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So many find it fashionable to quote her…how many have the courage to truly read her?  Someone asked me once why I love Flannery O’Connor?   At first, I wasn’t sure how to answer.  She is a challenge.  I suppose she islike your favorite fitness trainer; when you’re done you feel something has changed.  Reading Flannery causes you to look in the mirror; watch out you may not like what you see.  She causes you to practice the virtues in a way you may never have thought; so that when you encounter a moral challenge in life, you’ve already “flexed your virtue muscles”.  And isn’t that the key to great literature anyway?  “A Good Man Is Hard

To Find” was the first short story I read by Flannery…it was the first serious short story I had ever read (what a piece to cut your teeth on).   I was 13…I didn’t get it.  I read “Wiseblood” at 16…I didn’t get it.  At 48, do I get it?  I think I’ll leave that to God to answer.
Do I think she is a saint?  Yup, no doubt in my mind.  Will the Church ever declare her a saint…I don’t know, and in the end does it really matter what we think…God’s got her.

Here’s a little piece I found on her life…not great, but not bad..

Here is an “Inside the Pages” discussion with Amy Welborn about Flannery O’Connor
[powerpress url=”http://discerninghearts.com/interviews/Inside_the_Pages-Amy_Welborn_Flannery_O_Connor.mp3″]Download (right click & choose “Save Link As”)

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Here is an absolute GEM!!!!! The “Happy Catholic” Julie Davis told me that an audio was available of Flannery O’Connor actually reading “A Good Man is Hard to Find” …and indeed there was (is…whatever). This was recorded shortly before her death of lupus at a talk given at Vanderbilt University. Take a listen to the “Master” in her own voice…priceless!

A Talk by Br. Boniface Endorf, O.P.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/21603350[/vimeo]

[gview file=”http://books.google.com/books?id=-Sd3OkSndXQC&lpg=PP1&dq=inauthor 3A%22Flannery%20O’Connor%22&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false”]

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