What drew a New Yorker to Flannery O’Connor?
I’ve loved her stories since I first read them as a grad student in New York City in the late seventies. O’Connor once said that the Southern setting of her stories was “just an accent; it’s not the essence of what you’re trying to do.” I guess I’m living proof of their universality. O’Connor has been called a master of the short story. What makes hers work? For O’Connor, writing short stories was an extreme sport. She used shock and surprise to masterful effect. You start out reading about a lazy day on a farm and before you can think twice a Bible salesman has stolen the wooden leg of a young lady in a hayloft. O’Connor’s stories are sometimes violent, brutal, and grotesque. How did a nice Southern girl come to write such dark stories? You’re asking the same question asked in even more shocked tones by her proper maiden aunts. “I don’t know where Mary Flannery met those people she wrote about,” said her Aunt Mary, “but it was certainly not in my house.” Southern gothic is a label fre
