The Guardian book blog has a short but illuminating piece on the importance of Flannery O’Connor’s deeply-felt Catholicism on her work. O’Connor is on a shortlist of the best short-story writers of the twentieth century, and though her “Christ-haunted” South is peopled with Protestants, there is no question that Catholicism was her writing’s wellspring. For some this seems a contradiction because her stories are often violent, grotesque, and bleakly humorous. But O’Connor herself said: “I write the way I do because (not though) I am a Catholic.” [Read more...]