Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (Paperback)

~ (Author), (Editor), Robert Fitzgerald (Editor) "WHEN I WAS FIVE, I HAD AN EXPERIENCE THAT marked me for life..." (more)
Key Phrases: Mary Ann, Henry James, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Flannery O'Connor ranks with Mark Twain and Scott Fitzgerald among our finest prose stylists. Her epigrams alone are worth the price of the book . . . which should be read by every writer and would-be writer and lover of writing."--John Leonard, The New York Times

"[O'Connor] was not just the best 'woman writer' of [her] time and place; she expressed something secret about America, called 'the South,' with that transcendent gift for expressing the real spirit of a culture that is conveyed by those writers . . . who become nothing but what they see. Completeness is one word for it: relentlessness [and] unsparingness would be others. She was a genius."--Alfred Kazin, The New York Times Book Review
-- Review

Review

"Flannery O'Connor ranks with Mark Twain and Scott Fitzgerald among our finest prose stylists. Her epigrams alone are worth the price of the book . . . which should be read by every writer and would-be writer and lover of writing."--John Leonard, The New York Times

"[O'Connor] was not just the best 'woman writer' of [her] time and place; she expressed something secret about America, called 'the South,' with that transcendent gift for expressing the real spirit of a culture that is conveyed by those writers . . . who become nothing but what they see. Completeness is one word for it: relentlessness [and] unsparingness would be others. She was a genius."--Alfred Kazin, The New York Times Book Review

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; 1 edition (January 1, 1969)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374508046
• ISBN-13: 978-0374508043
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #98,345 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

82 of 86 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great book that helps writers to focus on their craft!, December 20, 1999

By	Christian Engler (Woburn, Massachusetts) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

For anyone wanting to understand the theory and importance of writing, whether it be fiction or nonfiction, get this book. Flannery O' Connor delves deeply into the mystery of writing, why people do it, struggle over it, sacrifice so much of themselves in order to do it, to a slew of other fantastic bits of information and reasons. Mystery and Manners has narrowed my own overly broad understanding of why I write. It has helped me to focus, not on just the many types of writing, but also on the type of books that I read and should read in order to be a fully developed writer. O' Connor discuses a lot on voice and plot and theme; her views are so clear and exact. Any professional or novice writer will really appreciate her collection of essays. More than anything, writers will appreciate O' Connor's affirmation of their own views. They too will appreciate her understanding of the difficulty and importance of why people write. I can not praise this book enough.

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Impressed by mystery, January 27, 2001

By	Stephan Stuecklin "thduggie" (Basel, Switzerland) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As an engineering student, I lean towards thinking of mystery as something temporary and, well, bad. The whole goal behind scientific research is to expel mystery - at least in the immediate context. Flannery O'Connor's timeless writings opened my eyes to the world beyond certainty, and I had to nod in agreement at her insightful appreciations of human quirkiness or critiques on deviatory literature teaching methods. (Of course science know uncertainty at the atomic/subatomic level, but we call that statistics.) In the end, I marvel at the little gems in this book, thoughtfully crafted by a master artist, laced with earthy truth and nitty-gritty humanness, and don't hesitate to recommend at least a library peek to anyone.

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Everyone's entitled to an opinion, June 27, 2000

By	Critic - See all my reviews

Flannery O'Connor shares opinions about (mainly) writing in this collection of previously unpublished transcripts of lectures. At times the text seems unwieldy, perhaps because the editors faced the dual duties of fidelity to the original work, and a need to prune over 50 transcripts into a non-repetitious form. There is also a clever editorial sleight of hand, with the inclusion of the first essay on the peacocks and pea hens - I was confused by it at first, then half way through the book realised it set the mood, the tone of how to read the book. That after reading 'King of the Birds', we have an impression of Flannery O'Connor - that she is a stickler for detail - which informs the rest of our reading. It is an experiential understanding of what she means when she says that a story should not be dissected but read as a whole, stands as a whole, and the whole informs whatever understanding we get out of it.

Lots of delicious gems in here for anyone who wants to see the other side of Flannery O'Connor's work. In a way it is a contradiction that this book was published at all, as the author felt that the obsessions writers have about how other writers work, what other writers think about writing, was pointless. She believed that all was contained in the stories themselves. Are we going to take her advice?