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savaging's review against another edition
3.0
I dislike so many things about Flannery O'Connor -- her dogmatic Catholicism, her venom toward the faithless world and other would-be writers -- and yet all the same I'm in love with her. I'm not the only one; what's wrong with us?
O'Connor's the mean girl in your writers' group:
"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. The idea of being a writer attracts a good many shiftless people, those who are merely burdened with poetic feelings or afflicted with sensibility."
Her own explanations of her work is often irritating to me. Her ultimate aim is to preach Catholic dogma and further the glory of God. But what remarkable talent, that reading her fiction alone none of us would have guessed it.
At least half of the essays in this book are about being Catholic, and would have been helpful to me when I was studying literature at a religious university. In one class we watched an interview where Mormon leader Boyd K. Packer, who also dabbles in painting, asserts that the role of the artist isn't to document the world with all its nastiness, but improve and perfect it. In contrast, O'Connor says the writer has to write what he or she sees, and "To look at the worst will be for him no more than an act of trust in God." (Let's hope the two of them can have a curmudgeon-off one day in the starry Great Beyond.)
Or as O'Connor writes elsewhere: "I lent some stories to a country lady who lives down the road from me, and when she returned them, she said, 'Well, them stories just gone and shown you how some folks would do,' and I thought to myself that that was right; when you write stories, you have to be content to start exactly there -- showing how some specific folks will do, will do in spite of everything."
O'Connor's the mean girl in your writers' group:
"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. The idea of being a writer attracts a good many shiftless people, those who are merely burdened with poetic feelings or afflicted with sensibility."
Her own explanations of her work is often irritating to me. Her ultimate aim is to preach Catholic dogma and further the glory of God. But what remarkable talent, that reading her fiction alone none of us would have guessed it.
At least half of the essays in this book are about being Catholic, and would have been helpful to me when I was studying literature at a religious university. In one class we watched an interview where Mormon leader Boyd K. Packer, who also dabbles in painting, asserts that the role of the artist isn't to document the world with all its nastiness, but improve and perfect it. In contrast, O'Connor says the writer has to write what he or she sees, and "To look at the worst will be for him no more than an act of trust in God." (Let's hope the two of them can have a curmudgeon-off one day in the starry Great Beyond.)
Or as O'Connor writes elsewhere: "I lent some stories to a country lady who lives down the road from me, and when she returned them, she said, 'Well, them stories just gone and shown you how some folks would do,' and I thought to myself that that was right; when you write stories, you have to be content to start exactly there -- showing how some specific folks will do, will do in spite of everything."
wdudley89's review against another edition
4.0
An excellent volume for anyone wanting to understand how O'Connor approaches writing, art, and religion. The essays are also plain fun to read. She has a great wit and writes without any pretense. It is so refreshing to encounter such intelligence devoid of jargon or arrogance.
"The Fiction Writer and His Country" and "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction" are especially good.
Despite not being Catholic myself, I have great sympathy for a number of her views, including the presence of grace within nature, and the role of art in revealing the full truth of that which we experience all around us.
"The Fiction Writer and His Country" and "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction" are especially good.
Despite not being Catholic myself, I have great sympathy for a number of her views, including the presence of grace within nature, and the role of art in revealing the full truth of that which we experience all around us.
aphunt_reads's review against another edition
funny
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
4.0
The King of the Birds
The Fiction Writer & His Country
The Nature and Aim of Fiction
On Her Own Work
The Church and the Fiction Writer
Novelist and Believer
The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South
The Fiction Writer & His Country
The Nature and Aim of Fiction
On Her Own Work
The Church and the Fiction Writer
Novelist and Believer
The Catholic Novelist in the Protestant South
novelideea's review against another edition
challenging
funny
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
4.75
woolfsfahan's review against another edition
4.0
Excellent reading for students of literature and theology. O'Connor writes on what literature is, who it's for, and how it relates to God, among other things. You don't have to be religious to get something out of it.
gtonsager's review
5.0
Wow, what a brilliant woman, what a brilliant book. Seriously the best integration of art and faith I’ve read of yet.
blakehalsey's review against another edition
4.0
O'Connor, one of my favorite authors, is necessary reading for any aspiring writer. Some of the articles are a little out of date because they were written more than half a century ago, but the principles are still clear and useful.
jimmypat's review against another edition
4.0
A wonderful collection of essays, culminating in the absolutely brilliant "Introduction to a Memoir of Mary Ann." After reading this collection, I need to return to Flannery's novels and re-read them all - I feel that I would have a much deeper understanding of what she was writing about.