Synopses & Reviews
“I would like to write a beautiful prayer,” writes the young Flannery OConnor in this deeply spiritual journal, recently discovered among her papers in Georgia. “There is a whole sensible world around me that I should be able to turn to Your praise.” Written between 1946 and 1947 while OConnor was a student far from home at the University of Iowa,
A Prayer Journal is a rare portal into the interior life of the great writer. Not only does it map OConnors singular relationship with the divine, but it shows how entwined her literary desire was with her yearning for God. “I must write down that I am to be an artist. Not in the sense of aesthetic frippery but in the sense of aesthetic craftsmanship; otherwise I will feel my loneliness continually . . . I do not want to be lonely all my life but people only make us lonelier by reminding us of God. Dear God please help me to be an artist, please let it lead to You.”
OConnor could not be more plain about her literary ambition: “Please help me dear God to be a good writer and to get something else accepted,” she writes. Yet she struggles with any trace of self-regard: “Dont let me ever think, dear God, that I was anything but the instrument for Your story.”
As W. A. Sessions, who knew OConnor, writes in his introduction, it was no coincidence that she began writing the stories that would become her first novel, Wise Blood, during the years when she wrote these singularly imaginative Christian meditations. Including a facsimile of the entire journal in OConnors own hand, A Prayer Journal is the record of a brilliant young womans coming-of-age, a cry from the heart for love, grace, and art.
Review
“When I read Flannery OConnor, I do not think of Hemingway, or Katherine Anne Porter, or Sartre, but rather of someone like Sophocles. What more can you say for a writer?” —Thomas Merton
Synopsis
The inspiring devotional journal of a young Flannery OConnor, which contains the key to her life and work.“I would like to write a beautiful prayer,” writes the young Flannery OConnor in this recently discovered prayer journal. Written from 1946 to 1947, when OConnor was far from home and a student at the Iowa Writers Workshop, this journal is an extraordinary portal into the interior life of the great writer. Not only does it reveal the deeply entwined nature of OConnors yearning for God and literary inspiration but it also shows her carefully working out a singular relationship to God. “I do not mean to deny the traditional prayers I have said all my life; but I have been saying them and not feeling them. My attention is always fugitive. This way I have it every instant. I can feel a warmth of love heating me when I think & write this to you.”
OConnor is plain about her literary ambition: “Please help me dear God to be a good writer and to get something else accepted,” she writes. Yet she struggles with any trace of self-regard: “Dont let me ever think, dear God, that I was anything but the instrument of Your story.” OConnors prayers are so intensely imaginative that she seems to will God into existence—it was no coincidence that she began writing the stories that would become her first novel, Wise Blood, during these years. Profoundly moving and original, A Prayer Journal is a record of a brilliant young womans coming of age, a cry from the heart for love, grace, and art.
About the Author
Flannery OConnor was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1925. When she died at the age of thirty-nine, America lost one of its most gifted writers at the height of her powers. W. A. Sessions is the Regents Professor of English Emeritus at Georgia State University. He was a personal friend of OConnor and has become a scholar of her work.