New in Paperback
Flannery O’Connor, Hermit Novelist
With a New Preface by the Author
Richard Giannone
“Through deft analyses, Giannone leads the readers through a goodly amount of
O’Connor’s fiction accompanied by a direct tracing to the concepts discovered by the
desert fathers. His reasoning is impeccable; his knowledge, though formidable, is mesmerizing. And by the end of the book, the reader has been so carefully tutored in all
the shimmering connotations of such concepts as catanyxis, amma, acedia, that such
terms seem not only apt but also undisturbing. . . . To say that this is an important book
is an understatement.”—Southern Quarterly
“Gianonne’s book proves that scholarship that takes as a starting point O’Connor’s radically countercultural spiritual vision can still provide important insights.”—American
Literature
“Lord, I’m glad I’m a hermit novelist,” Flannery O’Connor wrote to a friend in 1957.
Sequestered by ill health, O’Connor spent the final thirteen years of her life on her isolated family farm in rural Georgia. During this productive time she developed a fascination with fourth-century Christians who retreated to the desert for spiritual replenishment and whose isolation, suffering, and faith mirrored her own. In Flannery O’Connor,
Hermit Novelist, Richard Giannone explores O’Connor’s identification with these early
Christian monastics and the ways in which she infused her fiction with their teachings.
Surveying the influences of the desert fathers on O’Connor’s protagonists, Giannone
shows how her characters are moved toward a radical simplicity of ascetic discipline
as a means of confronting both internal and worldly evils while being drawn closer to
God. Artfully bridging literary analysis, O’Connor’s biography, and monastic writings,
Giannone’s study explores O’Connor’s advocacy of self-denial and self-scrutiny as vital
spiritual weapons that might be brought to bear against the antagonistic forces she
found rampant in modern American life.
Richard Giannone is a professor of
English at Fordham University and the
author of Flannery O’Connor and the
Mystery of Love, Vonnegut: A Preface to
His Novels, and Music in Willa Cather’s
Fiction.
March 2010, 312 pages
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