Book Description

Customer Reviews (11)

" O'Connor's School For Writers"
The recurrent subject in this first-rate collection of essays and occasional pieces is the business of writing. O'Connor was scrupulous in her insistence that the writer begin with the humblest of materials, the sights, sounds and smells of the concrete world. She found unreadable, apparently, those writers who had nothing to offer but one abstract psychological insight after another.At the same time she recognized that writers skilled only in giving the world's body a fond description would never transcend mere competence. And of writers merely competent, she asserted that there was in her time a glut.What distinguished the writer of the first rank, always a rare bird, she maintained, was vision, vision of a sort, allied with the aforementioned competence, that enabled such a writer to reveal through concrete events something of the mystery of our existence and experience on this odd planet. Such vision, she consistently held, was a gift that could not be learned in creative writing classes. Therefore, when asked if she thought such classes for writers stifled many talented practitioners, she quipped in her memorable style that such classes, unfortunately, "didn't stifle enough of them."

The distinct, distinguished Catholic voice from the South
I haven't read anything by Flannery O'Connor since "All Things That Rise Must Converge." I fell in love with her stories. There is so much life in them. I read this work to get an idea about her "sitz im leben", her life-situation, her milieu. A lot of it is correspondence, and there are some presentations as well. I am wondering if it speaks to the modern would-be novelist as much as it spoke to writers of her time and place. She says that one needs to write out of the context of where you are: the place, the people, the geography. This is mandatory, not optional.

This book is for writers. I appreciate her writing about how to be Catholic in the South, a very small minority. She has contributed much to finding faith in the stories of life, even violent and brutal stories. I look forward to my next work of hers.

Stellar Insights Into O'Connor's Writing And Fiction In General
This is a wonderful compilation of essays, speeches and musings by Flannery O'Connor, one of America's finest short story writers.If you have read O'Connor's stories, then this is an essential companion to her stories, because it reveals O'Connor's vision of the South, the grotesque, religion, other writers and the meaning and purpose of fiction.This book also contains some of the most succinct and lucid essays about the art and craft of writing.In sum, this is a superb book that, with the passage time, is timeless.

Pea chickens
Before reading this book, I never thought about the grandeur of peacocks and pea chickens this way.As a matter of fact, I do not believe I had ever thought about the royal pea chicken.Most of this book is really entertaining, although some is a little heavy-handed.If you are at all interested in the thought process of Flannery O'Connor, read this book

5 1/2 Stars...Fun in the Process!
O'Connor writes with such wit and wisdom that I found myself overwhelmed.I began to mark pages, then realized I was marking each and every one.

Tucked between two short pieces, the meat of the book deals with the craft of writing, the motivation and method, and the spiritual heart of fiction.Never have I read so direct an approach to the mix of religion and art.O'Connor's words can be applied to creative efforts in all fields and in all branches of Christendom.Why then, with such poignant insights penned over forty years ago, does the Church at large still look down on artistic endeavor?Must everything preach a literal sermon for the concrete Western mindset?As O'Connor makes clear, art speaks truth only when it embraces life in all its shades of good and evil.

This book could be titled aptly, "Freedom and Frustrations."Any writer diving into this work will discover O'Connor's pearls of wisdom beneath the waves of public narrowmindedness.Don't pass this by if you wish to make art that matters.You'll be encouraged.You'll also be freed to have fun in the process. ... Read more

Product Description
According to Sykes, the fiction of Flannery O Connor and Walker Percy provides occasions for divine revelation. He traces their work from its common roots in midcentury southern and Catholic intellectual life to show how the two adopted different theological emphases and rhetorical strategies O Connor building to climactic images, Percy striving for dialogue with the reader as a means of uncovering the sacramental foundation of the created order. Through sustained readings of key texts, Sykes focuses on the intertwined themes of revelation, sacrament, and community. By disclosing how O Connor and Percy made aesthetic choices based on their Catholicism and their belief that fiction by its very nature is revelatory, Sykes demonstrates that their work cannot be seen as merely a continuation of the historical aesthetic that dominated southern literature for so long. ... Read more

Product Description
In settings as different as Honolulu, Hawaii, small-town Minnesota, and Taxco, Mexico, these nine stories and a novella show blue-collar characters struggling to achieve the American Dream--and sometimes alienating friends and family as they try to upgrade their working-class pedigree. Anne Panning's people, despite their mixed record of success, make us root for them on their sometimes heartbreaking journeys of entrepreneurship, love, and loss.

In "Tidal Wave Wedding" a tsunami in Honolulu yields surprising results for a couple on their honeymoon. In "All-U-Can-Eat," a woman tries to stave off the investment of her inheritance into a restaurant specializing in frog legs. In the novella, "Freeze," a teenage son's future is forever complicated after a "life altering" accident confines his father to a wheelchair and accelerates the disintegration of his parents' marriage. An eerie clinical replay of another accident--this one on a bicycle in Hawaii--is at the center of "What Happened," and in the title story a college theater major gets caught up in his father's exotic pets scheme.

Panning's stories show an acute awareness of place, and--whether it be a seventeenth-century former-monastery in Mexico, a suburban housing development in Minnesota, or a hard-luck laundromat on the Oregon coast--each setting often tells us something about the characters who occupy them. Sometimes sad and often funny, Super America takes risks with our notions about the American Dream through characters caught between their working-class roots and grandiose visions. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Super, Anne Panning!
Anne Panning explores American life from all points of view: estranged tourist, new widow, an ovulating hopeful, budding entrepreneur, a college-aged victim of his broken family.It is not only the American life that Panning divulges, but the tiny tragedies and tiny victories of life itself.It is a refreshing read.Her characters are real, but in strange situations: riding in a car with a mini-horse and a lemur, frog-leg hunting with husband and sister.There is a real sense of displacement and loneliness, but not without the naturally-occuring humor that comes with life.It wasn't just the interesting props that kept me reading, it was the emotion.In a word: poignant! ... Read more