Review by Booklist Review
Flannery O'Connor's posthumous letter collection, The Habit of Being, has been cherished by booklovers and would-be writers. Now Good Things Out of Nazareth presents a whole new perspective on this audacious, compassionate, piercing young writer out of Georgia, coping with a disease that severely restricted and shortened her life, yet who lived vibrantly on the page with cosmic humor and compassion. These letters by O'Connor and her circle bring to light the impact her genius had on other writers, including Paul Engle, then director of the famed Iowa Writers' Workshop; Walker Percy, and critic and writer Caroline Gordon. A devout, wryly witty Catholic, O'Connor confides to Gordon, a convert, that she has been examining her conscience on the business of writing about freaks. O'Connor acknowledges her rootedness in Dante as the collection's editor, Benjamin Alexander, puts it, and describes her adventures raising peacocks, her response to reading Henry James, her thoughts on prayer, and how crucial letters are as her illness isolates her. This edifying and entertaining gathering offers a new portal onto a playful, spiritual, courageous, and indelible American master.--Donna Seaman Copyright 2019 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Alexander, a Franciscan University of Steubenville English and humanities professor, presents a fascinating set of Flannery O'Connor's correspondence. Beyond recreating the flavor of the Southern Catholic intellectual subculture which O'Connor inhabited, the compilation is highlighted by gems from O'Connor's writing mentor, Caroline Gordon. Recognizing O'Connor's talent early on, Gordon sets about pushing O'Connor to sharpen her prose, study James Joyce, and develop an "elevated" tone to complement her regional dialect. O'Connor fans will especially prize Gordon's detailed critiques of such celebrated works as the novel Wise Blood and short story "Good Country People." While O'Connor's milieu can seem intimidatingly insular, the volume allows readers to feel closer to the writer, by glimpsing O'Connor's struggles with lupus, which sometimes leaves her bedridden or walking on crutches, and by hearing her famously strong Georgian accent in the colloquialisms she sprinkles throughout the letters--congratulating author Thomas F. Gossett on receiving a positive Time review, she comments "better to have those people for you than agin ." Alexander makes a few odd editing choices, such as including a surprising amount of material about O'Connor's fellow Southern Catholic author, and Caroline Gordon mentee, Walker Percy. On the whole, however, this is an important addition to the knowledge of O'Connor, her world, and her writing. (Oct.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
The title of this collection, edited by Alexander (English & humanities, Franciscan Univ. of Steubenville, OH), alludes to the concept that important ideas can come from relatively obscure places, such as the hometown of Jesus and National Book Award-winning author O'Connor (Milledgeville, GA). The work contains letters from, to, and about O'Connor, written during the final decades of her brief life (1925--64)--she was diagnosed with lupus at age 25--and beyond her death, as well as commentary by the compiler. Correspondents include her longtime mentor Caroline Gordon, Robert and Sally Fitzgerald, Walker Percy, Katharine Anne Porter, Thomas Merton, and several priest friends. Many are Southerners who offer a regional perspective on American history and life. These writers constitute a support group of sorts, offering praise, critiques, and suggestions on ways to improve one another's works. O'Connor was unusual in that she was a Catholic writer from the South, and a focus here is on the importance of religion in her life as she dealt with her terminal illness. Often preoccupied with the grotesque, her works are described as combining violence with sacramental conviction in an effort to guide unbelievers toward the author's view of truth. VERDICT Of interest to students of O'Connor and American, especially Southern, mid-20th-century literature.--Denise J. Stankovics, Vernon, CT
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Wide-ranging letters reveal deep bonds between a literary titan and her friends."Most letters between writers are largely given over to envy, spite, wisecracks, discussions of money, the short-sightedness of award committees, soured love affairs and the innumerable horrors of the literary life," Michael Dirda once wrote. These letters by the National Book Award-winning short story writer and her friends alternately fit and break the mold. Anyone looking for Southern literary gossip will find plenty of barbse.g., novelist and critic Caroline Gordon's jab at William Faulkner, "I wonder if he wrote those paragraphs when drunk"; or O'Connor's complaint about the press: "I think photographers are the lowest breed of men and just being in the presence of one brings out my worst face." But there's also higher-toned talk on topics such as the symbolism in O'Connor's work and the nature of free will. The subtitle notwithstanding, this book has many letters previously published in full or in part in the 1988 collection of O'Connor's letters, The Habit of Being, or The Letters of Flannery O'Connor and Caroline Gordon (2018). The most revealing new material appears in letters O'Connor exchanged with the Jesuit priests James McCown and Scott Watson. These show how ardently she tried to live by the Catholic faith that informs her work. In a disarmingly earnest letter to McCown, O'Connor asks whether she must go to confession after eating butterbeans cooked in ham stock on a Friday: "There is something about you can use drippings but you can't use stock." Abundant headnotes by Alexander supply context as they follow O'Connor from the Iowa Writers' Workshop to her death at the age of 39 from complications of lupus in her native Georgia. O'Connor's correspondents range from an Atlanta file clerk to celebrated writers such as Robert Lowell, Walker Percy, and Katherine Anne Porter; taken together, the letters affirm Gordon's comment about her friend: "She is certainly a remarkable person and a remarkable writer."An epistolary group portrait that will appeal to readers interested in the Catholic underpinnings of O'Connor's life and work. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
