Collected works

by Flannery O'Connor

Hardcover, 1988

Status

Available

Publication

New York, NY : Library of America : Distributed to the trade in the U.S. and Canada by Viking Press, c1988.

Description

This collection contains all of Flannery O'Connor's novels and short story collections, as well as nine other stories, eight of her most important essays, and a selection of 259 letters, twenty-one published here for the first time.

Media reviews

Early in her novel Wise Blood, Flannery O’Connor describes protagonist Hazel Motes, leader of the Church without Christ, by the silhouette he casts on the sidewalk. “Haze’s shadow,” she writes, “was now behind him and now before him.” It’s a strange way to situate a character —
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skulking between his shadows — but it’s not unprecedented. In The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot’s narrator refers to “Your shadow at morning striding behind you/Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you.” Coincidence? Nobody can say for certain. But in the rare case of a critic linking O’Connor and Eliot, Sally Fitzgerald (O’Connor’s close friend) wrote that “it was Eliot and his Waste Land who provided for her the first impetus to write such a book as Wise Blood.”
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User reviews

LibraryThing member laytonwoman3rd
WISE BLOOD: The two words most commonly used to describe this novel are "grotesque" and "gothic". It is certainly both of those things. It is also a bit bewildering, even on a second reading, even with some critical assistance. It is primarily the story of an angry young man proselytizing against
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Christianity by preaching from the hood of his car (which is also his home, and symbolic of his doomed journey). Hazel Motes thinks he is rejecting the teachings of his upbringing by touting the "Church Without Christ"...he is in earnest, unlike the charlatan evangelists with whom he crosses paths and figurative swords, but really, he protests too much. Hazel's need to convince others that "there was no Fall because there was nothing to fall from and no Redemption because there was no Fall and no Judgment because there wasn't the first two", and that blasphemy is the only way to truth, only convinces the reader of his need to believe in something with the same passion as any other religious fanatic. How can there be blasphemy without something to blaspheme against? "Your conscience is a trick", Hazel preaches. "It don't exist...and if you think it does, you had best get it out in the open and hunt it down and kill it, because it's no more than your face in the mirror is or your shadow behind you...If you don't hunt it down and kill it, it'll hunt you down and kill you". If the man truly believed that, then why bother to preach at all? O'Connor's writing is wonderful; there is human understanding in her depiction of a slew of unlikeable, even despicable, characters. Her dialog is pitch-perfect. And she certainly made me uncomfortable, which was her oft-stated intent. I "get" it...but that doesn't mean I buy all of it.
September 2015
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LibraryThing member jaemaree
i'm telling you: flannery is going to send you off the end of a cliff! she has the knack. favorite short story: the river.
LibraryThing member rosrut
One of my favorite writers ever. Southern gothic, dark, ugly, beautiful, redemptive are some of the words that come to mind.
LibraryThing member jwhenderson
The writing style of Flannery O'Connor awakens the reader with its felicity. Miss O'Connor imagination takes over from there and the ride is a wild one. Wise Blood, the first work in this collection, is a nightmarish take on the world of southern itenerant preachers. Hazel Motes' Church without
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Christ is a bleakly humorous approach to the whole god/man situation and Motes own psychology is worth studying through rereadings of this short work. The collections of short fiction underscore the ability of O'Connor to surprise and challenge the reader. I find myself returning to her work from time to time just to make sure that my previous readings were not a dream.
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LibraryThing member mckall08
Re-reading Flannery O'Connor. In my youth, I didn't appreciate the beauty and power of her writing. Her prose has the Southern sensitivity of William Falkner without his convoluted verbiage. Her stories are "page turners" crafted from tendrils of character that reach onto their souls.
LibraryThing member SeriousGrace
A Good Man is Hard to Find is a compilation of ten short stories by Flannery O'Connor. In order they are "A Good Man is Hard to Find", "the River", "The Life You Save might Be Your OWn", "A Stroke of Good Fortune", "A Temple of the Holy Ghost", "The Artificial Nigger", "A Circle in the Fire", "A
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Late Encounter with the Enemy", "Good Country People", and "The Displaced Person." All ten stories have three things in common: a Southern twang, underlying religious tones and lots of interesting and deep characters with problems, some problems more obvious and serious than others. The title, A Good Man is Hard to Find comes from the first short story in the compilation (my favorite) and is a phrase first uttered by a restaurant owner outside of Atlanta, Georgia. He is discussing a serial killer on a rampage somewhere in Florida. The rest of the stories central mostly in the rural areas surrounding Atlanta, Georgia.
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LibraryThing member bibliofile55
Flannery O'Connor wrote beautifully--whether it makes you laugh, cry, cringe or gasp in horror with its truthfulness.
LibraryThing member laytonwoman3rd
WISE BLOOD:
The two words most commonly used to describe this novel are "grotesque" and "gothic". It is certainly both of those things. It is also a bit bewildering, even on a second reading, even with some critical assistance. It is primarily the story of an angry young man proselytizing against
Show More
Christianity by preaching from the hood of his car (which is also his home, and symbolic of his doomed journey). Hazel Motes thinks he is rejecting the teachings of his upbringing by touting the "Church Without Christ"...he is in earnest, unlike the charlatan evangelists with whom he crosses paths and figurative swords, but really, he protests too much. Hazel's need to convince others that "there was no Fall because there was nothing to fall from and no Redemption because there was no Fall and no Judgment because there wasn't the first two", and that blasphemy is the only way to truth, only convinces the reader of his need to believe in something with the same passion as any other religious fanatic. How can there be blasphemy without something to blaspheme against? "Your conscience is a trick", Hazel preaches. "It don't exist...and if you think it does, you had best get it out in the open and hunt it down and kill it, because it's no more than your face in the mirror is or your shadow behind you...If you don't hunt it down and kill it, it'll hunt you down and kill you". If the man truly believed that, then why bother to preach at all? O'Connor's writing is wonderful; there is human understanding in her depiction of a slew of unlikeable, even despicable, characters. Her dialog is pitch-perfect. And she certainly made me uncomfortable, which was her oft-stated intent. I "get" it...but that doesn't mean I buy all of it.
September 2015
Show Less
LibraryThing member LudieGrace
So far I've only read Wise Blood, and I intend to check this anthology out of the library again to read more of the stories and essays. Truthfully, I'll need to read Wise Blood again, because at this point, I scarcely know what I make of it!

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