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Conversations with Flannery O'Connor
As this collection of interviews shows, Flannery O'Connor's fiction, though bound to a particular time and place, embodies and reveals universal ideas. O'Connor's curiosity about human nature and its various manifestations compelled her to explore mysterious places in the mind and heart. Despite her short life and prolonged illness, O'Connor was interviewed in a variety of times and locations. The circumstances of the interviews did not seem to matter much to O'Connor; her approach and demeanor remained consistent. Her self-knowledge was always apparent, in her confidence in herself, in her enterprise as a writer, and in her beliefs. She could penetrate the surfaces; she could see things in depth. Her perceptions were wide-ranging and insightful. Her interviews, given sparingly but with careful reflection and precision, make a unique contribution to an understanding of her fiction and to the evolving narrative of her short but influential life.
- GenresNonfictionBiography
152 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1987
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262 people want to read
About the author
Flannery O'Connor
213 books5,305 followersCritics 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
March 23, 2010
This book contains about 20 interviews made with Flannery O'Connor from 1952 to 1963. They are in chronological order and some are written as scripts of actual conversation that was recorded, while others are written as articles. I enjoyed reading the interviews because having just finished "The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor" (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... ), she discusses many of these interviews in her letters to friends. Comparing her personal thoughts (from her letters) with the actual interviews (in this book) is very enlightening. For example, in writing to her friend Cecil Dawkins she says, "At interviews I always feel like a dry cow being milked. There is no telling what they will get out of you.... If you do manage to say anything that makes sense, they put down the opposite."
Flannery did not seem to enjoy being interviewed, and her early interviews show a marked stiltedness. However, in her defense, the interviewers sometimes explain her work to her and then ask what she thinks! I can understand why she would be hesitant to participate in this kind of interview... but she does persevere and becomes better at explaining herself as the interviews tick by.
This book is best read probably after you are fairly familiar with her books and short stories and her personal life. I accidentally read this just after reading her letters, and I think it was probably the best order I could have chosen. I would recommend this book, it is amusing to read and another layer of education for me as I learn more about Flannery O'Connor and her work.
The explanations Flannery makes about her work has helped me understand them much better. I list below some of topics that were interesting to me, with references to the interview they came from.
About her work being called "grotesque", here is a portion from Margaret Turner's interview with Flannery, 1960:
"She prefers to call her work 'grotesque', meaning that she does not write in a naturalistic vein but uses distortion to make what is not readily observable more observable.
Why, we ventured to ask, does a writer of fiction feel that he has to shock to get through to the average reader?
'Not every writer of fiction feels that he has to shock to get through to the average reader,' she said. 'I believe that the "average" reader, however, is a good deal below average. People say with considerable satisfaction, "Oh, I'm an average reader," when the fact is they never learned to read in the first place, and probably never will.'
'You see people who are supposed to be highly educated who don't know trashy fiction from any other kind,' she continued. 'if you have the values of your time, you can usually write without having to shock anyone to attention; but if you want to show something that the majority don't believe in or wish to see, then you have to get and hold their attention usually by extreme means.' "
Later in that same interview, she gives a humorous (in my opinion) and accurate assessment of teaching people to be writers.
"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think universities stifle writers," she said. "I think they don't stifle enough of them. The kind of writing that can be taught is the kind you then have to teach people not to read....." She explained that what she had at the University of Iowa was valuable, "but it wasn't training to write as such; it was training to read with critical attention -- my own work and other people's."
Her thoughts about being a writer in the South, from the Granville Hicks interview, 1962:
"Miss O'Connor said that any Southern writer has two great advantages -- a knowledge of the Bible and a sense of history..... As for the Bible, Miss O'Connor asserts that it is still a great power in the South and that it continues to influence the Southern writer. For one thing, it conditions him to think in concrete terms: 'We don't discuss problems, we tell stories.' More important, the Bible gives meaning and dignity to the lives of the poor people in the South, and the writer, particularly the Christian writer, has something in common with them."
Her thoughts on the critical position the Bible holds for Southern novelists from Joel Wells interview, 1962:
Flannery says, "The fact that Catholics don't see religion through the Bible is a deficiency in Catholics. And I don't think the novelist can discard the instruments he has to plumb meaning just because Catholics aren't used to them. You don't write only for now. The biblical revival is going to mean a great deal to Catholic fiction in the future. Maybe in fifty years, or a hundred, Catholics will be reading the Bible the way they should have been reading it all along. I can wait that long to have my fiction understood. The Bible is what we share with all Christians, and the Old Testament we share with all Jews. This is sacred history and our mythic background. If we are going to discard this we had better quit writing at all. The fact that the South is the Bible Belt is in great measure responsible for its literary preeminence now. The Catholic novelist can learn a great deal from the Protestant South."
Later in that same interview, her thoughts on how the novelist must work to present a concept to a reading audience that knows nothing about it:
"One of the Christian novelist's basic problems is that he is trying to get the Christian vision across to an audience to whom it is meaningless," Miss O'Connor agreed. "Nevertheless, he can't write only for a select few. His work will have to have value on the dramatic level, the level of truth recognizable by anybody. The fact that many people can't see anything Christian about my novel doesn't interfere with many of them seeing it as a novel which does not falsify reality." .........
"If I write a novel in which the central action is a baptism, I know that for the larger percentage of my readers, baptism is a meaningless rite; therefore I have to imbue this action with an awe and terror which will suggest its awful mystery. I have to distort the look of the thing in order to represent as I see them both the mystery and the fact."
Her comments on what stifles Catholic Christian writers, from Gerard E. Sherry interview, 1963:
SHERRY: What do you think is stifling the Catholic writer of today -- that is, apart from the spectre of poverty?
O'CONNOR: I think it's the lack of a large intelligent reading audience which believes Christ is God.
Another comment on why she uses the grotesque in her work, but then a very honest assessment of the code of Southern manners and why they are needed, from C. Ross Mullins interview, 1963:
Q: What about the grotesque in your work? Has it anything to do with your being a Southerner and the relations between people in the South, especially between Negroes and whites?
A: We're all grotesque and I don't think the Southerner is any more grotesque than anyone else; but his social situation demands more of him than that elsewhere in this country. It requires considerable grace for two races to live together, particularly when the population is divided about fifty-fifty between them and when they have our particular history. It can't be done without a code of manners based on mutual charity. I remember from an essay of Marshall McLuhan's. I forget the exact words but the gist of it was, as I recollect it, that after the Civil War, formality became a condition of survival. This doesn't seem to me any less true today. Formality preserves that individual privacy which everybody needs and, in these times, is always in danger of losing. It's particulary necessary to have in order to protect the rights of both races. When you have a code of manners based on charity, then when the charity fails -- as it is going to do constantly -- you've got those manners there to preserve each race from small intrusions upon the other. The uneducated Southern Negro is not the clown he's made out to be. He's a man of very elaborate manners and great formality which he uses superbly for his own protection and to insure his own privacy. All this may not be ideal, but the Southerner has enough sense not to ask for the ideal but only for the possible, the workable. The South has survived in the past because its manners, however lopsided or inadequate they may have been, provided enough social discipline to hold us together and give us an identity. Now those old manners are obsolete, but the new manners will have to be based on what was best in the old ones -- in their real basis of charity and necessity. In practice, the Southerner seldom undersestimates his own capacity for evil. For the rest of the country, the race problem is settled when the Negro has his rights, but for the Southerner, whether he's white or colored, that's only the beginning. The South has to evolve a way of life in which the two races can live together with mutual forebearance. You don't form a committee to do this or pass a resolution; both races have to work it out the hard way. In parts of the South these new manners are evolvoing in a very satisfactory way, but good manners seldom make the papers.
This last is later in the same interview, and speaks again to her purpose in making her point with exaggerated and distorted events and characters:
"When I write a novel in which the central action is baptism, I have to assume that for the general reader, or the general run of readers, baptism is a meaningless rite, and I have to arrange the action so that this baptism carries enough awe and terror to jar the reader into some kind of emotional recognition of its significance. I have to make him feel, viscerally, if no other way, that something is going on here that counts. Distortion is an instrument in this case; exaggeration has a purpose."
Flannery did not seem to enjoy being interviewed, and her early interviews show a marked stiltedness. However, in her defense, the interviewers sometimes explain her work to her and then ask what she thinks! I can understand why she would be hesitant to participate in this kind of interview... but she does persevere and becomes better at explaining herself as the interviews tick by.
This book is best read probably after you are fairly familiar with her books and short stories and her personal life. I accidentally read this just after reading her letters, and I think it was probably the best order I could have chosen. I would recommend this book, it is amusing to read and another layer of education for me as I learn more about Flannery O'Connor and her work.
The explanations Flannery makes about her work has helped me understand them much better. I list below some of topics that were interesting to me, with references to the interview they came from.
About her work being called "grotesque", here is a portion from Margaret Turner's interview with Flannery, 1960:
"She prefers to call her work 'grotesque', meaning that she does not write in a naturalistic vein but uses distortion to make what is not readily observable more observable.
Why, we ventured to ask, does a writer of fiction feel that he has to shock to get through to the average reader?
'Not every writer of fiction feels that he has to shock to get through to the average reader,' she said. 'I believe that the "average" reader, however, is a good deal below average. People say with considerable satisfaction, "Oh, I'm an average reader," when the fact is they never learned to read in the first place, and probably never will.'
'You see people who are supposed to be highly educated who don't know trashy fiction from any other kind,' she continued. 'if you have the values of your time, you can usually write without having to shock anyone to attention; but if you want to show something that the majority don't believe in or wish to see, then you have to get and hold their attention usually by extreme means.' "
Later in that same interview, she gives a humorous (in my opinion) and accurate assessment of teaching people to be writers.
"Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think universities stifle writers," she said. "I think they don't stifle enough of them. The kind of writing that can be taught is the kind you then have to teach people not to read....." She explained that what she had at the University of Iowa was valuable, "but it wasn't training to write as such; it was training to read with critical attention -- my own work and other people's."
Her thoughts about being a writer in the South, from the Granville Hicks interview, 1962:
"Miss O'Connor said that any Southern writer has two great advantages -- a knowledge of the Bible and a sense of history..... As for the Bible, Miss O'Connor asserts that it is still a great power in the South and that it continues to influence the Southern writer. For one thing, it conditions him to think in concrete terms: 'We don't discuss problems, we tell stories.' More important, the Bible gives meaning and dignity to the lives of the poor people in the South, and the writer, particularly the Christian writer, has something in common with them."
Her thoughts on the critical position the Bible holds for Southern novelists from Joel Wells interview, 1962:
Flannery says, "The fact that Catholics don't see religion through the Bible is a deficiency in Catholics. And I don't think the novelist can discard the instruments he has to plumb meaning just because Catholics aren't used to them. You don't write only for now. The biblical revival is going to mean a great deal to Catholic fiction in the future. Maybe in fifty years, or a hundred, Catholics will be reading the Bible the way they should have been reading it all along. I can wait that long to have my fiction understood. The Bible is what we share with all Christians, and the Old Testament we share with all Jews. This is sacred history and our mythic background. If we are going to discard this we had better quit writing at all. The fact that the South is the Bible Belt is in great measure responsible for its literary preeminence now. The Catholic novelist can learn a great deal from the Protestant South."
Later in that same interview, her thoughts on how the novelist must work to present a concept to a reading audience that knows nothing about it:
"One of the Christian novelist's basic problems is that he is trying to get the Christian vision across to an audience to whom it is meaningless," Miss O'Connor agreed. "Nevertheless, he can't write only for a select few. His work will have to have value on the dramatic level, the level of truth recognizable by anybody. The fact that many people can't see anything Christian about my novel doesn't interfere with many of them seeing it as a novel which does not falsify reality." .........
"If I write a novel in which the central action is a baptism, I know that for the larger percentage of my readers, baptism is a meaningless rite; therefore I have to imbue this action with an awe and terror which will suggest its awful mystery. I have to distort the look of the thing in order to represent as I see them both the mystery and the fact."
Her comments on what stifles Catholic Christian writers, from Gerard E. Sherry interview, 1963:
SHERRY: What do you think is stifling the Catholic writer of today -- that is, apart from the spectre of poverty?
O'CONNOR: I think it's the lack of a large intelligent reading audience which believes Christ is God.
Another comment on why she uses the grotesque in her work, but then a very honest assessment of the code of Southern manners and why they are needed, from C. Ross Mullins interview, 1963:
Q: What about the grotesque in your work? Has it anything to do with your being a Southerner and the relations between people in the South, especially between Negroes and whites?
A: We're all grotesque and I don't think the Southerner is any more grotesque than anyone else; but his social situation demands more of him than that elsewhere in this country. It requires considerable grace for two races to live together, particularly when the population is divided about fifty-fifty between them and when they have our particular history. It can't be done without a code of manners based on mutual charity. I remember from an essay of Marshall McLuhan's. I forget the exact words but the gist of it was, as I recollect it, that after the Civil War, formality became a condition of survival. This doesn't seem to me any less true today. Formality preserves that individual privacy which everybody needs and, in these times, is always in danger of losing. It's particulary necessary to have in order to protect the rights of both races. When you have a code of manners based on charity, then when the charity fails -- as it is going to do constantly -- you've got those manners there to preserve each race from small intrusions upon the other. The uneducated Southern Negro is not the clown he's made out to be. He's a man of very elaborate manners and great formality which he uses superbly for his own protection and to insure his own privacy. All this may not be ideal, but the Southerner has enough sense not to ask for the ideal but only for the possible, the workable. The South has survived in the past because its manners, however lopsided or inadequate they may have been, provided enough social discipline to hold us together and give us an identity. Now those old manners are obsolete, but the new manners will have to be based on what was best in the old ones -- in their real basis of charity and necessity. In practice, the Southerner seldom undersestimates his own capacity for evil. For the rest of the country, the race problem is settled when the Negro has his rights, but for the Southerner, whether he's white or colored, that's only the beginning. The South has to evolve a way of life in which the two races can live together with mutual forebearance. You don't form a committee to do this or pass a resolution; both races have to work it out the hard way. In parts of the South these new manners are evolvoing in a very satisfactory way, but good manners seldom make the papers.
This last is later in the same interview, and speaks again to her purpose in making her point with exaggerated and distorted events and characters:
"When I write a novel in which the central action is baptism, I have to assume that for the general reader, or the general run of readers, baptism is a meaningless rite, and I have to arrange the action so that this baptism carries enough awe and terror to jar the reader into some kind of emotional recognition of its significance. I have to make him feel, viscerally, if no other way, that something is going on here that counts. Distortion is an instrument in this case; exaggeration has a purpose."
January 31, 2013
A collection of interviews with Miss O'Connor. Some are transcripts and some are essays recording a visit to her. Well worth buying for anyone who wants to get a picture of O'Connor as she interacted with her friends and those interested in her in her own day.
Anyone who has read Mystery and Manners or her letters will be familiar with most of the themes and even many of the sayings presented here. I've found that writers tend to take the time to hone sayings like tools, where they're sharp and strong enough to withstand many uses before recycling--a nice way of saying they repeat themselves to different people (I do this, too). When those different people's impressions are all recorded in the same place, it can seem repetitive.
The keenness of her insights remains, however, and here are a few examples.
"What makes the sensibility good is wrestling with something higher than itself and outside."
"We [Southerners] don't discuss problems; we tell stories."
Katherine Ann Porter in a shared interview: "Defeat in this world is no disgrace, and that is what they cannot understand."
"What the fiction writer will discover...is that he cannot move or mold reality in the interests of abstract truth."
"It wasn't training to write as such; it was training to read with critical attention--my own work and other people's."
"A purely affirmative vision cannot be demanded of [the writer] without limiting his freedom to observe what man has done with the things of God."
"The Catholic writer, in so far as he has the mind of the Church, will feel life from the standpoint of the central Christian mystery: that it has for all its horror, been found by God to be worth dying for."
Anyone who has read Mystery and Manners or her letters will be familiar with most of the themes and even many of the sayings presented here. I've found that writers tend to take the time to hone sayings like tools, where they're sharp and strong enough to withstand many uses before recycling--a nice way of saying they repeat themselves to different people (I do this, too). When those different people's impressions are all recorded in the same place, it can seem repetitive.
The keenness of her insights remains, however, and here are a few examples.
"What makes the sensibility good is wrestling with something higher than itself and outside."
"We [Southerners] don't discuss problems; we tell stories."
Katherine Ann Porter in a shared interview: "Defeat in this world is no disgrace, and that is what they cannot understand."
"What the fiction writer will discover...is that he cannot move or mold reality in the interests of abstract truth."
"It wasn't training to write as such; it was training to read with critical attention--my own work and other people's."
"A purely affirmative vision cannot be demanded of [the writer] without limiting his freedom to observe what man has done with the things of God."
"The Catholic writer, in so far as he has the mind of the Church, will feel life from the standpoint of the central Christian mystery: that it has for all its horror, been found by God to be worth dying for."
December 15, 2011
This book of interviews is indispensible to the Flannery fan. It’s the shortest I’ve seen in the series of U. Press of Mississippi’s “Conversations With” books. And that fact is, itself, very Flannery: her life and literary output were too brief, and her conversation wasted no words. Still, her statements here are always profound and suggestive, infused with mystery. As always, she leaves you wanting more.
January 4, 2023
“Well, as I said, the South didn’t seem to me as a writer to be Christ-centered. I don’t think anyone would object to that at all. I think all you would have to do is read the newspapers to agree with me, but I said that we seemed to me to be Christ-haunted and that ghosts cast strange shadows, very fierce shadows, particularly in our literature.”
Flannery O’Connor isn’t a writer that you “love.” Her entire existence automatically repulses this kind of writer-reader relationship. Maybe it’s the complete and total lack of sentimentality in her work. But in spite of this she might be, at this point in my life, the writer whose craft and perspective fascinates me most. Her preoccupation with death, disability, mystery, “the grotesque,” and the complexities of Christian grace makes for a remarkable literary force. She knew exactly what she was about, and with this book I loved being able to hear more about her own regard for what she wrote as someone who, at least in her own eyes, only just so happened to be a Catholic southerner. I’m fascinated by her severity and intensity—there are so many little searing insights in this publication that are just totally cutthroat. Some highlights:
“Interviewer: Do you receive many crank letters?
Miss O’Connor: Some old lady said that my book left a bad taste in her mouth. I wrote back to her and said, ‘You weren’t supposed to eat it.’”
“I have Boston cousins and when they come South they discuss problems, they don’t tell stories. We tell stories.”
“Never go inside a character’s head until you know what he looks like…Don’t be subtle until the fourth page…You have to realize the genuine stupidity of the reader…his average mental age is thirteen years.”
“Miss O’Connor is a candid person: to a question as to what she thought of Tennessee Williams she replied, ‘Not much,’ and her opinion of To Kill a Mockingbird is that ‘it’s a wonderful children’s book.’”
“When I visited her later I found it hard to get used to her mother’s calling ‘Mary Flannery.’ She had dropped the first name because, as she told me, ‘who was likely to buy the stories of an Irish washerwoman?’”
Flannery O’Connor isn’t a writer that you “love.” Her entire existence automatically repulses this kind of writer-reader relationship. Maybe it’s the complete and total lack of sentimentality in her work. But in spite of this she might be, at this point in my life, the writer whose craft and perspective fascinates me most. Her preoccupation with death, disability, mystery, “the grotesque,” and the complexities of Christian grace makes for a remarkable literary force. She knew exactly what she was about, and with this book I loved being able to hear more about her own regard for what she wrote as someone who, at least in her own eyes, only just so happened to be a Catholic southerner. I’m fascinated by her severity and intensity—there are so many little searing insights in this publication that are just totally cutthroat. Some highlights:
“Interviewer: Do you receive many crank letters?
Miss O’Connor: Some old lady said that my book left a bad taste in her mouth. I wrote back to her and said, ‘You weren’t supposed to eat it.’”
“I have Boston cousins and when they come South they discuss problems, they don’t tell stories. We tell stories.”
“Never go inside a character’s head until you know what he looks like…Don’t be subtle until the fourth page…You have to realize the genuine stupidity of the reader…his average mental age is thirteen years.”
“Miss O’Connor is a candid person: to a question as to what she thought of Tennessee Williams she replied, ‘Not much,’ and her opinion of To Kill a Mockingbird is that ‘it’s a wonderful children’s book.’”
“When I visited her later I found it hard to get used to her mother’s calling ‘Mary Flannery.’ She had dropped the first name because, as she told me, ‘who was likely to buy the stories of an Irish washerwoman?’”
September 21, 2020
Excelente librito. Corto, y con una veintena de entrevistas cortas, que van desde participaciones de Flannery en simposios y mesas redondas, hasta entrevistas íntimas en su granja, y algunas semblanzas posteriores a su muerte.
Me sigue asombrando esta mujer. Entiendo un poco de dónde salió (y para entenderlo mejor voy a leer estudios sobre su contexto y demás), pero igual me sorprende cómo combina la ironía (pero una ironía comprometida, no una ironía reseca y desapegada), la rapidez, el ingenio y lo cáustico. Era una vieja cáustica pero el libro está lleno de perlitas sobre su proceso de escritura, sobre su filosofía personal, sobre su perspectiva de la relación entre la religión y la ficción... Era breve, iba al hueso, era una cuentista. Creo que la amo.
Me sigue asombrando esta mujer. Entiendo un poco de dónde salió (y para entenderlo mejor voy a leer estudios sobre su contexto y demás), pero igual me sorprende cómo combina la ironía (pero una ironía comprometida, no una ironía reseca y desapegada), la rapidez, el ingenio y lo cáustico. Era una vieja cáustica pero el libro está lleno de perlitas sobre su proceso de escritura, sobre su filosofía personal, sobre su perspectiva de la relación entre la religión y la ficción... Era breve, iba al hueso, era una cuentista. Creo que la amo.
November 2, 2017
I love the books about Flannery that contain more than just her most famous quotes. My new favorite, from this book: "Some old lady said that my book left a bad taste in her mouth. I wrote back to her and said, 'You weren't supposed to eat it.'"
March 6, 2020
If you love the banter of exceptional writers, you will love this little book. I chuckled or laughed out loud many times. Refreshing and candid.
August 21, 2023
Just read Flannery's quotes for the best parts.
June 23, 2013
This little book is composed of a selection of interviews and articles by and/or about Flannery O'Connor. She is very generously quoted and the selections do well to show, most particularly, the author's wit, humor, thoughtfulness, and Southern charm, but bring to life many other of her personality traits as well. The greatest benefit to these selections must surely be the advice on writing. Her approach to writing is examined and contrasted with other authors and I think this book would serve well as an introductory to writing for any perspective student, regardless of whether or not they are particularly interested in O'Connor.
The main detraction I have of the book is that it tends to be a bit repetitive. It isn't bothersome, from the point of annoyance, to reread some of the stories and insights by or about the author because they make for delightful reading, but as I made progress with the book I felt it lost a bit of freshness.
However, on the whole this is a lovely little book and I think anyone who reads it will profit from the wisdom and humor it offers and find it very pleasurable reading.
The main detraction I have of the book is that it tends to be a bit repetitive. It isn't bothersome, from the point of annoyance, to reread some of the stories and insights by or about the author because they make for delightful reading, but as I made progress with the book I felt it lost a bit of freshness.
However, on the whole this is a lovely little book and I think anyone who reads it will profit from the wisdom and humor it offers and find it very pleasurable reading.
September 19, 2013
This is a collection of interviews with, and articles about, one of my favorite fiction writers. The entries vary wildly in quality; some of the writers/interviewers show remarkable sympathy for and understanding of Ms. O'Connor's aims, while others are just inane. But most of it is worth reading; the best pieces here allow O'Connor to clarify her vision, and much of the stupid stuff is fun to read.
July 29, 2008
Despite her out-and-out distrust of reporters and interviews, her humor and immense thinking about writing as an art come out quite loud through this. Best line of the book: "Some old lady said that my book left a bad taste in her mouth. I wrote back to her and said, 'You weren't supposed to eat it.'" Marvellous.
December 30, 2008
While much of the cursory background information in the collection of interviews and essays, etc... is repetitive, one can really get a sense of O'Connor's purpose and wit. Highly recommend this to anyone who has barely familiarized themselves with her work, but fell for it immediately.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews