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About
This collection of letters and other documents offers the most complete portrait of the relationship between two of the American South's most acclaimed twentieth-century writers: Flannery O'Connor and Caroline Gordon. Gordon (1895-1981) had herself been a protégée of an important novelist, Ford Madox Ford, before publishing nine novels and three short story collections of her own, most notably, The Forest of the South and Old Red and Other Stories, and she would offer insights and friendship to O'Connor during almost all of O'Connor's career.
As revealed in this collection of correspondence, Gordon's thirteen-year friendship with O'Connor (1925-64) and the critiques of O'Connor's fiction that she wrote during this time not only fostered each writer's career but occasioned a remarkable series of letters full of insights about the craft of writing. Gordon, a more established writer at the start of their correspondence, acted as a mentor to the younger O'Connor and their letters reveal Gordon's strong hand in shaping some of O'Connor's most acclaimed work, including Wise Blood, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," and "The Displaced Person."
As revealed in this collection of correspondence, Gordon's thirteen-year friendship with O'Connor (1925-64) and the critiques of O'Connor's fiction that she wrote during this time not only fostered each writer's career but occasioned a remarkable series of letters full of insights about the craft of writing. Gordon, a more established writer at the start of their correspondence, acted as a mentor to the younger O'Connor and their letters reveal Gordon's strong hand in shaping some of O'Connor's most acclaimed work, including Wise Blood, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," and "The Displaced Person."
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Reviews
"Readers knowledgeable about the strong friendship between Flannery O'Connor and Caroline Gordon will applaud Christine Flanagan's gathering of this instructive and compelling collection. The often imperious and strong-willed Gordon was certainly a force in O'Connor's development as a writer; this carefully annotated exchange underscores both O'Connor's acquiescence and her frequent resistance to
Sarah Gordon, author of Flannery O'Connor: The Obedient Imagination
"When readers of Clara Silverstein's White Girl: A Story of School Desegregation put down this book, they will not feel good. They will, however, better understand the destructive and dangerous, as well as poignant and painful, impact that racism has had on both white and black Americans."
National Review