Editing Flannery O'Connor (section)

==Career==
O'Connor is primarily known for her short stories. She published two books of short stories: ''[[A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories|A Good Man Is Hard to Find]]'' (1955) and ''[[Everything That Rises Must Converge]]'' (published posthumously in 1965).  Many of O'Connor's short stories have been re-published in major anthologies, including ''[[The Best American Short Stories]]'' and ''[[Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards.|Prize Stories]]''.<ref>{{cite book |last=Farmer |first=David |title=Flannery O'Connor: A Descriptive Bibliography |publisher=Garland Publishing |date=1981 |location=New York}}</ref>

O'Connor's two novels are ''[[Wise Blood]]'' (1952) (made into a [[Wise Blood (film)|film]] by [[John Huston]]) and ''[[The Violent Bear It Away]]'' (1960). 

Fragments exist of an unfinished O'Connor novel tentatively entitled ''Why Do the Heathen Rage?'' The unfinished novel draws from several of her short stories, including "Why Do the Heathen Rage?", "The Enduring Chill", and "[[The Partridge Festival]]".<ref>{{Cite web |title=After a decade's work, scholar brings Flannery O'Connor's unfinished novel to light |url=https://www.detroitcatholic.com/news/after-a-decades-work-scholar-brings-flannery-oconnors-unfinished-novel-to-light |access-date=2025-03-25 |website=Detroit Catholic |language=en-US}}</ref>

From 1956 through 1964, she wrote more than one hundred book reviews for two Catholic diocesan newspapers in Georgia: ''The Bulletin'' and ''The Southern Cross''.{{sfn|O'Connor|2008|p=3}} According to fellow reviewer Joey Zuber, the wide range of books she chose to review demonstrated that she was profoundly intellectual.{{sfn|Martin|1968}}{{page needed|date=May 2016}} Her reviews consistently confronted theological and ethical themes in books written by the most serious and demanding theologians of her time.{{sfn|O'Connor|2008|p=4}} Professor of English Carter Martin, an authority on O'Connor's writings, notes simply that her "book reviews are at one with her religious life".{{sfn|O'Connor|2008|p=4}} 

===Characteristics===
Regarding her emphasis of the grotesque, O'Connor said: "[A]nything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case, it is going to be called realistic."{{sfn|O'Connor|1969|p=40}} Her fiction is usually set in the South{{r|Enniss (2007)}} and features morally flawed protagonists who frequently interact with characters with disabilities or are disabled themselves (as O'Connor was by lupus). The issue of race often appears. Most of her works feature disturbing elements, although she did not like to be characterized as cynical. "I am mighty tired of reading reviews that call ''A Good Man'' brutal and sarcastic," she wrote.{{sfn|O'Connor|1979|p=90}} "The stories are hard, but they are hard, because there is nothing harder or less sentimental than Christian realism.  When I see these stories described as horror stories, I am always amused, because the reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror."{{sfn|O'Connor|1979|p=90}}

She felt deeply informed by the sacramental and by the [[Thomist]] notion that the created world is charged with God. For her, God was a given of experience, not a mere intuition of the mind or spirit. When [[Mary McCarthy (author)|Mary McCarthy]] told her that she considered the [[Eucharist]] only a "symbol, and a pretty good one", O'Connor completely disagreed, saying: "Well, if it's a symbol, to hell with it".<ref>{{Cite web |title=Letters. Mary McCarthy, Aquinas, Hitler, et al. |url=https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/letters-mary-mccarthy-aquinas-hitler-et-al |website=Commonweal |date=26 January 2018 |access-date=27 March 2025}}</ref> Yet, she did not write [[apologetic]] fiction of the kind prevalent in the Catholic literature of the time, explaining that a writer's meaning must be evident, in his or her fiction, without [[didacticism]]. She wrote ironic, subtly allegorical fiction about deceptively backward Southern characters, usually [[Christian fundamentalism|fundamentalist Protestants]], who undergo transformations of character that, to her thinking, brought them closer to the Catholic mind. The transformation is often accomplished through pain, violence, and ludicrous behavior in the pursuit of the holy. However grotesque the setting, she tried to portray her characters as open to the touch of [[divine grace]]. This ruled out a sentimental understanding of the stories' violence, as of her own illness. She wrote: "Grace changes us, and the change is painful."{{sfn|O'Connor|1979|p=307}}

She had a deeply sardonic sense of humor, often based on the disparity between her characters' limited perceptions and the extraordinary fate awaiting them. Another frequent source of humor is the attempt of well-meaning liberals to cope with the rural South on their own terms. O'Connor used such characters' inability to come to terms with disability, race, poverty, and fundamentalism, other than in sentimental illusions, to illustrate her view that the [[Secularism|secular world]] was failing in the twentieth century.{{cn|date=March 2025}}

In several stories, O'Connor explored a number of contemporary issues from the perspective of both her fundamentalist and liberal characters. She addressed [[the Holocaust]] in her story "[[The Displaced Person]]", [[racial integration]] in "[[Everything That Rises Must Converge (short story)|Everything That Rises Must Converge]]", and [[intersex]]uality, in "[[A Temple of the Holy Ghost]]". Her fiction often included references to the problem of race in the South. Occasionally, racial issues come to the forefront, as in "[[The Artificial Nigger]]", "Everything that Rises Must Converge", and "[[Judgement Day (short story)|Judgement Day]]" (her last short story, which was a drastically rewritten version of her first published story, "[[The Geranium]]").{{cn|date=March 2025}} 

Despite her secluded life, her writing reveals an uncanny grasp of the nuances of human behavior. O'Connor gave many lectures on faith and literature, traveling quite far despite her frail health. Politically, she maintained a broadly progressive outlook in connection with her faith; she voted for [[John F. Kennedy]] in 1960 and outwardly supported the work of [[Martin Luther King Jr.]] and the civil rights movement.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Spivey |first1=Ted R. |title=Flannery O'Connor: The Woman, the Thinker, the Visionary |date=1997 |publisher=Mercer University Press |page=60}}</ref> Despite this, she made her personal stance on race and integration known throughout her life in several letters to playwright [[Maryat Lee]] (which she wrote under the pseudonym "Mrs Turpin"). In one such letter, she said, "You know, I'm an integrationist, by principle, and a segregationist, by taste.  I don't ''like'' negroes. They all give me a pain, and the more of them I see, the less and less I like them. Particularly the new kind".<ref name="Elie#">{{Cite magazine |last=Elie |first=Paul |date=June 15, 2020 |title=How racist was Flannery O'Connor? |magazine=The New Yorker |url=https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/22/how-racist-was-flannery-oconnor |access-date=September 10, 2023}}</ref> According to O'Connor biographer, [[Brad Gooch]], there are also "letters where she even talks about a friend that she makes in graduate school at the University of Iowa who is black, and she defends this friendship to her own mother, in letters. It's complicated to look at, and I don't think that we can box her in".<ref>{{Cite news |title='Acid humour was a big part': the life and legacy of Flannery O'Connor |url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/article/2024/may/08/flannery-oconnor-movie-maya-ethan-hawke |date=8 May 2024 |last=Smith |first=David |work=[[The Guardian]] |access-date=14 May 2024}}</ref>

===Letters===
Throughout her life, O'Connor maintained a wide correspondence{{sfn|O'Connor|1979|pp=''xii''–''xiv'', ''xvi'', ''xvii''}} with writers that included [[Robert Lowell]] and [[Elizabeth Bishop]],{{sfn|O'Connor|1979|ps=&nbsp;''passim''.}} English professor [[Samuel Ashley Brown]],{{sfn|O'Connor|1979|ps=&nbsp;''passim''.}} Catholic nun and literary critic [[M. Bernetta Quinn]],<ref>{{Cite web |last=Ripatrazone |first=Nick |date=27 July 2018 |title=The Nun Who Wrote Letters to the Greatest Poets of Her Generation |url=https://lithub.com/the-nun-who-wrote-letters-to-the-greatest-poets-of-her-generation/ |website=Literary Hub |language=}}</ref> and playwright [[Maryat Lee]].<ref>{{harvnb|O'Connor|1979|p=193}}: "There are no other letters among Flannery's like those to Maryat Lee, none so playful and so often slambang."</ref> After her death, a selection of her letters, edited by her friend Sally Fitzgerald, was published as ''The Habit of Being''.{{r|Young (2007)}}{{sfn|O'Connor|1979|ps=&nbsp;''passim''.}} Much of O'Connor's best-known writing on religion, writing, and the South is contained in these and other letters.{{cn|date=March 2025}}

In 1955, [[Betty Hester]], an Atlanta file clerk, wrote O'Connor a letter, expressing admiration for her work.{{r|Young (2007)}} Hester's letter drew O'Connor's attention,<ref>{{harvnb|O'Connor|1979|p=90}}: "You were very kind to write me and the measure of my appreciation must be to ask you to write me again. I would like to know who this is who understands my stories."</ref> and they corresponded frequently.{{r|Young (2007)}} For ''The Habit of Being'', Hester provided Fitzgerald with all the letters she received from O'Connor but requested that her identity be kept private. She was identified only as "A."{{sfn|O'Connor|1979|p=90}} The complete collection of the unedited letters between O'Connor and Hester was unveiled by [[Emory University]] in May 2007. The letters had been given to the university in 1987 with the stipulation that they not be released to the public for 20 years.{{r|Young (2007)|Enniss (2007)}}

Emory University also contains the more than 600 letters O'Connor wrote to her mother, Regina. O'Connor wrote to her mother nearly every day while she was pursuing her literary career in Iowa City, New York, and Massachusetts. Some of her letters describe "travel itineraries and plumbing mishaps, ripped stockings and roommates with loud radios," as well as her request for the homemade mayonnaise of her childhood.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://lithub.com/flannery-oconnors-two-deepest-loves-were-mayonnaise-and-her-mother/|title=Flannery O'Connor's Two Deepest Loves Were Mayonnaise and Her Mother|last=McCoy|first=Caroline|date=May 17, 2019|website=Literary Hub}}</ref>