Title: Flannery
First published: 2008
Description: The landscape of American literature was fundamentally changed when Flannery O'Connor stepped onto the scene with her first published book, Wise Blood, in 1952. Her fierce, sometimes comic novels and stories reflected the darkly funny, vibrant, and theologically sophisticated woman who wrote them. Brad Gooch brings to life O'Connor's significant friendships--with Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Hardwick, Walker Percy, and James Dickey among others--and her deeply felt convictions, as expressed in her communications with Thomas Merton, Elizabeth Bishop, and Betty Hester. Hester was famously known as "A" in O'Connor's collected letters, The Habit of Being, and a large cache of correspondence to her from O'Connor was made available to scholars, including Brad Gooch, in 2006. O'Connor's capacity to live fully--despite the chronic disease that eventually confined her to her mother's farm in Georgia--is illuminated in this engaging and authoritative biography.PRAISE FOR FLANNERY"Flannery O'Connor, one of the best American writers  of  short fiction, has found her ideal biographer in Brad Gooch. With elegance  and  fairness, Gooch deals with the sensitive areas of race and religion in   O'Connor's life. He also takes us back to those heady days after the war when   O'Connor studied creative writing at Iowa. There is much that is new in this   book, but, more important, everything is presented in a strong, clear light." --Edmund   White"This splendid biography gives us no saint or martyr but the   story of a gifted and complicated woman, bent on making the best of  the   difficult hand fate has dealt her, whether it is   with grit and humor or with an abiding desire to make palpable to readers the   terrible mystery of God's grace." --Frances   Kiernan, author of Seeing Mary Plain: A Life of Mary McCarthy   "A good biographer is hard to find.  Brad Gooch  is not  merely good-he is extraordinary. Blessed with the eye and ear of a  novelist, he  has composed the life that admirers of the fierce and hilarious  Georgia genius  have long been hoping for." -- Joel Conarroe, President   Emeritus, John Simon Guggenheim Foundation
Subjects: American Authors, Authors, American, Biography, Biography & Autobiography, Nonfiction, O'connor, flannery, 1925-1964, Authors, biography, Milledgeville (ga.), Georgia, biography, New York Times reviewed
Places: Milledgeville (Ga.)
People: Flannery O'Connor
Time periods: 20th century
LC classification: PS3565.C57 Z6795 2008