I can only visit this beautiful, ineffable city once a year, but this wonderful volume of literary gems makes me feel like I live there all year around. There is SO much more to know about the Hostess City of the South than one finds in "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil."

I've been to Savannah I don't know how many times; have walked the streets and squares and read the historical markers; have devoured some local history and novels--such as MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL. But, now I don't feel like I knew Savannah at all. I learned so much more in LITERARY SAVANNAH. I highly recommend it for anyone who has visited (and loved, of course) or is planning a visit to Savannah.

This book is exceptionally well done and brings all the facets of a Southern Gem - Savannah - together in one book. For anyone who loves the old South, I would strongly suggest this book. The compilation of stories show a rich wonderful city that has had its own share of joy and sorrow. The editor did a wonderful job pulling literary tones together in a unique and complimentary fashion, sounding a true lyrical tribute. My favorite stories are by Conrad Aiken and Flannery O'Connor. The description of Savannah by James Ogelthorpe is astonishing. The piece that stole my heart , however, was written by Aberjhani entitled "Return to Savannah." The voice of the poet moves the words straight to the core of the reader.

The Violent Bear it Away is a disturbing example of the unique gothic tradition of America's Southern writers. The story centers around young Francis Tarwater, nephew of a self-styled/self-proclaimed prophet, Mason Tarwater. Mason's purpose for living is to prepare Francis for his own prophetic ministry. However, Francis has a very different idea of what a prophetic ministry should be like. Hence, the conflict of the story is contained in Francis's trying to divest himself of his uncle's influence, an attempt that the story interprets as rebellion, which the Bible states is as witchcraft. Thus, the reader can expect young Tarwater to pay an awful price for his rebellion
Like almost all of O'Connor's stories, The Violent Bear it Away is essentially a tale of how the supernatural intrudes and imposes its will on the lives of ordinary people. The story is further given a divine theme by frequent symbolic elements, such as Francis's hat being something like a halo, and another child in the story serving as either an angelic or Christ-figure. The story even opens with an African-Amerian man erecting a cross at a grave, a scene reminiscent of the Biblical Simon of Cyrene being pressed into carrying the cross of Jesus on the way to Golgotha. Occasionally, the supernatural is not fully explained by the story, and there are some unanswered questions when the story ends, the main question concerning the reality of young Tarwater's mysterious, almost Svengalli-like friend.
The narrative structure of the story is very interesting, as O'Connor allows each character to give his own accounts and assessments of the same events, a technique that is somewhat similar to that used by William Faulkner in As I Lay Dying and Russell Banks in The Sweet Hereafter.
As O'Connor's second and final novel, The Violent Bear it Away represents the maturation of her technique. The narration resembles that of her first novel, Wise Blood, but shows the refinement wrought by the several years of thought between the two works. The story is easy to follow despite its several twists and its couple of very disturbing scenes.
Although not my favorite work by Flannery O'Connor (her short stories are much better), The Violent Bear it Away is an essential read for anyone wanting to understand Southern Literature in general and the Southern Gothic tradition in particular. And even if the reader isn't interested in such literary specialties, The Violent Bear it Away is a good enough story to stand on its own.

Grim determinism pervades the lives of an emotionally troubled family in the American South in this gripping novel by Flannery O'Connor. Female characters are curiously absent, unable to survive the withering glare of white-hot emotions that drive the old uncle, his schoolteacher nephew, and his nephew and son. All of these men have been damaged - perhaps beyond repair - by the intensely unforgiving monomania with which the old man pursues his Christian mission as a 'prophet'. O'Connor explores how such deeply ingrained childhood experiences can compromise a boy's world view, and leave him a helpless outsider for the rest of his life. The old man fritters away his days railing against a world that sees him as insane. The schoolteacher, for all that he feels he has freed himself from the old man's obsession, not only finds himself fighting perverse impulses, but allows himself to fall into the opposite trap, putting too much faith in science and intellect and failing to recognize the importance of the unseen, the unheard, and the unmeasurable. The schoolteacher's nephew Francis Tarwater, the protagonist in the story, bitterly refutes both of these legacies, determined to live his own life and follow his own personal, hard-won brand of individualism. The progress he makes toward his ultimate fate is at once terrifying, inevitable, and unforgettable.

Despite its religious tropes, this book is not so much a critique of Christianity as it is about a certain kind of mental illness - an obsessive/compulsive disorder that creates an intellectual tunnel vision. The failed relationships this engenders only exacerbate the situation, and leave the sufferer feeling ostracized and angry, encouraging further antisocial acts. O'Connor is more interested in showing how the cycle of violent, antisocial behavior works than in offering advice, so the net result is more depressing than uplifting, but one can hope that modern psychiatric medicine might have found a way to help these people. This is not an entertaining book, but it is brief and throat-grabbingly powerful. Its unrelenting intensity is not for everyone, but it definitely rates as a classic example of Southern Gothic literature.

This book is probably O'Connor's finest work of fiction. The story itself is much stronger than the more highly acclaimed Wise Blood, as are its characters. I find it interesting that one reviewer referred to disliking the grotesque characters, while admiring O'Connor's use of symbolism and metaphor. One who has read O'Connor knows that there are few characters in the author's opus that could not be classified as grotesque. As far as her use of symbolism, one must certainly recognize that O'Connor's characters were the most obvious manifestations of her symbolism and metaphor. As she herself said, when drawing for a child, one makes the figure overly-clear. Also, while this book, might seem to tread between rational humanism and religion, the end finds O'Connor squarely on the side of the seemingly tyrannical, certainly unbalanced uncle. The story is funny, full of observation and commentary, and endowed with the wisdom of one who has seen the world and is on their way out, as O'Connor was by the time the Violent Bear it Away was written. In short, no library is complete without this work-the paramount achievement of one of the century's greatest authors.

In A Good Man is Hard, to Find, Flannery O'Connor proves herself as the master of the short story. Through ten provocative, delightful, and at the same time disturbing stories, O'Connor paints a vivid picture of the Deep South while commenting on life and the different values that God plays in people's lives.
Flannery is brilliant writer whose experience in deep Southern Georgia shines through her language and characters. Each of her stories reflects a new detail of life in the south in the 1940's and 50's ranging from black prejudice, to staunch-almost ludicrous-religious fanaticism. Most of her stories concern people who live on family farms in the middle of nowhere and have little contact with the outside world. From this setting, Flannery has a lot of flexibility to develop her characters who are often without contact outside of their immediate family for days or even weeks on end and thus are believable representatives of southern heritage and culture.
Perhaps the most distinguishing part of O'Connor's writing, is her ability to create larger-than-life characters who's personalities are both exciting and disturbing: a woman who denies her own pregnancy; a colorful grandmother who refuses to see the truth of the lethal Misfit; and a one-armed vagabond who robs a innocent woman of her dearest possession. Each character represents and portrays a person whose personality and view of life is so set and unbending that their response to adversity leads to sadness and often death. Each ending leaves the reader deep in thought, and searching within his/her own soul for answers to the character's actions. She seems to have a way with words so that just by describing one of her characters, she almost tells a story of their persona, mentality, and background.
O'Connor's ability to write is sheer genius, and A Good Man is Hard to Find is nothing short of her best work. It deserves every bit of praise that can be heaped upon it.

The ten short stories in this 1955 collection by Flannery O'Connor expose a grotesque underbelly of the Southern mystique that go far beyond their seemingly simple surface plots. Ms. O'Connor has a flare for dialog as well as a primal understanding of the darkness in people's souls. All her characters have a relationship with God and she combines Christian imagery, an apocalyptic vision of life and a strong element of cruelty. And yet, there is a deeply human element that gives me the shivers because it exposes truths I'd rather not see.

I could tell from the very beginning of each story that something ominous was going to happen. I didn't know when, I didn't know how, and I didn't know exactly what it would be. Always, I was surprised. And yet, when I thought of it later, each story could have gone no other way. All of them had a sad or tragic ending, although some were more awful than others. What keeps the narrative exciting though is a way she has of suddenly disappearing the storyline and taking it up in another place, leaving just enough information to spark the imagination. Then, when I think I have it all figured out, things change again.

Ms. O'Connor writes in simple startling sentences. And most of the stories are no more than 20 or 30 pages long. I found it hard to read one story right after the other however. Each one was so thought provoking that, even though I felt a great deal of discomfort, I wanted to stay with each just a little bit longer. That's because they move much too fast and are too intriguing to stop. Later, when the initial shock of the story is over, is the time to work it out philosophically. And it is then that I could appreciate the mastery of her craft.

This is a truly fine book and I unquestionably give it a high recommendation. It is certainly not for everyone however. These stories haunt uncomfortably. But those willing to explore the dark side of human nature in this small work of art will love it.

Flannery O'Connor's classic short-story collection, featuring dark, pessimistic stories about Southern life, often with ironic twists at the end, really needs no introduction. My favorite is still the title story, about a family on vacation who meets with a very bad man. I don't advise reading these stories if you're feeling depressed, though. Their bleak outlook on life and human nature can leave you feeling positively suicidal.

At her death in 1964, Flannery O'Connor left a small canon of works that made her one of the most critically acclaimed authors of her time. Author Harold Fickett and photographer Douglass Gilbert have teamed up to produce a work that explores O'Connor's development as a Christian writer.

Fickett does a superb job in giving us a biographical view of her life and a detailed analysis of her works. He does a thorough exploration of her work through a Christian lens. Through his meticulous care, Fickett brings out the symbolism, concept of Grace, redemption and salvation that is found throughout her work. He looks at her life and shows how her religious faith as a Catholic served as the impetus for her work.
O'Connor's mission was for readers to see the grotesque and ugly that we in our fallen state share. The ugliness of our human condition is not the final answer for through her work we are shown how God's grace permeates even the darkest hearts.

Douglas Gilbert's black and white pictures of the south and its relationship to O'Connor's work is a compliment to the text. You can feel the soul of the southerner. You can see the human and natural devastation of man through these moving pictures. The two men have done a splendid job in presenting a critique of O'Connor through a Christian perspective.

My only criticism of the work is that Fickett overstates his case of O'Connor's Christian vision. He sees Christian themes in every detail of her works to the point where you become lost in attempting to focus on the main theme that she is trying to get across.

This is an excellent book for Christian writers and readers who can gain a greater appreciation for O'Connor through the author's analysis and the photographer's pictures. It is also a good work to have in your library for those who have studied O'Connor's works but have failed to consider her Christian perspective.

Wise Blood (1952)(Flannery O'Connor 1925-68)

All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful. -Flannery O'Connor

Wise Blood is Flannery O'Connor's grotesque picaresque tale of Hazel Motes of Eastrod, Tennessee; a young man who has come to the city of Taulkinham bringing with him an enormous resentment of Christianity and the clergy. He is in an open state of rebellion against the rigidity of his itinerant preacher grandfather and his strict mother. So when one of the first people he encounters is the blind street preacher Asa Hawks and Motes finds himself both attracted and repelled by Hawks' bewitching fifteen year old daughter Lily Sabbath, he reacts by establishing his own street ministry. He founds the "Church without Christ":

Listen you people, I'm going to take the truth with me wherever I go. I'm going to preach it to whoever'll listen at whatever place. I'm going to preach 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. Nothing matters but that Jesus was a liar.

As you can guess the church is singularly unsuccessful, although he does attract a couple of other crackpots: Enoch Emery a young man who works at the zoo and longs for a kind word from anybody; and Onnie Jay Holy, yet another rival preacher who believes Motes when he says he's found a "new jesus."

While at first this cast of bizarre characters, ranging from merely repugnant to truly evil, and the scenes of physical, moral and spiritual degradation through which they pass all seem to be just a little too much, the reader is carried along by O'Connor's sure hand for dark comedy. The book is very funny. But as the story draws to a close, O'Connor's true mission is revealed; Motes loses his fight against faith and he achieves a kind of grace, becoming something like a Christian martyr to atone for his sins. O'Connor has something serious and important to say about the modern human condition and the emptiness of a life without faith. That she is able to disguise this message in such a ribald comic package is quite an achievement.

Reading the book inevitably called to mind Carson McCullers' dreadful book The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940), which made the Modern Library Top 100 Novels of the Twentieth Century list. It too is a Southern gothic, populated by dismal misanthropes. But it is devoid of humor and has nothing to say about the characters and the world they've created. Wise Blood is a superior novel in every sense and really deserves that spot on the list.

GRADE: A+

The Violent Bear It Away (1960)(Flannery O'Connor 1925-68)

From the days of John the Baptist until now, the Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away. -Matthew 11:12

Flannery O'Connor wrote with one of the most distinctive voices in American Literature; a kind of grotesque amalgam of Jonathan Edwards, Charles Brockden Brown, Edgar Allen Poe, and William Faulkner. She perceived the world in starkly Manichean terms, as a struggle between the forces of Light and Dark, Good and Evil. The Violent Bear it Away is a psychomachia--literally a battle for the soul--the story of a backwoods Southern boy named Francis Marion Tarwater (see The Violent Bear it Away and The Bible by Angela Lucey for more on this). The boy's great uncle, an Old Testament style patriarch, kidnapped him away from an uncle, George Rayber, and has raised him to be a prophet of God. Upon his great uncle's death, Tarwater rejects the prophetic mission and heads to the city to live with his uncle, who tries to wean the boy away from the teachings of the great uncle. Through a series of increasingly violent actions Tarwater is eventual driven back to the woods and a final acceptance of God and his own role in God's plans.

This is powerful stuff, O'Connor felt that exaggeration and caricature were more likely to reach a modern audience than more subtle styles ever could. Combine that with her vision of violence as a sort of crucible which forces the individual to make a final choice between Good and Evil, and you've got the makings of a truly disturbing fiction. The book will surely not appeal to all tastes, but it is undeniably affecting and thought provoking.

GRADE: B-

...can be found in Flannery O'Connor. But don't be deceived, she is not an easy read. Her stories are disturbing and her characters are often grotesque, yet the reader undoubtedly knows that the author loves her characters very much. We never feel that a bitter, misanthropic creator is behind the stories, and this is the same view that O'Connor has of God that is put forth in her stories. Reading Wise Blood feels like going fifteen rounds with Mike Tyson, and making it to the final bell. Although the reader feels battered and beaten up afterward, you also feel saved. This is the feeling most of O'Connor's stories leave with the reader, and it is a result of her deeply held faith. These stories are some the strongest affirmations of faith to be found in a disturbing, modern world.

Granted, some stories do not leave the reader with the idea of grace that Hazel Motes attains at the end of Wise Blood. O'Connor, herself, said that the old man in "A View of the Woods" is pretty as close to damned as any of her characters. But most of characters, we know, are saved, no matter how pretentious (the woman in "Revelation" for example), or misguided in thought.

The stories, despite their ugliness, are almost transcendent in where they leave the reader. In short, they are beautiful, and a testament to her faith.

O'Connor did not write for celebrity, impressive money, or so that she could look glamorous, sleekly pasted on the back jacket photo. Maybe she knew one day we'd have Danielle Steele for that. As it was, her photos of herself were not something she admired. She wrote because she had talent, and she felt to do less would be do to a disservice to her gift. She wrote for love, but not for sex. She writes characthers who search for love, for understanding of identity, wisdom, or redemption. As Ms. O'Connor knew, all of us who inhabit creation are weak and flawed. She turned her creative and spirtual sights to showing us how we flawed creatures do what we do and how we damage ourselves. O'Connor writes of suffering and love and faith, in spite of all that seems crude, awkward, and yes, grotesque, in our world. She isn't EASY to understand the way a romance novel is, or an adventure story. She's not writing that kind of book. What she writes in multi-layed, but it was not, to O'Connor's mind, subtle. Still, O'Connor writes prose that pulls you along as a reader, that she manages to encompase a tone or atmosphere in places that feels as though it would explode. That's not bad writing--that's good, because you read it, and you know that you're getting something profound, even if you're not sure what that is right at that moment. O'Connor believed in God, in that kind of love. She knew how sickly we humans approach it. She attempts no less than to draw us to an eternal message. She's not anti-religious in that message because she's writing about the weaknesses of those who fail in their station, in what they were called upon to do, with what gifts they were given. That type of message may not be in fashion now, no more than it was when O'Connor wrote, but that does not make this fiction "poorly written." O'Connor was not a fast, sloppy writer. She honed her craft. These works will give you as much as you can put into them, and then some. The purchase price on this one is more than repaid by the intense value in the meaning of the work.

Flannery O'Connor is arguably one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. She was passionately Southern and passionately Catholic, dedicated to her craft and a consummate professional.

This is why I think she would have scorned her recent biography, written by Jean Cash.

Cash's work is merely competent. She has all the facts straight. The book is well-researched, and well documented. Cash has flipped over every O'Connor stone, but there are so few unpublished gems at this point, that the project seems to be simply one of repetition.

What makes Cash's biography especially defective is that she seems afraid to make qualitative judgments regarding O'Connor or her work. I suppose this can be good in other biographies of lesser-known literary figures. The biography falls short, in other words, precisely because of its attention to detail, and its lack of synthesis. There are times when it reads like a shopping list of O'Connor things, places, friends and relatives. Cash's prose falls lifeless into the annals of poorly-written biographies.

I only recall Cash voicing her opinion three times. She defends O'Connor's relationship with Maryat Lee as a perfectly heterosexual one. On another occasion, she defends O'Connor, who, throughout her life and private letters, made a few controversial statements regarding the Civil Rights movement: these have since tagged her as racist to some scholars. Cash also frequently asserts that O'Connor was not a reclusive person, a kind of 1950s Emily Dickenson. Of these assertions, only the second seems to have any direct bearing on her writing. It seems that her focus should have been directed to other facets of O'Connor's life.

Cash's thoughts often read like terse journal articles that have been assembled into a book as an afterthought. It is sometimes difficult to read her rather fibrous prose, which fails to synthesize multiple tellings of any particular O'Connor account into a single cohesive narrative.

Robert Fitzgerald's introduction to _Everything That Rises Must Converge_ accomplishes in about 25 pages what took Cash over 300. Besides, Fitzgerald's introduction was written by somebody who knew O'Connor, and who considered her family. But the best part about buying _Everything that Rises..._ is that instead of being forced to read a synthesis of quotes, the reader can actually look at 9 pieces of O'Connor's short fiction.

Cash's FLANNERY O'CONNOR: A LIFE is a noble attempt to define and to find the Southern Catholic writer Flannery O'Connor. However, though the biography is full of facts and details about O'Connor's studies and speaking tours and friendships, it is a book that features conclusions drawn from one or two events or incidents. This problem is particularly evident, it seems, in the opening chapters about O'Connor's early years.
Another nagging problem is the frequent errors in editing or writing: extra words, missing words, odd punctuation, and a strange abundance of parentheses when a simple revision would clarify the sentences. This reviewer wonders why such mistakes coat the book like red Georgia dust. If the book ever has another edition, it will need plenty of attention to bring it up to professional standards.
It's all too bad; the basics of a good biography are there, and the subject is fascinating.
Best advice: read O'Connor's works and save the biography for occasional filler if you have the interest.

Better than *Publisher's Weekly* suggests, Jean Cash's life of Flannery O'Connor still it isn't all it could be. Its strengths are its fidelity to the events of O'Connor's largely unexciting life as a practicing writer and Catholic and, in this age of the doorstop biography, its modest length. Cash mines *The Habit of Being,* Sally Fitzgerald's 1979 collection of letters, and the archives she dutifully has read through. O'Connor's brilliance, orneriness, intractibility, deadpan humor, courage, honor, talent (at least by repute), and doggedness come through. In some ways, that's enough--four stars. However, one who finishes this book may still want more.

What is missing? An extended understanding of the interplay the fiction and the life, for one. Why did Hazel Motes and Julian and Tarwater and Rayber come out in just that form? When Cash discusses the connections between O'Connor's mother, Regina Cline O'Connor, and Mrs. Hopewell (in "Good Country People"), her book takes on life. More, more! Again, without naming it or discussing it at any length Cash points to the self-loathing that was the other side of O'Connor's spirituality and selflessness. The presentation needs pointing up, development.

For another, a sense of O'Connor's achievement as an artist. The fiction, which is what counts or we wouldn't be reading the life, is almost not there. My own judgment is that the two novels matter much less than and are ungainly compared to half a dozen stories, in which form perfectly embodies vision--with humor, intellectual force, and the many-sidedness of a great writer. This text needs more engagement with O'Connor's text.

Finally, Edward F. O'Connor, the father. His death, when his daughter was fifteen, surely underlies what Cash describes as the "matriarchal" world of the fiction. If it bears on Flannery O'Connor's own atrophied love life and even for her choice of *What Maisie Knew* as the work of Henry James that most interests her, those connections should be made. Cash has the facts, but the figure in the carpet needs highlighting. Otherwise, one might as well read Sally Fitzgerald's nineteen page biographical sketch at the end of the Library of America volume on O'Connor.

It is unfair to blame the author for this, but the decorative peacock feather ovals make the page numbers hard to read!

This text was not what I expected. Only the brief introduction is a narrative, while the text itself is a collection of the transcriptions from seminars, articles about O'Connor's life, and her answers to questions at various symposia. That is not to suggest that the book was not useful; instead, I gained valuable data that would have otherwise taken me hours to find in a library - all between the covers of this short book. (Some readers may be interested to know that some of the interviews may be recognized as those mocked by O'Connor in her letters in The Habit of Being.) It is interesting to observe her behavior as she participates in a panel discussion, and her responses are classic O'Connor.

I would recommend this book to those looking for data sources for research and those hoping for unfiltered insight into the person of Flannery O'Connor.