Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor

The landscape of American literature was fundamentally changed when Flannery O'Connor stepped onto the scene with her first published book, Wise Blood (1952). Her fierce, sometimes comic novels & stories reflected the darkly funny, vibrant, & theologically sophisticated woman who wrote them. Gooch brings to life O'Connor's significant friendships-with R Lowell, E Hardwick, W Percy, & J Dickey among others-& her deeply felt convictions, as expressed in her communications with Thomas Merton, Elizabeth Bishop, & 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 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 & authoritative biography. "Flannery O'Connor, one of the best American writers of short fiction, has found her ideal biographer in Gooch. With elegance & fairness, Gooch deals with the sensitive areas of race & 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." -E White "This splendid biography gives us no saint or martyr but the story of a gifted & complicated woman, bent on making the best of the difficult hand fate has dealt her, whether it is with grit & humor or with an abiding desire to make palpable to readers the terrible mystery of God's grace." -F. Kiernan, author of Seeing Mary Plain: A Life of Mary McCarthy "A good biographer is hard to find. Gooch is not merely good-he is extraordinary. Blessed with the eye & ear of a novelist, he has composed the life that admirers of the fierce and hilarious Georgia genius have long been hoping for." -J. Conarroe, P