A Good Man Is Hard to Find
Flannery O'Connor · 1955
O'Connor's 1955 debut collection. The first time the American literary world encountered her vision of grace arriving through violence. Stories so good they seem to have always existed.
The case against
Grace arrives by gunshot, drowning, or stolen wooden leg, story after story, and the formula shows by the fifth: a smug character, a grotesque stranger, a violent epiphany. Without O'Connor's Catholic theology the collection reads as pure cruelty, and she is not on hand to supply it. The period's racial language is deployed with intent; it still abrades.
Short Stories · the Pro canon
The case for it and the rest of the canon open with Pro.
if this one calls to you, so will these →
