we normally take to be 'ordinary life'.

If it sounds like I did not like the book then you are probably right. However, the depiction of Enoch is absolutely compelling because his irrational violence and strange compulsions are presented as having their own internal logic, but a logic we cannot enter into in. Severe violence comes out of nowhere - either 'evil' (if, like O'Connor, you are a Catholic) or the 'irrational'.

For anybody who has read 'Hannibal' this is a far superior read. Oh, it is not slick or well-plotted, it is often strange and downright annoying (too many narrative dislocations and you start to wonder if the lady can even tell a story). However, the ridiculous character of Lecter - this mix of Lord Byron, Glenn Gould, Louis Pasteur and Raffles or James Bond - does not just glamourize violence, it trivializes it. Extreme violence is not aesthetically pleasing, and it does not issue from highly cultured 'supermen'. (Which is not to say that wealthy and sophisticated people have not been known to kill.)

'Wise Blood' portrays violence and psychic disorder with power and rawness.

P. S. - The chapter about Enoch killing the man was originally a short story 'Enoch And The Gorilla' and can be found in the short stories. It is worth reading on its won.

A literary voice silence way too early., 21 Jul 2003
Flannery O'Connor did not even live to see her 40th birthday; she died, in 1964, of lupus, the same inflammatory disease which had killed her father when she was a mere teenager and which all too soon began to cripple her as well. A graduate of the Iowa State University's journalism and writing program, she had started to write her first stories, poems and other pieces when she was still in high school, and had submitted a collection of six short stories entitled "The Geranium" as her master's thesis in university. (Most of the stories contained in that collection were published individually in various magazines and anthologies around the time of their inclusion in the thesis; the collection as a whole, however, was first published only posthumously in the National Book Award winning "Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor.") Only a few years after having obtained her master's degree, and after a prolonged residence at Yaddo artists' colony in upstate New York, O'Connor began to spend time in hospitals and, in due course, was diagnosed with lupus. From that moment on, she focused on her writing even more than she had before - and the result were two novels, two short story collections, several stand-alone short stories, essays and other pieces of occasional prose, as well as a barrage of letters. The majority of that work product, including twenty-one previously unpublished letters, is reproduced in this collection published in the Library of America series; notably, the fiction part also includes, as one piece, O'Connor's master's thesis, "The Geranium: A Collection of Short Stories."

A native of Georgia, Flannery O'Connor defined herself as much as a Catholic writer as a Southerner; and she commented on the impact that regional influences on the one hand and her religion on the other hand had had on her writing in the 1963 essays "The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South" and "The Regional Writer." Yet, while religion (and more specifically, Catholicism) certainly plays a big part in her writing, from the "Christian malgre lui," as she herself characterized the hero of her first novel "Wise Blood" in the Author's Note to book's 1962 second edition, to the "odd folks out" and searching souls populating her short stories, and to her frequent biblical references, it would not do her writing justice to limit her to that realm, nor to that of "Southern" fiction. (No matter for which specific dramatic purpose a writer employed a Southern setting, he would still be considered to be writing about the South in general, and was thus left to get rid off the label of a "Southern writer ... and all the misconceptions that go with it" as best he could, she quipped in her 1960 essay "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction." Rather, she added three years later in "The Regional Writer," location matters to an author insofar as any author "operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet," and it is up to him to find that precise spot and apply it to his writing.) Similarly, while her heroes are certainly not the kind of people you expect to meet on your daily errands (or do you?), it would shortchange them were we to succumb to the temptation of merely defining them as some particularly colorful examples of grotesque fiction. For one thing, "[t]o be able to recognize a freak, you have to have some conception of the whole man," as O'Connor noted in "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction." More fundamentally, however, she saw her calling - and that of any Southern author treading the same ground as William Faulkner and trying not to have their "mule and wagon stalled on the same track the Dixie Limited is roaring down" - as an attempt to reach below the surface of the human existence to that realm "which is the concern of prophets and poets," and to strike a balance between realism on the one hand and vision, poetry and compassion on the other; to recognize the expectations of his readers without making himself their slave.

Thus, the famously unexpected endings of Flannery O'Connor's narratives are more than merely weird plot twists, the encounter between the grandmother and The Misfit in the title story of her first published short story collection "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" (1955) is the result of a wrong turn in the road as much as that of a series of wrong choices, coincidences and essential miscommunications, and the title story of her second, posthumously published collection of short stories "Everything That Rises Must Converge" (1965) truly does indicate more than a physical proposition and indeed, a situation applicable to the entire world, as O'Connor wrote in a 1961 letter regarding the initial publication of the collection's title story in New World Writing.

A six-time winner of the O. Henry Award for Short Fiction and winner of the posthumously awarded 1972 National Book Award for her Collected Short Stories, in her short career as a writer Flannery O'Connor left an indelible mark on American literature, far transcending the borders of her native South. We can only speculate what she would have contributed had illness and death not intervened - and in a time when, as O'Connor wrote so prophetically in "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction," too many writers abandon vision and instead contend themselves with satisfying their readers' more pedestrian expectations, her contributions would doubtless be invaluable. Alas, we are left with a body of work that fits neatly into this marvelously edited single-volume entry in the "Library of America" series - but the content of this one book alone is worth manifold that of the much ampler output of many a writer of recent years.

Excellent collection, 24 Nov 1999
A handsome edition of the complete fiction of this marvellous writer, plus several essays and a generous selection of her letters, which are amongst the best of the century - by turns acute, brilliant, catty and self-deprecating. Only doesn't get the extra crown because of the omission of some of her best short pieces on the craft of writing, collected elsewhere in Mystery and Manners. But with that book and this one, you'll have most of what you'll ever need by one of the toughest and darkest of American writers.

Flannery O'Connor-Pillar Of Southern Writing, 28 Apr 1999
This is must read for anyone with literary interest. O'Connor's grotesque style grabs the reader and transports him or her into a version of the south that is all to true. Excellent author.

A great artist, a noble soul!, 19 Feb 1999
This is perhaps the most beautiful edition of the collected works of Flannery O'Connor. And it contains not only her incomparable stories--with those unforgettable characters!--but her magnificent letters. Her stories can both shock and shine. Her letters have made me both laugh and cry. Her stories never grow old--I've read them over many years now and am always finding something new and fresh and am always in awe of her consummate artistry. And her letter reveal, at least in part, the secret of her art and the power of her stories: they reveal a noble soul. Humble, honest, caring, suffering, and always, a valiant woman of faith. Her lupus stimied her activity; but it deepened her spirit and heart. I am sure those peacocks she loved so much missed her. And they're not fortunate enough, like us, to be able to read her relatively slim, but always enriching, literary legacy. GET THIS BOOK!

"Some fun," said Bobby Lee., 25 Jun 1998
Flannery O'Connor is a wonderfully honest person. If you would know her, read her letters.

Oddball prophets caught in the web they wove themselves., 28 Feb 2005
They are misfits, wanderers, and souls searching for faith and absolution. Many of them are, to one extent or another, hypocrites; others are almost unbelievably naive. All of them are Southerners - and yet, even the most outlandish among Flannery O'Connor's protagonists come across as entirely believable, complex characters whom, regardless of location, you might expect to come across in your own travels, too; and there is no telling how such an encounter would turn out.

Of course, you would hope it does not prove quite as disastrous as the title story's chance meeting of a family taking a wrong turn (on the road as much as figuratively) and the self-proclaimed Misfit haunting that particular area of Georgia; which culminates in a bizarre conversation, the failure of communication underneath which only adds to the reader's growing feeling of helplessness in view of impending doom. And such a sense of irreversible destiny pervades many a story in this collection; yet, while as in O'Connor's writing in general, her and her protagonists' Catholic faith plays a dominant role in the course of the events, that course is not so much brought about by the hand of God as by the characters' own acts, decisions, judgments and prejudices.

Freakish as they are, O'Connor's (anti-)heroes are meant to be prophets, messengers of a long forgotten responsibility, as she explained in her 1963 essay "The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South:" their prophecy is "a matter of seeing near things with their extensions of meaning and thus of seeing far things close up." Often, she uses names, titles and items of every day life and imbues them with a new meaning in the context of her stories; this collection's title story, for example, is named for a blues song popularized by Bessie Smith in the late 1920s, and a cautionary road sign commonly seen in the 1950s ("The Life You Save May Be Your Own") becomes the title and motto of a story about a wanderer's encounter with a mother and her handicapped daughter who take him in, only to use that purported charity to their own advantage - at the end of which, predictably, nobody is the better off. Indeed, the endings of O'Connor's stories are as far from your standard happy ending as you can imagine; and while you cannot help but develop, early on, a premonition of doom, most of the time the precise nature of that doom is anything but predictable.

"A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories" was Flannery O'Connor's first published collection of short stories; yet, by the time these stories appeared (nine of the ten were published in various magazines between 1953 and 1955 before their inclusion in this 1955 collection) she was already an accomplished writer, with not only a novel under her belt ("Wise Blood," 1952) but also, and significantly, a master's thesis likewise consisting of a collection of short stories, entitled "The Geranium and Other Stories" (1947; first published as a collection in 1971's National Book Award winning "The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor," although several of those stories had likewise been published individually before). Two of the stories included in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" count among O'Connor's six winners of the O'Henry Award for Short Fiction ("The Life You Save May Be Your Own" and "The Circle in the Fire," again an exploration of insincerity, half-hearted charity and its exploitation); and the collection as a whole, even more than her first novel, quickly established her as a masterful storyteller, endowed with vision, an unfailing sense for language and a supreme feeling for the use of irony; all of which have long since placed her firmly in the first tier of 20th century American authors.

Flannery O'Connor died, at the age of 39, of lupus, an inflammatory disease which in less severe forms may not be more than an (albeit substantial) nuisance, but which proved fatal in her case as well as that of her father before her. Her literary career, almost the sole focus of her life from the moment that she was diagnosed onwards, was thus cut short way before her time. Yet, to this day her writing holds a unique position in contemporary literature; and "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" is an excellent place to start exploring her work.

Flannery O'Conner 'The Complete Stories', 09 Oct 2007
Every sentence so very rich. What a loss to the literary world when O'Conner died at a relatively young age. A thousand thanks to Robert Giroux for his enlightening introduction which enhances the book and helps the reader know a little more about Flannery O'Conner.

Anne forrest

Recommended by The Independent newspaper today., 05 Jan 2007
Just thought you'd like to know, this book just got a glowing write-up by Dean Koontz in "The Independent" newspaper today, describing it as a "book in a lifetime" and his inspiration. Good enough to make me want to read it.

Some of the most essential short fiction of the 20th century, 03 Apr 2000
Flannery O'Connor was a genius. Her prose is beautifully restrained, powerful, frightening and, disturbingly, often hilarious. I haven't encountered a writer of short fiction yet who hasn't doffed their cap to O'Connor. This collection takes the reader from slightly scrappy early writings to the faultless work of her final years. The stories here are so essential that I am giving this book five stars despite its revolting 1980s conceptual jacket, which depicts a baldie with a triangular penis standing in what can only be described as a Drama Space.