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The Complete Stories
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780374515362
Edition: 33
ISBN: 0374515360
Label: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 555
Publication Date: January 01, 1971
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Studio: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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Editorial Review:
Winner of the National Book AwardThe publication of this extraordinary volume firmly established Flannery O'Connor's monumental contribution to American fiction. There are thirty-one stories here in all, including twelve that do not appear in the only two story collections O'Connor put together in her short lifetime--Everything That Rises Must Converge and A Good Man Is Hard to Find. O'Connor published her first story, "The Geranium," in 1946, while she was working on her master's degree at the University of Iowa. Arranged chronologically, this collection shows that her last story, "Judgement Day"--sent to her publisher shortly before her death—is a brilliantly rewritten and transfigured version of "The Geranium." Taken together, these stories reveal a lively, penetrating talent that has given us some of the most powerful and disturbing fiction of the twentieth century. Also included is an introduction by O'Connor's longtime editor and friend, Robert Giroux.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Flannery O'Connor, one twisted sister
This was my first introduction to O'Connor's work. Had I known how thoeoughly I would enjoy, I would have read her years ago. I grew up in the South and always thought I got a pretty good education. But I was never introduced to Flannery O'Connor's work. From the dark and stark nature of her unique characters, I suppose I can see why she might have been excluded. Her work shines a bright light on the flaws and foibles that make us human. She does not show the lovely views of gentle Southern living ... Read More
Rating:  - American Sophocles
Thomas Merton said of O'Connor that when he thought of her, he did not think of her in terms of her peers in contemporary fiction (i.e., Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck) but rather, he thought of Sophocles or Aeschylus.
This compendium more than validates Merton's assessment -- after the American Empire passes, O'Connor's achievement will remain as its literary zenith. It's doubly strange, too, both for the form in which she specialized, and the content of the works. Americans (always ... Read More
Rating: - The Devil's In The Details
"Grace changes us, and change is painful."
O'Connor, a delicate Southern Catholic who lived a third of her life ravaged by lupus, was certainly acquainted with pain. Her stories reveal this much. Many readers and reviewers may wonder if she doesn't take a bit of artistic license with her definition of "grace," though. Considering her religious ideologies (which aren't hard to figure out, even after reading just one of these deliciously dark little tales), her unsubtle brutality isn't so ... Read More
Rating: - Dark, very dark
One does not read Flannery O' Connor for feel good endings. The characters feel incredibly real, in that their innate psychology is so easy to realte to. Whether it be the old man who lives vicariously through his granddaughter and tries to shape her to be just like him to the proud intellectual who gets outmaneuvered by a crooked Bible salesman, it's disturbing in the fact that you've felt some of the same feelings as some of the despicable people that populate her short stories.
The prose ... Read More
Rating: - Roman-Catholic-Southern-Gothic
I suppose Flannery O'Connor has her own genre, and the reader gets it aplenty in The Complete Short Stories of Flannery O'Connor (550 pages of it). Even if you do not share her version of Thomistic philosophy, or care too much for the unique American southern fixation with exaggerated characterization, there is much to enjoy here. Some stories, like the heavily anthologized A Good Man is Hard to Find, is heavy handed and obvious. It is the less known stories where the punch is packed, like Enoch and the ... Read More
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