Flannery O'Connor : Collected Works : Wise Blood / A Good Man Is Hard to Find / The Violent Bear It Away / Everything that Rises Must Converge / Essays & Letters (Library of America) [Hardcover]

Flannery O'Connor (Author)

Book Description

Series: Library of America | Publication Date: September 1, 1988

Flannery O'Connor, a unique and important figure in the Southern literary tradition, was one of the finest writers of the twentieth century. This volume, containing her two novels, short stories, essays and letters, is the only complete collection of her works.

Editorial Reviews

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. Among the strongest influences on O’Connor’s work were the writings of William Faulkner and Nathanael West, from whom she derived her conception of the grotesque in literature. Following the publication of numerous short stories in literary journals, O’Connor’s first novel, Wise Blood, was published in 1952. Suffering from a hereditary rheumatic ailment, she spent the next twelve years writing at the family farm in Milledgeville under the care of her mother, Regina, and the strictest medical super vision. A Good Man is Hard to Find, a collection of short stories, was published in 1955, and another novel, The Violent Bear It Away, appeared in 1960. Though seriously ill, 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another collection of short stories, Everything That Rises Must Converge, was published (1965), as well as a volume of unpublished lectures and essays and various critical articles, Mystery and Manners (1969).

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Hardcover: 1300 pages
• Publisher: Library of America; 1St Edition edition (September 1, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0940450372
• ISBN-13: 978-0940450370
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #36,550 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #72 in Books > Literature & Fiction > United States > 20th Century

More About the Author

Flannery O'Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia in 1925, the only child of Catholic parents. In 1945 she enrolled at the Georgia State College for Women. After earning her degree she continued her studies on the University of Iowa's writing program, and her first published story, 'The Geranium', was written while she was still a student. Her writing is best-known for its explorations of religious themes and southern racial issues, and for combining the comic with the tragic. After university, she moved to New York where she continued to write. In 1952 she learned that she was dying of lupus, a disease which had afflicted her father. For the rest of her life, she and her mother lived on the family dairy farm, Andalusia, outside Millidgeville, Georgia. For pleasure she raised peacocks, pheasants, swans, geese, chickens and Muscovy ducks. She was a good amateur painter. She died in the summer of 1964.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

106 of 113 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great artist, a noble soul!, February 19, 1999

By 

"gerard77" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Flannery O'Connor : Collected Works : Wise Blood / A Good Man Is Hard to Find / The Violent Bear It Away / Everything that Rises Must Converge / Essays & Letters (Library of America) (Hardcover)

This is perhaps the most beautiful edition of the collected works of Flannery O'Connor. And it contains not only her incomparable stories--with those unforgettable characters!--but her magnificent letters. Her stories can both shock and shine. Her letters have made me both laugh and cry. Her stories never grow old--I've read them over many years now and am always finding something new and fresh and am always in awe of her consummate artistry. And her letter reveal, at least in part, the secret of her art and the power of her stories: they reveal a noble soul. Humble, honest, caring, suffering, and always, a valiant woman of faith. Her lupus stimied her activity; but it deepened her spirit and heart. I am sure those peacocks she loved so much missed her. And they're not fortunate enough, like us, to be able to read her relatively slim, but always enriching, literary legacy. GET THIS BOOK!

97 of 108 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars brilliant stories in a flawed edition, April 8, 2004

By 

Yalensian - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Flannery O'Connor : Collected Works : Wise Blood / A Good Man Is Hard to Find / The Violent Bear It Away / Everything that Rises Must Converge / Essays & Letters (Library of America) (Hardcover)

The stories themselves easily get a five. O'Connor was a genius, combining her Catholicism, her Southern-ness, and the grotesque in stories that explore the nature of revelation, grace (or the lack thereof), and redemption. The stories have characters who are often "freaks"-physically (legless, armless, fat, pock-marked) and psychologically. Frequently, the stories are violent, shockingly so; and if not violent, then they still surprise or shock us in some way. My jaw has hit the floor reading each story. But they are meant to startle us into our own revelation. It requires patience and careful reading and re-reading to get to the heart of O'Connor's writing, but it's well worth the effort.

The collection itself gets, at best, a two. It is very poorly organized, as others have mentioned. Rather than a table of contents listing every story, the main table of contents lists only "major" works-that is, the novels (Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away) and the collections (A Good Man Is Hard To Find and Everything That Rises Must Converge). To find a particular story, one must either know what collection it appears in or must check separate tables of contents within the book. I'm probably nitpicking, but it can be frustrating, especially for someone new to O'Connor. The included essays are O'Connors most well-known and provide important and interesting insights into her writing and themes. Many of the letters are intriguing, but many others consist of a few lines and are not extremely useful (there's a two-line letter to Walker Percy, congratulating him on an award, which tells us virtually nothing at all; include it in a book of O'Connor's letters but not in a sampling of her best and most important). Beyond that, the letters are very poorly indexed. Sometimes, an index entry refers the reader to a page with no reference to the topic; other times, an entry lists, say, two references, whereas there are actually three or four among the letters.

It's wonderful to have all this under one cover, but I wish they'd have taken just a bit more time to produce a better volume.

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just Read It All, September 1, 2004

By 

RoyGené the Reader (Ridgecrest, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Flannery O'Connor : Collected Works : Wise Blood / A Good Man Is Hard to Find / The Violent Bear It Away / Everything that Rises Must Converge / Essays & Letters (Library of America) (Hardcover)

The complaints about the poor organization of the collection can be overcome by simply reading it from front to back. Surely it is that good.

My foray into the works of Flannery O'Connor, a southern, gothic author of darkly humorous novels and short stories came via a recommendation in Harold Bloom's, "What to Read and Why." As it turned ot, I had read one of her short stories, "A Good Man is Hard to Find," in a collection somewhere and had been surprised and shocked, by the turn of events and ending of the story, so much so, that I remembered it instantly, even though it has to have been thirty years since I read it. I enjoyed everything, short stories, novellas, and even her letters. She writes about southern Christ-haunted people, most backward, all damned, but many redeemed. Bloom says that according to her, we are all damned but one should put that aside and simply enjoy her beautiful, grotesque, and wonderful comedic stories. Her protagonist is often a woman, forced to take on a role and duties she didn't sign up for but resignedly and with no illusions playing and discharging both out of a sense of morality or necessity; those women are usually the most superior beings in her stories.

Many of her insights stick with me months afterwards. For example, O'Connor says in one of her letters, "...Hazel's integrity lies in his not being able to do so. Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen." That brought tears to my eyes -- perhaps because it is so beautifully put.