Hillbilly Thomist

25 aug 2020

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Links

Resources: Wikipedia, O'Connor • Bibliography

Documentaries: Mary Bauer (2017) • Uncommon Grace (2017) • Flannery (2020)

Associations: The Flannery O'Connor Society

Landmarks: Gravesite / Milledgeville GA • Savannah GA

Fiction

O'Connor's fiction consists of thirty-two short stories and two novels but several factors complicate setting out their chronology. The short stories appeared in wide variety of venues (academic works, literary reviews, anthologies) and not all were published during O'Connor's lifetime. Moreover O'Connor retitled and/or rewrote some of her stories (some of them several times) and incorporated larger or smaller parts of some stories into her novels.

Short stories

The following six stories appeared in O'Connor's thesis for the University of Iowa (1947, info here). Each also eventually appeared in a literary review and in The Complete Stories (1971 et seq., info here).

The Crop, comp. 1946, pub. 1971. Wiki.

The Geranium, comp. 1946, pub.1946. Wiki. • Revised several times.

The Barber, comp. 1947, pub. 1970. Wiki.

The Turkey, comp. 1947, pub. 1948 as The Capture, Wiki. • Revised and nearly published in A Good Man is Hard to Find but delayed and republished in 1988 as An Afternoon in the Woods. Wiki.

The Train, comp. 1947, pub. 1948. Wiki. • Revised and incorporated into Wise Blood.

Wildcat, comp. 1947, pub. 1970. Wiki.

The following ten stories appeared in various literary reviews, in O'Connor's first collection of stories, A Good Man is Hard to Find (1955, info here) and in The Complete Stories (1971 et seq., info here).

A Stroke of Good Fortune (orig: A Woman on the Stairs), pub. 1949. Wiki.

A Good Man Is Hard to Find, pub. 1953. Wiki. • Flannery O'Connor (1959), here, 38 min., audio only.

The River, pub. 1953. Wiki.

A Late Encounter with the Enemy, comp. 1953, pub. 1955. Wiki.

The Life You Save May Be Your Own, pub. 1953. Wiki.

A Circle in the Fire, pub. 1954. Wiki.

The Displaced Person, pub. 1954. Wiki.

The Artificial Nigger, pub. 1955. Wiki.

Good Country People, pub. 1955. Wiki. • Thomasson Morris, here, 42 min., audio and text.

A Temple of the Holy Ghost, pub. 1954. Wiki. • Cole Webb Harter, here, 31 min., audio only.

The following nine stories appeared in various literary reviews (pace Judgement Day), in O'Connor's second collection of stories, Everything that Rises Must Converge (1965, info here) and in The Complete Stories (1971 et seq., info here).

Greenleaf, comp. 1956, pub. 1965. Wiki.

The Enduring Chill, pub. 1958. Wiki.

The Comforts of Home, pub. 1960. Wiki.

The Lame Shall Enter First, pub. 1962. Wiki. • Paul Hamilton, here, 81 min, audio only.

A View of the Woods, comp. 1956, pub. 1957. Wiki.

Everything That Rises Must Converge, pub. 1961. Wiki. • Estelle Parsons, here, 36 min., audio only.

Revelation, pub. 1964. Wiki. • Michael du Bon, here, 47 min., audio. • Remarks: Bp. Barron, here, 8 min.

Parker's Back, pub. 1965. Wiki.

Judgement Day, pub. 1965. Wiki.

The remaining six stories appeared in various literary reviews and in The Complete Stories (1971 et seq., info here).

The Peeler, pub. 1949. Wiki. • Revised and incorporated into Wise Blood.

The Heart of the Park, pub. 1949. Wiki. • Revised and incorporated into Wise Blood.

Enoch and the Gorilla, pub. 1952. Wiki. • Revised and incorporated into Wise Blood.

You Can't Be Any Poorer than Dead,1955. Wiki. • Revised and incorporated into The Violent Bear It Away.

The Partridge Festival, pub. 1961. Wiki.

Why Do the Heathen Rage?, pub. 1963. Wiki. • Intended as the opening of a novel.

Novels

• Wise Blood, pub. 1952. Wiki.

• The Violent Bear it Away, pub. 1960. Wiki.

Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)

From Flannery

The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.

Conviction without experience makes for harshness.

Whenever I’m asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks, I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.

If (the Eucharist) is just a symbol, to hell with it.

I have found that anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the Northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.

All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless and brutal.

About Flannery

Steve Ayers, "The Life and Work of Flannery O'Connor", here, 67 min., audio only.

Non-Fiction

Essays

Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction (1960), here.

Interviews

R. Magee, ed., Conversations with Flannery O'Connor, (University of Mississippi, 1987) 118 pp.

Staging