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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.
Review:
"Gooch (City Poet:The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara) offers a surprisingly bloodless biography of Flannery O'Connor (1925 — 1964), who, despite the author's diligent scholarship, remains enigmatic. She emerges only in her excerpted letters, speeches and fiction, where she is as sharp-tongued, censorious, piteously observant and mordantly funny as her beloved short stories. There is little genuinely interesting new material, but there are small gems — the full story of O'Connor's friendship with the mysterious A. of her letters, for instance. Perhaps mindful of the writer's dislike of being exposed in print, Gooch errs on the side of delicacy; he does not sufficiently explore her attitudes toward blacks and how the early onset of lupus left her sequestered on her mother's Georgia farm, without the 'male companionship' she craved. Instead, he plumbs O'Connor's fiction for buried fragments of her daily life, and the revelations are hardly astonishing. Readers looking for more startling tidbits will be disappointed by this account that brims with the quiet satisfactions the author took in her industry ('I sit all day typing and grinning like the Cheshire cat'), her faith, friends and stoic approach to a debilitating disease. 16 pages of b&w photos. Two journalists reflect." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:
In February 1951, Flannery O'Connor was diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus, the disease that had killed her father 10 years earlier at the age of 45; she died of it 13 years later at the age of 39. In between that diagnosis and her death, she wrote almost nonstop. It is a life's work slender enough to be contained in a single volume in the Library of America, yet it occupies a large place... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) in any critical assessment of American literature and in the hearts of readers here and abroad. That O'Connor was one of the great writers of the 20th century is now beyond argument. Of few writers can it more accurately be said that it is the work, not the life, that matters. Apart from her struggle against lupus, almost nothing of moment happened to her. But readers understandably have long been curious about this quiet woman who wrote such powerful, occasionally violent, frequently funny novels and stories, yet whose work is infused with the most passionate religious conviction. The difficulty for would-be biographers has been that O'Connor's mother, Regina Cline O'Connor, outlived her by more than three decades and guarded her flame with a possessive zeal almost unmatched in the long history of literary flamekeepers. Precisely why she was so determined to shield her daughter's life from the eyes of strangers remains unclear to this day, but I can well recall thinking about attempting an O'Connor biography sometime in the 1980s and being most emphatically dissuaded by people in the know who said it was pointless even to inquire. Now we have "Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor." No doubt O'Connor, who delighted in giving her characters unusual if not outlandish names such as Lucynell Crater, Hazel Motes and Francis Marion Tarwater, would be tickled to know that the author of her first full-scale biography is named Brad Gooch. A professor at William Paterson University in New Jersey, he has done an earnest, respectful but mercifully not hagiographic job. There are some odd aspects to it — Gooch gives less attention than he should to O'Connor's relationships with her editor, Robert Giroux, and her agent, Elizabeth McKee, and his portrait of her mother is excessively polite — but the book is for the most part lucidly written and neither excessively long nor riddled with extraneous detail. Mary Flannery O'Connor was born to Regina and Edward O'Connor in Savannah in 1925. She was utterly devoted to her father, a man of charm and panache who tried to establish a career in real estate but was brought down by the Depression. Shortly before his death in 1941, his widow and their only child settled in Milledgeville, a small town in Georgia where members of Regina's family welcomed them. Mary Flannery, as she was known throughout her childhood in the venerable tradition of double-named Southern womanhood, attended the local schools and then Georgia State College for Women. She did well there, but she didn't really begin to flower until she was awarded a scholarship at the University of Iowa and enrolled in its Writers' Workshop as soon as she got there. Still a small enterprise, basically a one-man band directed by Paul Engle, it bore little resemblance to the writing factory it subsequently became. She received close attention and instruction from Engle and various visiting luminaries, notably Robert Penn Warren, all of whom recognized her brilliance and were eager to help her, as they seem to have understood that writing was the entire purpose of her life. Indeed, many years later she told a friend, "In my stories is where I live." As another friend told Gooch: "She was very serious about her mission in life, and had a sort of sense of destiny. She knew she was a great writer. She told me so many times. If I would have heard that from other people, I would have laughed up my sleeve, but not with her. We both agreed that she might never be recognized, but that wasn't the point. The point was to do what she thought she was meant to do." It wasn't easy, as O'Connor well knew. "What first stuns the young writer emerging from college," she wrote in 1948, "is that there is no clear-cut road for him to travel on. He must chop a path in the wilderness of his own soul; a disheartening process, lifelong and lonesome." It says much about O'Connor that this penetrating observation was made when she was 23 years old; four years before the publication of her first novel, she knew exactly how much hard work and discouragement lay ahead of her. Yet she was in her way an optimist, not cockeyed but clear-eyed; she was stubborn and determined; and she had a rebellious streak that encouraged her to go her own way. Only three books were published during her lifetime: "Wise Blood" (1952); the story collection "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" (1955); and a second novel, "The Violent Bear It Away" (1960). A second story collection, "Everything That Rises Must Converge," appeared shortly after her death in 1965. It was followed by "Mystery and Manners" (1969), a superb collection of speeches and other nonfiction; "The Complete Stories" (1971); "The Habit of Being," her selected letters (1979); and the Library of America's "Collected Works" (1988). O'Connor's readership and reputation have grown ever stronger in the four-and-a-half decades since her death. No doubt this has much to do with the frequency with which her work is assigned in high school and college courses, but it also reflects her growing popularity in the general readership. Whether Gooch's conscientious, respectful biography will bring new readers to her work is doubtful, since literary biographies rarely sell as well as their authors and publishers wish, but readers who already know that work will be glad to have it. Jonathan Yardley's e-mail address is yardleyj(at symbol)washpost.com. Reviewed by Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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Review:
"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
Review:
"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
Review:
"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
Review:
"If O'Connor's writing glows with edged comic genius, biographer Gooch is himself no slouch. If a library is to have only one book on Flannery O'Connor, this should be it." Charles C. Nash, Library Journal
In this engaging and authoritative biography, Gooch brings to life Flannery O'Connor's significant friendships and her deeply felt convictions, as expressed in her communications with Thomas Merton, Elizabeth Bishop, and Betty Hester.
Synopsis:
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
Lynne Perednia, June 4, 2009 (view all comments by Lynne Perednia)
FLANNERY is an objective look at a remarkable woman who accomplished a great deal during a short life that had more than a bit of suffering and trouble. Although some aspects of her life were not explored -- why the nearly lifelong fascination with exotic birds? -- Gooch sticks to the facts while portraying O'Connor's family, her faith, her circle of friends and some idea of her feelings about racial issues while she discovered and nurtured her gift of storytelling. The end result is a renewed interest in O'Connor's work that will serve both author and reader well.
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No (8 of 11 readers found this comment helpful)
C Horne, March 17, 2009 (view all comments by C Horne)
Brad Gooch's "Flannery" passes the test fundamental test for excellence in a biography: when the book is finished the reader fundamentally understands the subject of the book in a way he or she did not before.
Brad Gooch's exhaustive research surely paid off as he fills in the details - about her family life, her medical conditions, her spirtual life and both the joys and difficulties of her writing. Perhaps what surprised me the most were the legion of friends and fans this very unusual women attracted living, as she did, a rather quiet life in a generally quiet place.
Professor Gooch provides his readers with a very vivid portrait of Miss O'Connor's struggles - and how her faith and her sickness found their way into her works. As a Roman Catholic myself, reflecting on Miss O'Connor's strong faith in the face of her difficulties through this biography seemed very fitting for Lent.
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No (5 of 19 readers found this comment helpful)
Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor
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Brad Gooch
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448 pages
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Reviews:
"Publishers Weekly Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"Gooch (City Poet:The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara) offers a surprisingly bloodless biography of Flannery O'Connor (1925 — 1964), who, despite the author's diligent scholarship, remains enigmatic. She emerges only in her excerpted letters, speeches and fiction, where she is as sharp-tongued, censorious, piteously observant and mordantly funny as her beloved short stories. There is little genuinely interesting new material, but there are small gems — the full story of O'Connor's friendship with the mysterious A. of her letters, for instance. Perhaps mindful of the writer's dislike of being exposed in print, Gooch errs on the side of delicacy; he does not sufficiently explore her attitudes toward blacks and how the early onset of lupus left her sequestered on her mother's Georgia farm, without the 'male companionship' she craved. Instead, he plumbs O'Connor's fiction for buried fragments of her daily life, and the revelations are hardly astonishing. Readers looking for more startling tidbits will be disappointed by this account that brims with the quiet satisfactions the author took in her industry ('I sit all day typing and grinning like the Cheshire cat'), her faith, friends and stoic approach to a debilitating disease. 16 pages of b&w photos. Two journalists reflect." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
"Review"
by Edmund White,
"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."
"Review"
by Frances Kiernan,
"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."
"Review"
by Joel Conarroe,
"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."
"Review"
by Charles C. Nash, Library Journal,
"If O'Connor's writing glows with edged comic genius, biographer Gooch is himself no slouch. If a library is to have only one book on Flannery O'Connor, this should be it."
"Synopsis"
by Ingram,
In this engaging and authoritative biography, Gooch brings to life Flannery O'Connor's significant friendships and her deeply felt convictions, as expressed in her communications with Thomas Merton, Elizabeth Bishop, and Betty Hester.
"Synopsis"
by Ingram,
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
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