Review
Readers approach Flannery O'Connor's work without knowledge of her Catholicism may find little evidence of it in her fiction. Yet readers who come to O'Connor's work with a prior awareness of her faith believe that her Catholicism suffuses every sentence of her fictional canon. Writing Against God: Language As Message In The Literature Of Flannery O'connor by Joanne McMullen explores the difficulty of reconciling O'Connor's private and public insistence on the importance of Catholicism in her work with the fiction her readers encounter on the printed page. O'Connor wrote voraciously about her adherence to, and support of, Catholic doctrine. Her linguistic choices, however, often move her fiction out of her control producing a message in conflict with the one she says she intended. Through a detailed examination of O'Connor's language in her two novels and in various short stories that span her career, Writing Against God exposes a pervasive spiritual environment often in opposition with the Roman Catholic tenets O'Connor professed. Blending a reader-response approach with linguistic analysis, Writing Against God offers explanations for the mysteries surrounding and the mysteries with O'Connor's fiction. Writing Against God is a superb literary treatise! -- Midwest Book Review
