Flannery O'Connor on Writing - (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A must for aspiring writers: an indispensable collection of a great writer's reflections on her craft.

For the first time in one volume, the distilled wisdom of an American literary genius through her letters, reviews, interviews and essays.

Flannery O'Connor's reflections about the art and aim of fiction writing, long scattered amongst her letters, book reviews, interviews, and talks, are gathered here for the first time."I want to be the best artist it is possible for me to be, under God." O'Connor wrote those words in 1947, while a student at the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. Over the next seventeen years, while she published two novels and two short story collections and made a name for herself as the most astonishing writer of her generation, O'Connor never stopped considering herself to be a student of her craft, apprenticing herself to the novelist and short story writer Caroline Gordon, sharing drafts of her work with friends, and critiquing the work of her friends in turn.

How does a writer make or find the meaning in a story? How does belief inform writing? And what about technique? Here are twenty-one witty and wise letters, many of them hard to find, interviews, and book reviews in which O'Connor worked out her theories of the art and nature of fiction writing, culminating in two talks in which O'Connor summarized, at the height of her career, her hard-won artistic insight. The writings gathered here offer a window into O'Connor's life and work, showing the evolution of an artist; they will also help and inspire students of writing today.

About the Author

FLANNERY O'CONNOR was born in Savannah, Georgia, on March 25, 1925, and was raised as a devout Roman Catholic in Milledgeville, Georgia. Upon graduation from the Graduate Program of the Women's College of Georgia, O'Connor attended the writing program at the State University of Iowa, receiving her MFA in 1947. Following the publication of numerous short stories in literary journals, O'Connor's first novel, Wise Blood, was published in 1952. The story collection A Good Man is Hard to Find was published in 1955, and another novel, The Violent Bear It Away, appeared in 1960. Though seriously ill with a rheumatic condition, O'Connor made an extensive series of lecture tours, received an honorary degree from Smith College in 1963, and that same year, won first prize in the annual O'Henry short story awards (as she had previously done in 1956). After her death on August 3, 1964, another collection of short stories, Everything That Rises Must Converge, was published (1965), as well as a volume of unpublished lectures and essays and various critical articles, Mystery and Manners (1969).

ALICE McDERMOTT is the author of nine novels, including Absolution; After This; Child of My Heart; Charming Billy, winner of the 1998 National Book Award; At Weddings and Wakes; and Someone. Her stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and elsewhere. She is the Richard A. Macksey Professor of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University.