Most of my friends will not be surprised to know that I have a huge crush on Flannery O’Connor. She’s one of America’s most memorable fiction writers. Today would have been her 84th birthday. However, she died from Lupus at the age of 39.
Ralph Wood, of the National Review Online, has a great article reflecting on her work, especially the aspects of divine grace. If you’ve ever read Flannery, you’ll enjoy this article. And if you’re looking for a good reason to get into short stories, the article should get you going.
Many are thrown off by her violent and self-destructive characters. But Wood observes that this is one reason her fiction is so unique in introducing an element of mercy and grace. He explains:
When asked why her fiction, like that of so many other Southern writers, is filled with freaks, O’Connor wryly replied that Southerners “are still able to recognize one.” To discern deviations and distortions, O’Connor explained, one must first have a clear vision of the Norm. The rural and “Christ-haunted” South, as she called it, has retained such a vision because the popular imagination has remained essentially Biblical. When the folk religion is shaped by the Biblical narrative — of creation and fall, of Israel’s election and Christ’s incarnation, of the crucifixion and the resurrection, of the church as God’s own people and the Second Coming as history’s consummation — then even the barely literate possess the ultimate criterion for measuring themselves and everything else.
You can read the full (though short) article here.
