The Destiny of Sunshine Ranch by T.M. Gaouette

Flannery herself prefaced her work by saying: “That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling block for readers who would prefer to think it a matter of no great consequence.” Thomas Merton compared her to “Sophocles… for all the truth and all the craft with which she shows man’s fall and his dishonor” (“ Flannery O’Connor: A Prose Elegy,” in The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton).

She retired to her mother’s house outside Milledgeville and continued to write and to publish until her death in 1964. Then in 1950 she was stricken with lupus, the disease that her father had died of. In 1947 she was awarded a prize offered by a publisher for a first novel, and for three short years she enjoyed both literary success and good health. But her writing sample was “imaginative, tough, alive,” so he accepted her into the Writer’s Workshop. Her Milledgeville, Georgia accent was so thick that he could not understand what she was saying and had to ask her to write down her name and request on a notepad. Engle at the State University of Iowa, in 1946.

O’Connor was twenty-one years old when she walked into the office of Prof. She’ll make you laugh out loud too, without quite knowing how that can be possible. She will brace you and ease the burden for a while. When the miasma of falsehood suffocates you, and you gag on ready-made answers to questions you’re not asking-then reach for her. Sip slowly, and reserve for special occasions: the sort of occasions when your back is to the wall, and the pall mantles your shoulders. This is not something you take with you to the beach, or that you consume at one sitting. If you’ve never tried it before, you may be shocked at the punch it packs, and astonished at the complexity of the flavors. You won’t understand why she’s supposed to be such a great writer, and you’ll walk away indignant at the unpleasant things she describes.Ĭracking a book of Flannery O’Connor stories is like opening a bottle of single barrel, handcrafted, sour mash, whiskey straight bourbon. If you’ve never perceived evil in your vicinity-the petty kind, with no glamor to make it titillating-don’t bother reading her stories. She’s known as a Catholic writer, but the sort of Catholics who have no sense of evil don’t like Flannery much, especially when they find out that she recommended avoiding devotional literature. There’s a famous person in the Bible who provoked nice people to complain, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” The same could be said of Flannery O’Connor.

The Destiny of Sunshine Ranch by T.M. Gaouette