Episode 276: An Introduction to Flannery O’Connor

This week on The Literary Life podcast, Angelina and Thomas bring us the first of a two-part series on the oft-requested, oft-misunderstood author, Flannery O’Connor. They begin by sharing their commonplace quotes for this week, which leads into the topic of O’Connor, the controversial mid-century southern American author. Angelina gives us a look at Flannery’s early life and education, then her adult life and writing career. She also talks about southern culture and Christianity, as well as ways in which O’Connor’s work is misunderstood by so many people. Thomas highlights the genre of Southern Gothic literature, and Angelina pushes back on that oversimplification of O’Connor, arguing that she is actually writing in the medieval tradition. Join us back here next week as we discuss O’Connor’s short story, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find.”

Now is the time to sign up for the upcoming summer classes and webinars at The House of Humane Letters. Some of the classes highlighted in this episode are Angelina’s next installment in her series of classes on Harry Potter and Thomas’ class on five famous figures of the Victorian era.

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Commonplace Quotes:

Happy is the man who can number the evils he has endured.

Felix qui patitur quae numerare potest.
Ovid, from Tristia

But essential O’Connor is not about race at all, which is why it is so refreshing, coming, as it does, out of such a racial culture. If it can be said to be “about” anything, then it is “about” prophets and prophecy, “about” revelation, and “about” the impact of supernatural grace on human beings who don’t have a chance of spiritual growth without it.
Alice Walker, from “Beyond the Peacock/A South Without Myth“

from “Song of the Open Road”

by Walt Whitman

2
You road I enter upon and look around, I believe you are not all that is here,
I believe that much unseen is also here.
Here the profound lesson of reception, nor preference nor denial,
The black with his woolly head, the felon, the diseas’d, the illiterate person, are not denied;
The birth, the hasting after the physician, the beggar’s tramp, the drunkard’s stagger, the laughing party of mechanics,

The escaped youth, the rich person’s carriage, the fop, the eloping couple,
The early market-man, the hearse, the moving of furniture into the town, the return back from the town,
They pass, I also pass, any thing passes, none can be interdicted,
None but are accepted, none but shall be dear to me.

Books Mentioned:

Amazon Affiliate links follow

In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens by Alice Walker

Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor

The Habit of Being by Flannery O’Connor

A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor

Mystery and Manners by Flannery O’Connor

The Presence of Grace by Flannery O’Connor

The Letters of Flannery O’Connor and Caroline Gordon ed. by Christine Flanagan

A Prayer Journal by Flannery O’Connor

Everything that Rises Must Converge by Flannery O’Connor

Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor by Brad Gooch

The Terrible Speed of Mercy by Jonathan Rogers

Flannery O’Connor and the Christ-Haunted South by Ralph C. Wood

The Comedy of Redemption by Ralph C. Wood

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