Everything That Rises Must Converge: Stories

by Flannery O'Connor, Robert Fitzgerald (Introduction)

Flannery O'Connor was working on Everything That Rises Must Converge at the time of her death. This collection is an exquisite legacy from a genius of the American short story, in which she scrutinizes territory familiar to her readers: race, faith, and morality. The stories encompass the comic and the tragic, the beautiful and the grotesque; each carries her highly individual stamp and could have been written by no one else.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, Literature, Southern Gothic, Audiobook, Southern

320 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Critics note novels Wise Blood (1952) and The Violent Bear It Away (1960) and short stories, collected in such works as A Good Man Is Hard to Find (1955), of American writer Mary Flannery O'Connor for their explorations of religious faith and a spare literary style.

The Georgia state college for women educated O’Connor, who then studied writing at the Iowa writers' workshop and wrote much of Wise Blood at the colony of artists at Yaddo in upstate New York. She lived most of her adult life on Andalusia, ancestral farm of her family outside Milledgeville, Georgia.

O’Connor wrote Everything That Rises Must Converge (1964). When she died at the age of 39 years, America lost one of its most gifted writers at the height of her powers.

Survivors published her essays were published in Mystery and Manners (1969). Her Complete Stories , published posthumously in 1972, won the national book award for that year. Survivors published her letters in The Habit of Being (1979). In 1988, the Library of America published Collected Works of Flannery O'Connor, the first so honored postwar writer.

People in an online poll in 2009 voted her Complete Stories as the best book to win the national book award in the six-decade history of the contest.

Reviews

[Zoeytron · Rating 4 out of 5]

A misbegotten bus ride, an ill-chosen hat, and a shiny new penny converge to provide the setup here.  A well of simmering resentment rises to the boiling point, and there will be no turning back.  

I love the tone of Flannery O'Connor's short stories, created with an air of despair and a disturbing feel.  The characters are always just a little "off" and many times mean-spirited.  They walk amongst us, don't think for one minute that they don't.

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge"--Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Flannery O’Connor died at the age of 39 of complications from lupus. This manuscript was what she had been working on the last ten years of her life, not yet submitted to her press, but considered to be essentially finished. Written by one of the great short story writers ever, this collection is brilliant, though it may seem somewhat jarring to those who have no religious background or have never lived in the American South. O’Connor, more than many today, actually believes in the functionality of faith; in other words, she would affirm the words on a billboard I saw for more than thirty years between Holland and Hudsonville, Michigan: “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and Thou Shalt Be Saved.” Though O’Connor not only believed in Heaven and faith, but the lack of it, or Hell. And several of the self-assured, pompous and well-educated cynics about religion (like me) are surely going to Hell in O’Connor’s (Roman Catholic) moral universe.

When I first read this collection, in my early twenties, I was already a skeptic about the Calvinist Dutch Reformed religion with which I had been raised, but I had and have never judged her as a writer based on her religious views. She’s hilarious in her somewhat didactic denunciation of atheists, but she’s also hilarious in her denunciation of racists, and any who are self-satisfied and pompous and ignorant. So you don’t like ignorant racists and you want to see them suffer? Well, O’Connor may in fact agree with you, but you can’t sanctimoniously point fingers at the sanctimonious finger pointers and not be implicated for your hypocrisy. In other words, you can’t really hate haters. It’s that hate the sin but love the sinners point. In other words, these stories are largely, imho, about grace, the need for forgiveness. We all fall short of the Glory of God. Get over your moral superiority.

“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”--Flannery O’Connor

That said, this collection is somewhat darker and harsher than her early and maybe just as great collection, A Good Man is Hard to Find. All of her work that is often characterized as Southern Gothic depicts people that she identifies as “grotesque.” Many of the stories are also hilarious.

In the title story, read here by the great American actress Estelle Parsons,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83HEG...

the humor comes through very clearly from the first. A woman rides the bus to the Y for a “reducing” class with her son Julian who lives with her post college, wanting to be a writer, selling typewriters. This is a time in which buses and cafeteria counters are being integrated, which makes her uncomfortable. She’s a racist, so we are inclined like Julian to be embarrassed and feeling superior to her, and in addition to that she wears a hideous new hat. We see her through Julian’s (supercilious) and educated eyes, but they are also our eyes. When a black man sits near them (NOT in the back of the bus anymore!) Julian deliberately sits down next to the guy, to her mother’s outrage and the Black guy’s annoyance.

Then an amazing thing happens: A young black woman gets on the bus with her child and is wearing exactly the same hat! This’ll teach her, Julian (and we) say. And when his mother tries to condescendingly give the little boy a penny and the woman refuses, angrily, we think, good, maybe she’ll learn she can’t be like this anymore. But the ending turns on Julian and us in such a powerful way it takes my breath away and brings tears to my eyes.

Of the other stories, I honestly loved all of them, though admittedly they are at times harsh about all sorts of people. And some of them are surprisingly violent, though O’Connor believed very much in the concept of the authoritarian Old Testament God of Wrath and punishment. But as O'Connor also says,

"All fiction is about human nature. What kind of human nature you write about depends on the amount and kind of your talent, not on what you may consider correct behavior to be. The best forms of behavior are not more desirable than the worst for fiction, if the writer sees the situation he is creating under the aspect of Truth and follows the necessities of his art.”

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

and she observed that the more education they got, the less they could do.

A descriptive title of Flannery O'Connor's short story collection could be, This Aint Gonna End Well.

This collection is like a crescendo of awfulness, brutality and despair. Physically it's sort of akin to getting kicked in the stomach, and then when your down getting stomped on the back, then for the next story getting kicked in the face, and then getting a nice solid shot to the liver when you try to stand up again, and repeated getting pummeled in five more spots, including once in the balls; which is sort of humorous, because there is some humor in here, too.

Contained in quite a few of these stories are doomed or ineffectual characters who have too much education. Intellectuals. The not so prodigal sons who ran away from the backward South to universities or New York City and now back. Generally feeling superior, or entitled but not exactly getting on with their lives in any sort of manner. If only these young men had had the internet where they could have found some like minded people to engage in endless discussions with. Instead they generally wallow around their mothers' homes (there is a conspicuous absence of fathers in many of these stories, and in the one where the mother is absent, well that doesn't go so well either). Their own ineptitude, their slow path to failure isn't seen that way from their mothers though who look on their sons with a certain pride at having gotten an education, and think that the years since when they haven't started to make any forward movement on becoming the writers or whatever it is they claim to be, is only something to be lamented with by saying a pithy statement, "Well Rome wasn't built in a day."

Rome was never built without actually laying some stones down.

The people surrounding these young men (they are all young men) are ignorant Southerns. Even if they aren't white trash, they still exhibit the slowness and ingrained prejudices one associates with mid-Century life below the Mason and Dixon line. Some curse the fact that there is no one around them that can talk about Beckett or Joyce with them while they wallow away in bed awaiting a Kafka-esque death. Or course the difference between Kafka's Kafka-esque consumptive death and their own is that Kafka was busy creating and destroying a life time of work while also busy dying; some of these characters are only waiting for life to acknowledge their genius that they are sure is do to them because they learned some books in a university somewhere.

Life though has a nasty little trick of not being put on hold while you wallow around thinking the world owes you something. And in Flannery O'Connor's universe what life is going to give you is, well a solid kick to the stomach, if you're lucky.* It'll probably be worse though.

Of course I'm generalizing about this collection, and just taking a few characters from some of the stories to ramble on about. There are plenty of stories without this element.

But, even if it's not in all of the stories, it's the outside world, the universities or say New York City which are work as the element in the story that lets in the brutality.

Many of the Southerns might be ignorant and backwards, but it's when the Yankee-fied element gets introduced it's similar to the good efforts of an environmental group to introduce an endangered predator into a new environment and then watching in horror as the predator wrecks havoc on the existing ecosystem. I'm not really sure what I think of the scene where the old man is found crucified in the stairwell, hanging by his arms from the posts of a banister, is it an over-reaction to his good 'ol boy racism, is it racist in portraying the reaction of the black guy as being so over the top in brutality? Is it saying something about the difference in culture between the North and South?

Or maybe I'm just talking a lot of shit, and it's not any Yankee/Intellectual element at all, but something more like a whole bunch of stories just illustrating how the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Whatever I say doesn't matter about this book, all that matters if you want to read a handful of brutal Southern stories and want to lose a bit more of hope in people this would be a collection worth checking out.



*For the record, I have discovered that getting kicked even with just medium power in the ribs is sort of like getting kicked in the solar plexus. I was more than a little surprised by this, it might not have helped that I was already getting gassed when I got kicked.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three strange things about Flannery O’Connor :

1. Flannery. Kind of a pretty odd name. Some writers get them, don’t they – Edwidge, Somerset, Rudyard, Rider, Tennessee. Never heard of nobody else called no Flannery.

2. What links these celebs with our author : Selina Gomez, Lady Gaga and Ferdinand Marcos. Answer : lupus. An auto-immune disease.

3. Grace. Apparently either a lot or all of Flannery’s stories are about grace. This is a Christian concept defined as "the love and mercy given to us by God because God desires us to have it, not necessarily because of anything we have done to earn it". The good cop side of God, in other words. (Day of Judgement will be the Bad Cop, I assume.) But as a non-Christian, I could not understand this aspect of these stories at all. Seemed to me we were introduced to various unpleasantly smug individuals who then got met with unexpected and serious acts of violence. The love and mercy was in real short supply, far as I could see. But that was okay, I didn’t need it.

[Cindy Rollins · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have tried and tried to read Flannery O'Connor because people I trusted said I should but the darkness always got to me.
"They" said her books were about redemption but I couldn't see it.
Then I read her letters-A Habit of Being-and fell in love with Flannery. I began to trust her. I decided to try her stories again.
They were still painfully dark but I got the 'redemption.'
Flannery understood people and she was unwilling to let any of us off the hook. At first it seems she is only exposing unlikeable people but suddenly you begin to see that she is exposing everyone. None is righteous in her world, no not one.
She does not tell pretty stories. She tells true stories, the stories of the heart, the stories underneath the stories. Turns out every single one of her characters needs to be redeemed and so do I.
I am happy she did not have a chance turn her razor sharp mimesis on me. Although it is quite possible I would not recognize those dark places of my own heart.

[Kristi Siegel · Rating 5 out of 5]

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Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog

There is no doubt. I am a Flannery O’ Connor junkie. I can’t think of anything she’s written I haven’t loved. Even her letters and essays ring true. She is, to some degree, a product of her environment, and her use of certain words can grate on our 21st-century ears, but a toned-down O’Connor would not be O’Connor. Everything That Rises Must Converge may be her best collection of short stories, including, among others, the title story, “Parker’s Back,” “The Lame Shall Enter First,” and, my personal favorite, “Revelation.”

Typically, O’Connor takes her spiritually-flawed protagonists and blasts them to hell and back. By the time O’Connor is through with them, they’re emptied out, meek, and ready to receive grace. Some of Samuel Beckett’s characters seem post-apocalyptic, as if they had just returned from the Flannery O’Connor Finishing School. The characters most likely to be squashed flat are the smug, self-righteous, short-sighted, hypocritical, complacent, and intellectually or spiritually proud.

To effect redemption, O’Connor often has her fairly grotesque characters confront circumstances and people that are also grotesque. Given O’Connor’s rather mild aspect, she was asked frequently why she used such shockingly violent means and had such a penchant for the grotesque. It’s doubtful O’Connor ever gave a verbal response; she did not suffer fools lightly, and apparently saw critics comfortably occupying that category. In an essay, though, she does provide an answer: “To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost-blind you draw large and startling figures.” O’Connor works to get the religiously distorted back into spiritual alignment or at least into a state of self-awareness, and she’s willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish her aims. Despite her serious intent, all of her fiction—even the darkest—has moments of humor, and few authors have achieved O’Connor’s level of hilarity.

“Revelation” provides a nice illustration of O’Connor at work; here her target is the memorable Ruby Turpin. I don’t view this summary as a spoiler; while her plots are wildly imaginative, it’s O’Connor’s writing, with its perfect pitch and dead on descriptions, that must be experienced.

Ruby Turpin believes she is a good person. She thinks she believes in God. What’s going on in Ruby’s thoughts and conversation are less than godly, and we’re given a full view of her philosophy as Ruby sits in a doctor’s waiting room, observing the array of people. After scanning the room, Ruby chooses to talk to a woman she knows must be lady, given her tasteful clothing and good shoes. For the most part, though, Ruby is preoccupied with ranking the others in the waiting room.

And Ruby finds most of these people sorely wanting, the dregs of her envisioned hierarchy:

On the bottom of the heap were most colored people, not the kind she would have been if she had been one, but most of them; then next to them—not above, just away from—were the white-trash; then above them were the home-owners, and above them were the home-and-land owners, to which she and Claud belonged.

Ruby also occupies herself with another favorite pastime: contemplating what she would choose if Jesus said she would have to be either white trash or a “nigger.” Ruby prides herself on her correct, self-sacrificing, moral choice, and tells Jesus to “make her a nigger then—but that don’t mean a trashy one.”

Throughout Ruby’s conversation with the respectable lady, largely dealing with the virtues of a good disposition and strategies for getting the most work out of “colored” people, Ruby notices that the lady’s daughter is showering her with “ugly looks.” The more Ruby talks, the more intensely the daughter stares: “[H:]er eyes were fixed [on her:] like two drills." As Ruby ecstatically thanks Jesus for making her the type of person she is, the young college girl takes her book, aptly entitled Human Development, and beans Ruby just above the eye. Just before the girl is taken away, presumably to an asylum, Ruby, in shock, asks her, “What you got to say to me?” In a voice “that brooked no repudiation,” the girl whispers, “Go back to hell where you came from, you old wart hog.”

Ruby leaves, stunned and outraged. Later that day, she goes out to their state-of-the-art pig parlor to confront the hogs they own, who are “a-gruntin and a-rootin and a-groanin,” and demands loudly, “How am I a hog?...Exactly how I am like them?” Still gazing at them as though she “were absorbing some abysmal life-giving knowledge,” Ruby begins to have a vision of a “vast horde of souls…rumbling toward heaven.”

Surprisingly, Ruby sees the “white-trash,” “niggers,” “freaks,” and “lunatics” ahead of her and Claud, who were at the end of the line along with people just like them, those who always believed in “good order and common sense and respectable behavior.” Further, Ruby could see by “their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away.”

We are not told Ruby’s outcome. We don’t know if O’Connor’s reality check takes hold, but it is clear—if only for a moment—that Ruby sees her goodness as a shell that would crumble in the face of eternity.

[Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reread

“I am not afraid that the book will be controversial, I'm afraid it will not be controversial.” – Flannery O’Connor


Flannery O’Connor once addressed readers who did not share her views by writing, “You have to make your vision apparent by shock – to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.”

The nine stories included in the Everything That Rises Must Converge collection are densely populated with “large and startling” figures and the narrations are one long and very loud shout. A number of the stories deal with generational conflict in which the older generation represents the beliefs and culture of the conservative “Old South” with the younger generation standing in for the more progressive ideas of the “New South.”

I may be reaching too far here, but as I read these stories I couldn’t help remembering the TV series, All in the Family, specifically the contentious relationship that existed between the conservative patriarch, Archie, and his extremely liberal son-in-law, Michael, whom Archie called Meathead.

Michael’s liberal views, which tended to be of the knee jerk variety, never allowed him to cut Archie any slack when questions of race or politics or religion arose. But Archie, despite his shortcomings, wasn’t all bad, and although he was nearly always ill-informed when it came to their arguments, he wasn’t entirely wrong in every situation.

And, furthermore, he was financially supporting Michael, even giving him a home, so that he could complete his education. Of course Archie never hesitated to remind his son-in-law of the sacrifices that he was making for him and Michael in turn resented Archie for bringing it up during the course of their many disputes.

In short, it was the type of generational divide that characterizes several of the stories in this collection, including the title story. A widowed mother made many sacrifices so that her son could acquire a college degree. However, the job that he has selling typewriters does not allow him to move out on his own. This causes him to be resentful of the situation and he bristles when his mother reminds him of the sacrifices she has made. He also finds it impossible to respond to her with gratitude or any degree of patience.

Being a product of the “New South,” he considers himself to be a liberal on the issue of race and is unable to tolerate his mother’s “Old South” views on the same issue. However, despite his liberal ideas, the son experiences difficulty in acting on his convictions and fully accepting and treating blacks as equals.

Nevertheless, he sets out to teach his mother a lesson in an attempt to prove to her that her views are misguided; this being O’Connor, the lesson goes badly awry with tragic consequences.

And yet, just as in “All in the Family,” there is humor in this story. But then there is the quote that has been attributed to both Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw: “If you’re going to tell people the truth, you had better make them laugh or they will kill you.”

In the majority of these stories the reader is left with the impression that the characters received exactly what they had coming to them, but usually only after a painful epiphany that is often accompanied by violence and destruction.


"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." – Flannery O’Connor


The fiction writer has to engage in a continual examination of conscience. He has to be aware of the freak in himself."-- Flannery O'Connor


--------------------------------------------

You can read the title story here: https://thomasaquinas.edu/pdfs/alumni...

Or you can listen to the actress Estelle Parsons read it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83HEG...

And you can listen to “Revelation,” another story that deals with some of the same issues as the title story, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0c4J...

**** I posted these links in 2019. Only the middle one is still valid.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was such a powerful collection of short stories! I read this in high school after already having discovered Faulkner and Dostoyevsky and found that stories like Wise Blood and All That Rises Must Converge had the same nervous energy with larger than life characters that just screamed off the pages. The plots have not really aged and can be read with interest and delight all these decades later. Highly recommended!

[Sasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This lovely collection of sentimental stories is just the thing for a rainy Sunday when you want to curl up on the couch and read your blues away. Just try to read the title story, in which a beloved mother learns she has something surprising in common with a woman of color, without feeling your spirits rise! Or "A View of the Woods," a beautiful pastoral where an old man takes his favorite granddaughter out for ice cream and they both learn about the importance of family. This must have been what D.H. Lawrence was thinking about when he described the American soul! And talk about chicken soup for it - your mother never made chicken soup like this!

Soundtrack: you must always listen to Lucinda Williams while reading Flannery O'Connor. Rules are rules.

[Celeste Corrêa · Rating 4 out of 5]

«Tudo O Que Sobe Deve Convergir» foi o quarto livro que li de Flannery O'Connor; nove contos; o primeiro dá título à compilação.
E, a cada livro, os temas e os ambientes são os mesmos: o racismo, a religião, o fanatismo e os conflitos entre pessoas desconhecidas ou familiares lá nas terras onde tudo o vento levou.
Flannery O'Connor cria atmosferas de grande intensidade para no final castigar pela violência das suas espadas levantadas.
Provavelmente, tudo o que sobe converge para o céu, mas não será o céu de Flannery O'Connor alcançado à custa de demasiados castigos e licões de grande crueldade? O céu é por diversas vezes apresentado como uma espécie de «colossal monstro amarelo».
Nunca encontrei nada nesta católica devota, - ou fanática, em minha opinião - que conseguisse compreender totalmente.
Um extremar de posições entre as personagens, a salvação que chega ou talvez não, como «uma espécie de hospício para automóveis incuráveis».
A minha relação com Flannery O'Connor é contraditória: gosto como escreve, não tanto sobre o que escreve.

[Mala · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars.

When the mother in the title story asserts to her son Julian: "I know who I am," she is mainly referring to her social & cultural identity, identities that divide us from human beings who happen to be on the other side of race, class, religion, gender, because if you really knew who you are; that self-realization itself would open the doors of perception, kindness, empathy—leading to a state of grace.
Grace that is the linchpin of Flannery O'Connors' writing & it comes in unexpected ways to the most unlikely of her characters.

Religion dominates her work; in both its presence & absence. It bolsters her fiction with the endless possibilities of drama inherent in her Roman Catholic faith. She surprisingly escapes the pitfalls that catholic writers like Graham Greene & Evelyn Waugh experienced in that her writing never seems preachy or appear merely as a ruse to dramatise religious conflicts & the credit for that goes to her very complex characterisations: while it's true there are family resemblances among her characters (which means that she is regurgitating types), Mrs. May in Greenleaf seems to be a version of the lone farm-owning lady from A Circle in the Fire, the mother in the titular story seems to recall the grandmother from A Good Man is Hard to Find,— their motivations are complex & she subverts the types: the prim & proper grandmother becomes the unlikely agent for a gruesome family tragedy, the well-meaning mothers in both Good Country People, & here in Comforts of Home welcome fake people into their families & in the process destroy their children. Isn't the pride of Sheppard in The Lame Shall Enter First, as bad as the evil in the delinquent Rufus Johnson, a pride that makes him blind to his own little boy's trauma while gloating in his own charitable disposition: "Nothing excited him so much as thinking what he could do for such a boy. First he would have him fitted for a new orthopedic shoe..."
And: "his benefactor was impervious to insult and that there were no cracks in his armor of kindness and patience where a successful shaft could be driven."
She also makes her villainous characters formidable ones so her virtuous characters get thoroughly tested by their adversaries.
It wasn't for nothing that the great T. S. Eliot admired O'Connor's short stories!

She astutely shows that prejudices exist on both sides of the ideological divide: a thesis that masterfully plays out in Everything That Rises Must Converge— the "negress" mother on the bus is as prejudiced against the White Folks as they are against her, that the liberal-minded son is as mistaken in his high estimation of the black folks as is his mother in her old-world condescension towards them, that if her martyr complex & blinkered view of reality are wrong, so is his cynicism & calculated cruelty towards her. For what is knowledge if it doesn't lead to conscientious behaviour? What good is faith if it is not guided by kindness?

The irony implicit in the title is not lost on the readers: here hopes & goodwill rise but they don't converge! The generational, racial, & class divides are too broad to be filled but sometimes they get lucky & their life is touched by Grace through a kind gesture, a gentle smile, a sweet glance... After her humiliation in the doctor's waiting room ( a microcosm of southern society), Mrs. Turpin gets to have a heavenly vision of human unity in my favourite story of this collection called, Revelation.

O'Connor's work is not reducible to simple moral parables because it is loaded with delicious irony. While her characters mouth their platitudes, you chuckle knowing that in the background she is cranking up the irony factor. The humour in her stories is largely irony-driven, but there is wit too & wry observations, otherwise, in the absence of humour, her dark world would be hard to bear.

There are flaws, yes. The so-called 'twist endings' in her stories become so predictable that they seem anything but that—you know for a fact that at the end of the story her characters will meet violent death/ get disillusioned. That her so-called pious characters will turn out to be hollow/hypocritical & that the criminals/black sheep types would carry a sliver of grace in them. My first experience of O'Connor was via her story collection A Good Man is Hard to Find, seeing a plethora of five-stars ratings by GR friends here, I read that very critically: I sometimes found the violence arbitrary— like an avenging angel, O'Connor seemed to be teaching her characters hard lessons, a story like The River, though highly moving; felt emotionally manipulative— ditto the case here with an otherwise excellent story The Lame Shall Enter First.
Subtlety doesn't seem to be her strongest point & that's why an occasional story like The Artificial Nigger, and Revelation, take you completely by surprise with their finely wrought pathos & quiet dignity.
This collection comes with a biographical Intro & that gave me a fresh appreciation of her work: despite her limiting circumstances & her long battle with Lupus ( She died at 39), Flannery O'Connor managed to achieve a lot.
A writer's geographical boundaries are often confused with their overall literary significance: O'Connor may be writing of the old, rural American south but it's often with shock that we recognize therein our own prejudices & our own nostalgia for a bygone time. In the pompous self-righteousness of her religious folks that alienates her liberal characters, we see the modern man's frustrating search for a certainty that no longer exists. Who would be able to recall these words from her story The Displaced Person & not shudder? : "We are all damned, but some of us have taken off our blindfolds and see that there's nothing to see. It's a kind of salvation." In that sense, her stories become archetypal ones: they are relevant for all times and places.
*********
About the title:
The title Everything That Rises Must Converge refers to a work by the French philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin titled the "Omega Point": Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge. (From Wikipedia)

[Tom LA · Rating 3 out of 5]

Look — it’s not like a Goodreads review is something written in stone. When I went into these stories, I listened to the audiobook narrated by a very nasal voice, and I had no idea that I was walking into a complicated labyrinth of symbolism and allegories.

So I’m still far from a point where I can express a deep and appropriate thought about this author.

First time around, I did not like this book. But I didn’t realize I was reading a mine-field of unreliable narrators, shifting perspectives and ironic twists!

I KNOW the next read will be a better one.

Here’s my old review:

—-

These stories are not about the power of religion to lift your soul. On the contrary, they emanate a really, really bad energy. And I don't mean the bad energy that the author consciously gave as a personality trait to her doomed characters (especially the "young ungrateful intellectual male", who is everywhere in this book), no, I have no problem with dark stories or dark characters. What I'm talking about is the raw emotional energy of old Flannery herself. You know, that feeling you get as a reader when you touch the soul of the writer? I felt Flannery's soul was seriously tormented. And, most of all, angry. That feeling had nothing positive about it. Nothing forgiving, nothing joyous, nothing constructive about the underlying soul of her stories. Maybe her own rationalization of her work sounded great, but in reality there is something creepily off in her writing.

Through these emotionally tense stories, she gives out whiffs of unhappiness, of frustration (personal issues, maybe?). She judges her non-redeemed characters mercilessly, she hates them with a passion, she tortures them until things inevitably end up in disaster for them.

How is this supposed to dispose me, as a reader, in an open listening mode at all? How am I supposed to "accept the grace of God" after reading these stories? What dark brand of Christianity is this? Maybe one that was popular in the 13th century?

Perhaps most importantly, I found myself in complete disagreement with the author's "moral of the story" every single time.

Let me explain.

Her goal was to portray characters who did not allow the grace of God in their lives, and to show how badly that works out for them (as she openly and very clearly explained in an interview). But the way she does that is by constantly siding with the wrong character, and by condoning any type of nasty, anti-social behaviour as long as a character is adhering to some very superficial / formal aspect of catholicism.

Examples:

1) “Wise blood”: one can be an insane, violent criminal (like the old guy in her story "Wise blood"), but as long as he is driven by the obsession to baptize his kid, he wins and he gets the moral high ground in O'Connor's world.

2) "The enduring chill": One can be a rude, annoying, disrespectful and aggressive priest who barges into your room while you're actually dying and you don't want anyone around, but as long as he declares that you need to open up to the Holy Spirit, he is the real hero of the story. You are wrong and he gets the moral high ground. Attitude doesn’t matter one bit.

3) "Greenleaf": One can be a poor single mother who had to work hard all her life to raise two sons, but if she doesn't accept God in her life, she gets the Wrath of Flannery: there is a gigantic bull ruining her property, and all the poor woman wants is to get the f-ing bull out of her loan, but no. She is godless, so she needs to suffer. Her employees, who are responsible for the bull, are lazy and totally unreliable. However, because they are superficially "open to God", they get to win first prize: they have happy children, wealth, and serenity. While the poor woman is the baddie of the story, the one whom the author tortures until the end.

I could go on and on, but I hope this is clear.

[☾❀Apple✩ Blossom⋆｡˚ · Rating 4 out of 5]

“She was a good Christian woman with a large respect for religion, though she did not, of course, believe any of it was true.”



A collection of stories about humans, relationships, sons, fathers, mothers, faith and sin. I read this book right after A good man is hard to find, and I enjoyed both of them, although I found this one stronger. The analysis of the human behaviour went even deeper into the souls of every flawed individual portrayed in these stories, which seemed to focus more on the relationship between parents and their children, and on the differences between generations which often lead to miscommunication, misinterpretation, closure, and conflict. Sensitive topics like metal health, religion, racism and politics often break relationships between different generations, and sometimes we feel disconnected from the people we love because, even though we can't stop loving them, we still resent them for their ideas. This book raised questions like: would you still love your mother all the same if she was racist and prejudiced? Would you still love your son all the same if he was an atheist and you a fervent catholic? And how would that feel like?



I think that ultimately, the main topic of this book is the impossibility of a real communication between individuals; the notion that everyone is a world on their own and that any attempt to create a bridge between us and other beings, even and maybe more so if very close to us (a father, a grandparent, a spouse, God), is always approximated and keeps inside the seed of miscommunication, of feeling misunderstood and, ultimately, isolated. A son who's suicidal and suffers from crippling depression, and a mother who encourages him to "just go outside, get some sun, find a job". The son resenting her, the mother still thinking she knows best. A father who's convinced his son is spoiled and ungrateful, and doesn't see his pain of losing a mother until it's too late. Who's going to judge who's right and who's wrong? And who's the real victim? Is ignorance an excuse? Are we all just victims of our sins?

I think that, ultimately, we all can have our opinions but they are of relative importance in the face of the depth of pure, existential, pain; like each character of this book portrays in its own way. So, in the end, we are all wonderful, flawed beings who live, mate, die and love as best as we can; and hope for some kind of forgiveness and redemption, in this world or another.

[Cláudia Azevedo · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Tudo o que Sobe Deve Convergir" é um conjunto de contos em que o universo se encarrega sempre de dar uma lição às criaturas mais exasperantes, habitualmente homens e mulheres que se consideram superiores aos seus semelhantes, seja pela cor da pele, seja pela classe social, seja pela religião ou falta dela. O tempo parece encarregar-se de colocar estes seres, defeituosos e orgulhosos das suas pretensas virtudes, no seu devido lugar. Ora abre-lhes os olhos, ora castiga-os. E talvez seja essa a razão pela qual este livro é tão aclamado: ele parece vir repor a justiça e vingar as vítimas. Se estas personagens são bodes expiatórios para que continuemos a acreditar que todos têm o que merecem? Claro que sim! Precisamos deles para encontrarmos alguma ordem no caos existencial. Pelo menos estes não são de carne e osso, ainda que pareçam.
Contos preferidos:
A Vista dos Bosques -5*
O Calafrio Permanente - 5*
Os Confortos do Lar - 5*
Os Coxos hão de Entrar Primeiro - 5*

[Lou · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well I tell you one thing she can write. This woman was of exceptional cleverness and writes of characters of her era and ones that live around us now. She rights of the human condition and the darkness of the heart. These story have humour thrown in she tries to give us a view of how we behave and how insanely stupid and careless we can be. How love blinds and evil destroys, how good can only prosper.
She writes of parenthood, guilt, obsession, control freaks, the sick, the despondent, vengeance, redemption, love, compassion and love.
She has been said to be a catholic writer and mentions God, Jesus and themes of redemption. She does not throw it down your throat but adds light on how people behave.
There are a few stories here that that have characters who behave in a fascist manner and used words, N words, that readers might find offensive. The only reason, her being a catholic, in writing with these words and characters can only be to shock and show the reader how one can look like from the outside.
She was capable of so much more, died at a young age of 39 due to Lupus. A gifted writer on the horror and joys of our behaviour as people.
Think of some of Stephen Kings stories but realistically told.

I listened to this on audiobook via audible.com and was really a wonderful listen, it had quite a few voices with southern accents that added to making it enjoyable and easy listening. I am also going to read these again in another book where she includes these storirs and others. A completed works on ebook The Complete Stories . Once I have read that edition I will give a breakdown of each story.




There is a documentary and the review at my webpage here.

[Tom Mathews · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read/listened to A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories and Everything That Rises Must Converge back-to-back and have to say that I found the tone of this book a bit softer than A Good Man. While both books share a dearth of characters vying for sainthood, this last volume written before her death at least seems to offer some hope for humanity. Still O'Connor’s prose offers us an insight into the human condition that is unparalleled in American literature. As Thomas Merton said after her death in 1964, “I write her name with honor, for all the truth and all the craft with which she shows man’s fall and his dishonor.”

I suspect that her stories will stay with me for many years to come. Some, like the tragic The Lame Shall Enter First, may never leave me.

FYI: On a 5-point scale I assign stars based on my assessment of what the book needs in the way of improvements:
*5 Stars – Nothing at all. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
*4 Stars – It could stand for a few tweaks here and there but it’s pretty good as it is.
*3 Stars – A solid C grade. Some serious rewriting would be needed in order for this book to be considered great or memorable.
*2 Stars – This book needs a lot of work. A good start would be to change the plot, the character development, the writing style and the ending.
*1 Star - The only thing that would improve this book is a good bonfire.

[RJ - Slayer of Trolls · Rating 4 out of 5]

O'Connor's second collection of stories, published shortly after she passed away, continues to show her mastery of the form with character-based pieces featuring judgmental, selfish, ill-tempered people whose misfortunes are largely their own doing. Biblical themes are present for those who wish to seek them out. Story list is below, along with ratings for each and some song lyrics which might be amusing or insightful, or not:

Everything That Rises Must Converge - 4/5 - I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all
Greenleaf - 4/5 - the wisdom of a fool won't set you free
A View of the Woods - 4/5 - all I want to do is be more like me and be less like you
The Enduring Chill - 3/5 - you know how hard it is for me to shake the disease
The Comforts of Home - 4/5 - you're an all night generator wrapped in stockings and a dress
The Lame Shall Enter First - 5/5 - old man look at my life
Revelation - 4/5 - there ain't no room for the hopeless sinner
Parker's Back - 4/5 - now he's getting a tattoo yeah, he's getting ink done
Judgement Day - 4/5 - all I want for you is to take my body home

[JimZ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, I enjoyed reading this collection of stories quite a bit. The arithmetic mean (stop rolling your eyes — there is a method to my madness!) was 3.67 and therefore I will rate this collection 4 stars. 😊

I was pleasantly surprised I liked these stories because on the surface there wasn’t much to like about the characters in the stories. They were portrayed as unattractive, many of the whites were dyed-in-the-wool racists, even the children were portrayed in less than a nice light. But the story lines were interesting, and the writing was wonderful. So what can I say? I used to have her collection of short stories, The Complete Stories, but I gave it away without reading it. How stupid could I be?!!! Now I need to retrieve the book, because I want to read more of her.

She died at an early age (39) of lupus (it was an inherited disease, her father died of it) and a significant part of her life she spent in pain and on steroids that had god-awful side effects. The money that she derived from her writing helped pay for her drugs that were keeping her alive (albeit with significantly yucky side effects).

Here are my ratings with a couple of comments from me as I was reading a story or when I was finished. This was her last collection of stories. Settings but for one story was in the South (Judgment Day was in New York City). I hunted down where the stories were originally published as best I could, too. I’m always interested in that — I can just imagine coming across some of these short stories in magazines/periodicals and being blown away by the writing…
• Everything that Rises Must Converge 5 stars published in New World Writing, 1961
• Greenleaf 5 stars published in The Kenyon Review, Summer 1956, received an O. Henry Award
• A View of the Woods 5 stars published in Partisan Review, 1957
• The Enduring Chill 3.5 stars may have been published in Harper’s Bazaar, she submitted it there in 1958
• The Comforts of Home 2 stars published in The Kenyon Review, Autumn 1960
• The Lame Shall Enter First 1.5 stars published in The Sewanee Review, 1962
• Revelation 3.5 stars published in The Sewanee Review, Spring 1964, received an O. Henry Award
• Parker’s Back 3 stars published in Esquire, April 1965
• Judgment Day 4.5 stars this contains many similarities to one of O'Connor's earliest short stories, "The Geranium, as part of her master’s thesis (The Geranium: A Collection of Short Stories) in 1946

COMMENTS
• Everything that Rises Must Converge: The Black woman is wearing a hat that is identical to that as Julian’s mother’s. Julian’s mother tries to give a black boy a penny and the black boy’s mother hits the mother’s pocketbook and Julian’s mother falls to the ground, and has a stroke, and dies. And Julian is overcome with guilt. )
• Greenleaf: funny…” she was a good Christian woman with a large respect for religion, though she did not, of course, believe any of it was true.” … A bigoted racist old bitter woman with 2 loser sons and her farmhand (black), Greenleaf, that she mistreated, and a bull.
• A View of the Woods: Damn. Mary Fortune Pitts (9 years old) is just like her 79-year-old grandpa (Mr. Fortune), and her father, Mr. Pitts, hates the grandpa. Mr. Fortune sells a plot of land to spite his son-in-law (Mr. Pitts) and Mary sticks up for her father and Mr. Fortune kills his granddaughter. Holy sh*t.

Reviews:
I can’t find any reviews of the short story collection! ☹
NYer article on O’Connor and race; https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/20...

[Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perceptive cinematic nightmares of brilliant grey-to-black shades.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Best collection of short stories since Hemingway. O'Connor is now a bit faded out of sight but in the 1950s and 1960s she had a strong reputation. She lived a very intense but short life (because of illness) in the South of the United States. Her tone is markedly realistic-accurate, with sparse details (only those that are necessary) but with a far-reaching psychological depth. The stories almost always are about two people (male-female, son-mother, grandfather-grandchild, etc) with a close but markedly not satisfying relationship. The actual theme is usually social: : the relation between the races, the futility of good works, etc. In general a slow-buildup is followed by a sometimes very violent denouement, hence O'Connor's stories are qualified as grotesques. Her work has some kinship with Edgar Allen Poe, and obviously (through the southern setting) with Faulkner.
The most captivating stories are: the title story 'Everything that Rises', 'A View on the Woods', and 'The Lame shall enter First'. Handsomely written and rather upsetting, O'Connor makes it pretty obvious that the perspective from which you are viewing the world is absolutely hyper-individual and can never be measured by objective standards. For me this was a really nice discovery!

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Holy crap!

Or really, I ought to say that these stories are all about crappy holier-than-thou jerkwads all coming to gloriously nasty ends. And/or despair. As desert.

I expected something of this before I read it, of course. I've heard that Flannery O'Connor is one of the masters of the short fiction and nothing I've read is telling me any else. But what can we really expect?

TONS of racism. A mountain of some of the very worst humanity has to offer handed to us in our very own PoVs. This is fifties and sixties stuff, so prepare yourself. The most grace I see in them usually comes from the really delightful ends. A death here or there. Despair is good. And often these nasty people don't even know why.

We do. Or I'd like to think we, as readers, do.

Hell, this is why I'm such a big fan of Stephen King. We get to know these jerks and then we start cheering when the bad happens to them. Glory, glory, hallelujah!

Well worth the read.

[Theo Logos · Rating 4 out of 5]

I once heard Joseph Campbell say that, once broken down into their basic archetypes, there are really only twelve stories in the world. Flannery O'Connor only knows one. She tells it over and over. Relentlessly. Each tale follows a rigid formula, distinguished by predictable variations, and each is a toxic dance of prejudice, pretension, bitterness, and inadequacy.
O'Connor's writing is top shelf, five star quality. This was necessary to keep me reading each variation on her theme of the deplorable and the doomed. Despite the quality writing, I think that one Flannery O'Connor collection will be sufficient for a lifetime.

[Genia Lukin · Rating 5 out of 5]

These stories are amazingly grim. Practically every single one manages to end with the death of someone or another, usually in the grisliest and most horrifying manner possible.

Aside from a tendency to never leave her characters alive, O'Connor also takes a look at hypocrisy, and she does it again, and again, and again. It's actually a quite terrifying look, all the more so because you keep feeling 'I know this person... wait, I've been this person'.

Which one of us hasn't felt the urge to be charitable and "save" someone, as though he were a personal messiah, in the most sanctimonious and annoying way possible, knowing for sure exactly what this other person needs, for example, and what we "can do" for them, while at the same time abandoning things that are staring us in the face, as Sheppard in The Lame Shall Enter First has done? And how many of us think that our glorious liberal ideas make us better, nobler, in all ways different people than those reactionary fools out there? I'm looking at you, internet.

O'Connor slaps every sanctimonious forum poster in the face, and does it so well that for the first few pages you don't even realise she's doing it. You think, 'dear God, she can't be serious', but she really is, and you can't help but admire the audacity of a writer, who is supposed in an almost canonical way to stand for modernity, liberalism, and all those other wonderful things, who instead throws their hypocrisy in their face.

[Renin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Müthiş, müthiş! Flannery O’Connor söz konusu olunca, insana dair bütün kirli çamaşırlar ortalara saçılıyor, rezillik diz boyu. Gotik, güneyli, dindar vesaire birtakım etiketler altında sınıflandırılıyor ama bu etiketlere katiyen sıkıştırılamayacak, muazzam bir edebiyat var ortada. Dönüp dönüp tekrar okumalık..

Çevirisi de hiç yabana atılacak gibi değil. Uzun zamandır bu denli lezzetli sözcükler kullanılarak yapılmış bir çeviriyle karşılaşmamışım meğer.

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Julgo que não será necessário apreciar contos para delirar com estas maravilhas; basta gostar de ler — e ter alguma queda para histórias negras, amargas, grotescas — que Flannery O'Connor trata do resto...

[Stephen M · Rating 2 out of 5]

Prose style: 2
Plot: 3
Depth of characters: 3
Overall sense of aesthetic: 2
Originality: 3
Entertaining: 1
Emotional Reaction: 2
Intellectual Stimulation: 4
Social Relevance: 4
Writerly Inspiration: 1

Average = 2.5
Click here

There were some stories that I thought were very strong, the first two especially. On their own, those were hands down five stars. 'The Comforts of Home' and 'The Lame Shall Enter First' I also thought worked very well. But my grippes all come from her writing style. She has a very stripped down method of writing, think Hemingway without the macho-ness. But with the 'less is more' mantra, the writer should be taking out extraneous detail, adjectives, adverbs, etc. It seems that Flannery O'Connor's writing is devoid of detail. You know, the good stuff. The small minor details that give a new world life. When it comes down to it, her writing comes across as summary. Which sucks. If I wanted summaries of stories, then I wouldn't read books. I would only read spark notes, wiki summaries and Goodreads reviews!

My other major problem is characters. Most of these characters have the emotional complexity of a street sign. I felt like taking out a red and green highlighter and coloring each character's name. This one is bad. This one is good. Oh no! Look how tragic it is when bad things happen to good people! Oh no! Look at the wrath of God getting retribution on those bad people too! Plus, the characters felt so reused that not many of them stood out to me. They all seemed to stew into a single protagonist and antagonist dichotomy that hung over every story.

Gosh, reading back on this review, it seems like I hate it. But maybe I'm just venting a little. Because there were many things I really enjoyed about the stories. If you can consider the simple prose and stockish characters more as a vehicle for her musing on ethical dilemmas, then you know, it is not too bad. It seems that that was her intention. She less of a writer trying to achieve any typical character/plot realizations, more of a philosopher "testing" out human paradigms within the context of fiction.

That being said, it didn't make me love every sentence.

[Daniel Montague · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, Flannery you were quite liberal with your n-words. I get you must judge a book as a product of their times and this being written in the mid-1960s, it was common, but even with that caveat, it was a lot. I think one sentence had 3 and the sentence was only 6 words long. Also, listening to this provided a unique experience as for the most part the narrators led by Bronson Pinchot did an excellent job. The one exception would be the uneven voice work for decrepit elderly women. Sometimes, it would be fine, but other times it would take a “Mrs. Doubtfire” patois — another cultural touchstone, albeit 30 years later than this was written that has not aged well. Even with those gripes, this was an entertaining look at the unique way in which Flannery O’Connor is able to cut people down to size. As befits a short story collection, this one encompassing nine, some hit with more force than others. In saying that, none of the stories were abysmal, which is quite a triumph. Whether it is the woman who considers herself genteel and above reproach, the scholar who deigns to do labor, the deluded mother who can’t reconcile that her family’s station is now below her former tenants, the son who condemns the lodger his mother has taken in, or the father who is so blinded by his “scientific approach” to reform a wayward adolescent that he neglects his son, the stories often depict prideful people who fail. Race, faith and morality are themes given much emphasis. Overall, this collection is worthy of 4 stars with, “The Lame Shall Enter First”, “Revelation” , and “Greenleaf” , being my favorites.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Flannery O'Connor combines an ear for dialect and dialog with racial and class ironies in the reforming South; at the heart of her stories is a controlling sensibility like Mrs Turpin who asks God at the end how she is like a pig. The reader, placed by O'Connor in a godlike position, knows. It's a Revelation.
Perhaps the most revealing story, and the most prescient of things to come--that have now come-- is the story on tattoos, "Parker's Back." Parker, doubtful of his own body, and hoping to impress his girl who is very religious, gets his back tattooed with a picture of God. Guess her reaction. Delicious irony of character, culture and of course, religion. O'Connor is as it were a counter to the attractive but atheistic modernism of James Joyce: Flannery O'Connor was a practicing Catholic and great skeptic of Southern Protestantism. All three of her novels satirize hucksters and
preachers. But curiously, her novels are not as powerful and resonant as her stories. (Maybe her novels are as Bonnie Joe Campbell says of hers, "failed short stories." Another great writer suggested that short stories are more artful--Faulkner or Hemingway?)
As a college lit teacher, I once assigned my Freshman the usual ten stories in two weeks, but for a change, they were all from one author, this one. I had forgotten her impact when read through. As the students entered night class, I could immediately tell those who had done the reading.
They looked shell-shocked. I never again assigned so many of O'Connor's stories in a short period.

[Sketchbook · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author has been called "a genius" for her woebegone tales of southern white trash, hence many readers humbly accept this hyperbole and are in agreement. It's an understandable aberration. Her stories or parables are too similar for my taste buds and, for best effect, should be read months apart. I read in a compressed "sit" and wanted to gore certain critics, like Alfred Kazin, just as Mrs May is off'd in "Greenleaf." (Foreshadowed early in the story; same with the gun in "The Comforts of Home"). The most effective is the titular about white-black condescension. (B. on the west coast, I've lived my adult life on east coast, with interim years in Europe. Howev, I went to college in the south. I daresay I know more about the southern "spirit," as Kazin calls it, than know-it-all Kazin, who never left NYC).

There's a deadly religio-meller sameness in these stories that I resist. This sameness includes opening sentences: (a) Mrs May's bedroom window (b) Thomas withdrew to the... (c) Parker's wife was sitting on.. (d) Sheppard sat on a stool. ~~ Very Creative Writing 101. Flannery is interesting. Of 2 serious and crazy ladies I much prefer Jane Bowles.

[Darwin8u · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice Catholic ladies aren't supposed to demolish you like this. O'Connor was born to be a literary knife fighter. Page after page, with zero sentimentality, O'Connor rips the grotesque out of her characters and with a bareknuckle, Christian realism absolutely dares you to turn the page. Hers is a painful grace, a search for the holy in the swamps of the Southern absurd. The brilliant thing about O'Connor is by telling her stories of divine grace among the heretics and the horrors, the reader might easily miss the divine spark in the grotesque and absurd darkness.