Art: Stories & Novels: Flannery O'Conner and the Christ-Haunted South

A book announcement will have to do in lieu of a book review (which hopefully won't end up in the loo, either the book or the review). My live-link above will take you to an Amazon.com webpage, and put you in touch with a fine writer on a grand figure of American letters. I'm talkin' 'bout a new work of litcrit that at last fathoms the depths, I'm told, of that great Southern lady who gained a reputation as a foremost American novelist and, thematically obsessed as she was with matters of faith, our foremost Catholic novelist, our own Graham Greene. The writing of her stories and novels took place during the years 1948 to 1964, leaving off just when the Civil Rights Act was passed by Congress and signed into law. But it seems that O'Conner was much closer to the her rural Protestant neighbors in Georgia and thereabouts, than ever the Liberal literary crowd in academia let on to us. She wasn't so much a Catholic writer in combat with her surroundings, as she was an intimate and grace-conscious co-pilgrim with those of the Fundamentalist culture that palpiated thru Southern life in its broadest sweep of, yes, sin and grace. That is, if Ralph C. Wood, in his latest book, Flannery O'Connery and the Christ-Haunted South (Eerdmans), has it basically correct about her, and the previous school of O'Conner interpretation of Robert Brinkmeyer, Sura P. Rath, Mary Neff Shaw and that cohort have it too much slanted, using O'Conner's neighborly Catholicism as a foil aganst the Fundamentalism the litcrits neither liked nor understood. And still fail to do so.

There are 6 pages of Chapter One online, and 4 pages double-columned of an Index of Names and Subjects, to give you a taste of the hitorical, literary, and theological scope of Wood's approach to his task and his subject situated in her own times.

Wood had already gained a reputation for work at the interface between Chrstian faith and literary art--The Gospel According to Tolkien: Visions of the Kingdom in Middle Earth (pbk 2003); The Comedy of Redemption: Christian Faith and Comic Vision in Four American Novelists (pbk 1991); Ivan Karamazov's mistake.(on freedom, Legend of the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov) : An article from: First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life (HTML Digital - December 1, 2002); Contending for the Faith: The Church's Engagement With Culture (Interpreting Christian Texts and Traditions Series, #1, pbk - May 1, 2003); Love's Sacred Order: The Four Loves Revisited. (Review essay: C. S. Lewis and the Ordering of Our Loves). (book review) : An article from: Christianity and Literature [HTML Digital - September 22, 2001); American Evangelical Christianity: An Introduction. (Books In Review: evangelicalism, with and without reformation).(Review) : An article from: First ... A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life (HTML Digital - October 1, 2001); and to top of the list, Flannery O'Connor: a Life.(Book Review) : An article from: Journal of Southern History (HTML Digital - February 1, 2004). So there, Robert C. Wood oughta' be able ta' keep ya' stocked fer readin' all thru the dog days a' summah. But if your really into Lady Flannery but need some variety to contrast intriguingly with Wood, I'd recommend Flannery O'Conner's Religious Imagination: A World with Everything Off Balance (Paulist Press, 2001) which emphasizes O'Conner's Catholicism in step with the "great Catholic minds of her time," over-absorbing her into just what one would expect from Paulist Press, a book authored by, of course, George A. Kilcourse, Jr. - Owlb

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