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Flannery O’Connor, born
in Savannah, Georgia, attended the University of
Iowa’s Writer’s Workshop before going to New York.
She did not stay long, as her health began failing
her at a young age. She suffered from Lupus and in
1955 moved back to Georgia to be under the care of
her family. She died August 3, 1964 at the age of
39.
O’Connor was a devout
Roman Catholic, yet the characters she portrayed in
her work were Protestant. It was her observation
that Protestants expressed
their faith through dramatic action, something she
did not see in Catholics. This fit with
her philosophy on writing about religious matters,
in that she preferred to approach her subjects
indirectly, that is, through the depiction of human
actions.
O’Connor’s work is evidence to a deeper
understanding of the role religion plays in the
South. Critics often refer to her
work as grotesque, as she focused her tales
on the darkness of human nature. To this label she
responded: “Anything 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.”
See our book review
of O'Connor's
A Good Man is Hard to Find
For more books by
and about Flannery O'Connor
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