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Flannery O'Connor's Role in Popular Culture: A Review Essay Flannery: A Life of Flannery O 'Connor. By Brad Gooch. (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2009. 464 pp. Cloth $19.80, ISBN: 978-0-31600066-6.)
Travel almost anywhere in rural Georgia and Flannery O'Connor's fiction seems to come to life. Throughout her native state, apocryphal stories are told and retold as an uncommonly high number of classmates, acquaintances or even those who just met her on a class trip to Andalusia during childhood, still tell stories about O 'Connor. Not only has her writing resonated within her native state, but with readers throughout the country. Yet, strangely enough, these same people who ruminate on O'Connor have been extremely tight-lipped about the Georgia writer until now. Fortunately, Brad Gooch 's new biography contains some of the first interviews about O'Connor and is able to uncover new insights into her life. More importantly, Flannery: A Life of Flannery O 'Connor represents the first mass-marketed biography of the author, which reflects her continued popularity in the public sphere.1
A lot has been said of O'Connor's role as a pop-culture icon, a role which seems counter to her modus operandi. Mary Flannery O'Connor ( 1 925- 1 964), an unassuming writer who lived a quiet life raising peafowl in rural central Georgia, has maintained her popularity long after her death in 1 964, leading to her becoming one of the most anthologized female American writers. During her short writing life, which produced a small collection of two novels, two short story collections and various essays and letters, O'Connor managed to gain a foothold in the American psyche as she became a highly esteemed writer, winning three prestigious O. Henry Awards for best short story (the last one posthumously), among other grants and fellowships.2 Her story "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" (1955) was made into a television movie (1957),3 and she was interviewed on television and became a frequent speaker on the lecture circuit. Yet, her somewhat nominal fame only grew brighter after her death. Her posthumously published The Complete Stories (1971) was awarded the National Book Award and her collected letters, edited by Sally Fitzgerald and published as The Habit of 'Being (1979) won the National Book Critics Circle Special...