Flannery O'Connor's Radical Reality

"Brevets to Jan Nordby Gretlund and Karl-Heinz Westarp who have once again discerned and eliminated a weak spot in southern literary scholarship, this time in the Flannery O'Connor sector. Stemming from a superb group of scholars, the essays published here do not gloss over the sordidness endemic to O'Connor's fictional world; rather they examine its citizens, who have made their world sordid by denying that it has its roots in God's creation."—Lewis A. Lawson, University of Maryland

"Flannery O'Connor's Radical Reality extends the boundaries of O'Connor criticism, especially by deepening our understanding of the theological and philosophical foundations of her thought and art."—John F. Desmond, Whitman College

"Fourteen contributors expand the field of O'Connor scholarship to consider not only the cultural, political, and religious contexts surrounding the author in the midcentury South but also to animate her work for the concerns of the twenty-first century. Essays put O'Connor's work in conversation with such varied events as the World Wars, the Cold War, and French Catholic Resistance and with such figures as Thomas Merton, Truman Capote, and German thinkers from the interwar era."—American Literature

"This outstanding group of O'Connor scholars has captured the essence of the juxtaposition of good and evil that were characteristic of Flannery O'Connor's writing. . . . No O'Connor collection is complete without this excellent work"—Georgia Library Quarterly