“Nothing Left to Say of Me” – Flannery O’Connor’s, “A Prayer Journal”

Here is the shortened version of a piece I wrote on Flannery O’Connor’s, “A Prayer Journal.” The longer version will be coming somewhere soon, but this is the heart of it…

“Flannery also worries that her writing will lead people away from God instead of towards Him. It shows she knew that her themes were going to be very high stakes, and that meaning well doesn’t necessarily mean doing well. It also shows she had already figured out that she couldn’t show the power of the resurrection in her stories without dragging her readers through the potentially scandalizing places of fetishistic Bible salesmen, acne-scarred Yankee crazy women, and bitter old men clinging to the N-word. Her prayers for the impact of her writing make for some of the most charming and thought-provoking parts of the book: “Please let Christian principles permeate my writing, and please let there be enough of my writing (published) for Christian principles to permeate.”