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| The Complete Stories | 
 enlarge | Author: Flannery O'connor
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Category: Book
List Price: $17.00
Buy Used: $4.75
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Avg. Customer Rating:  62 reviews
Sales Rank: 6379
Media: Paperback
Edition: 33
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 555
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.4 x 1.6
ISBN: 0374515360
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780374515362
ASIN: 0374515360
Publication Date: January 1, 1971
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Dark, very dark April 29, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
One does not read Flannery O' Connor for feel good endings. The characters feel incredibly real, in that their innate psychology is so easy to realte to. Whether it be the old man who lives vicariously through his granddaughter and tries to shape her to be just like him to the proud intellectual who gets outmaneuvered by a crooked Bible salesman, it's disturbing in the fact that you've felt some of the same feelings as some of the despicable people that populate her short stories.
The prose is incredible, and vividly shows that South in a time of rampant racism as well as transition to a more technological age. If there was one complaint, it would probably be that almost all of her stories have a tragic ending, and becomes a little predictable after a while. I consider myself pretty jaded, but a lot of the time it was cynicism for cynicism's sake, even if the underlying message spoke something all too true.
 Roman-Catholic-Southern-Gothic April 24, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I suppose Flannery O'Connor has her own genre, and the reader gets it aplenty in The Complete Short Stories of Flannery O'Connor (550 pages of it). Even if you do not share her version of Thomistic philosophy, or care too much for the unique American southern fixation with exaggerated characterization, there is much to enjoy here. Some stories, like the heavily anthologized A Good Man is Hard to Find, is heavy handed and obvious. It is the less known stories where the punch is packed, like Enoch and the Gorilla and The Displaced Person. O'Connor has an uncanny way of making the obvious and banal evil; she takes the Catholic fixation on the fall of humanity and its need of redemption seriously, and in this collection the state of this state is unusual, exotic, page turning.
31 stories of violent grace, madmen, prejudice, and fierce redemption. September 27, 2007
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
Thirty-one stories and 550 pages rest within this collection. Each story has its own merit, but I would like to take a moment to describe the ones that have best remained powerfully glued to my mind.
Revelation - This tale deals with a smug, pious church-goer (of which many of O'Connor's find similarity). The woman is happy she is not black or white-trash, and thinks herself a candidate for the front of heaven's lines. Of course, O'Connor has a tasty ending for her in the story's last pages.
The Lame Shall Enter First - A story about loving when it's too late. The last words of this tale still haunt me.
The River - A young boy wishes to find the kingdom of God but finds tragedy instead. I think O'Connor was attacking how some things are best not taught to children because they will not be able to comprehend them.
The Peeler - A pre-teen searches for cleansing after his first experience with lust.
Wildcat - an old black man's greatest fear ominously grows closer and closer to him with each new night.
The Enduring Chill - the Holy Ghost, depicted as a purifying terror, descends madly upon a reluctant intellect as he waits for death.
A View of the Woods - an old man is not above the things he hates as he turns on the one thing in the world he swears to protect: his ten year-old granddaughter.
A Late Encounter With the Enemy - a Civil War veteran finds that his moment in the sun is actual nothing more than his first day among the devils.
Good Country People - considered a classic by most, this tale deals with the ironies of a devious mind and those who fail to recognize it.
The Comforts of Home - a female nymphomaniac is taken off the street by a kind-hearted old woman. The old woman's son, however, refuses to accept the new house guest and sets a plan in motion that will destroy everything he holds dear.
O'Connor's stories are often filled with fringe-lunatics in the raw pursuit of grace as they battle pious church-mice, the racism of the day, and their own feeble place in the world. She exposes the harsh prejudice of those who claim an outward perfection, and often times the righteous and smug are given over to the very things they claim to be above. O'Connor takes on a literary trip that features corruptive minds, freakish hermaphrodites, hopeless nymphomaniacs lurching for any form of grace, and wild-eyed country folk who doubt both faith as well as admire it from afar.
She spares us nothing and when it's all said and done, what we have witnessed are the rawest forms of grace being sprinkled on those who most would never imagine worthy, while those who seem to have it all together are thrust into their own personal hells. If you are interested in grace for the rugged, vexed, slob and slut, her tales are for you. Enter with an open mind and you will unearth something more intriguing than you can imagine.
DOWN AT THE INTERSECTION OF PICK-UP TRUCKS AND HOLY WATER July 29, 2007
10 out of 14 found this review helpful
Todd Sentell is a Georgia native and author of the social satire, Toonamint of Champions
Dear Flannery,
Forty-three years after you died too young, a Georgia historical marker was stuck in the ground across the highway from the end of Andalusia's driveway. On a boiling hot Friday morning in July, in the shadow of the Badcock & More furniture store sign, just before the dedication ceremony started, a suntanned fellow in a red pick-up truck drove past and honked his horn. For an instant, I thought Parker was back.
The mayor of Milledgeville spoke about you in his Milledgeville accent. And then, a priest with an Irish name in a huge white robe from your old church, Sacred Heart, got up in front of everybody and moved his hands around and read some things from out of that book that's not exactly the Bible. He said some things that a few of your fellow Catholics repeated with him and then the priest flicked the historical marker, while it was still covered with an official Georgia historical marker blue cover, with holy water. He flicked his wood water wand six times. I counted. The first time he flicked it at the cover you could see the cover quiver but it never did again. If there was a moment you would have loved the most, other than that redneck in the pick up truck blasting the earnestness out of the hot air, it was that holy water business. I'm not Catholic, but these were some moments I deeply understood anyway, especially since we were across the street from where you made literary history because of those hard, perpendicular intersections you designed in your stories and two novels ... the perfectly timed crashing together of personalities and religion in all its strange forms ... and its haunting aftermath. We were having some near crashing together of religion and personalities right there ... right by a loud highway in a modern time as we quietly stood in the grass that belonged to your marker and a discount furniture store.
After that priest blessed your marker, the fellow who's in charge of the Georgia Historical Society got up there and said he was pretty sure that was the first time in the history of Georgia historical marker dedication ceremonies that one's been flicked with holy water. Everybody laughed and nodded at each other. God ... did I think of you right then. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who got the literary and personal importance ... to you ... of that moment. I saw you smiling down at this one, too: after everyone stopped laughing I wanted to shout out, like Hazel Motes would at discovering a blasphemer ... that the feller who's in charge of the Georgia Historical Society is wearin' a tie covered with the logo ... of the state of South Caroliner!
After the roadside ceremony, we were invited to come across Highway 441--very carefully--for a reception in the main house. Your house and yard were populated with people speaking in only Southern accents and they were talking about how they knew you and when. Or how and when they knew your mother. On your front porch an old woman grabbed my arm and asked me if I was in church Sunday ... that she saw me. I said I wasn't ... I live one hundred miles from here ... but if my evil twin was there then good for him. The lady, tottering on feeble pegs, told me her name but I didn't get it because she spoke in an accent so rich her words came out like syrup. She said she had moved onto the farm when she was fifteen and that you and her were opposites. She said she lived in that building over there. She pointed at it with a crooked finger ... at the old shed where Andalusia's caretakers keep an old donkey named Flossie. I wondered if she was drunk. Who cares. We were all drunk on you. Standing in your bedroom doorway gawking at your crutches, your bed, and your writing table. I'm sure you think that's repulsive--a bunch of people crowded at your door like that. But I'm a respectful hick. I gawk with misty eyes but I don't point.
I'm not going to go on about the condition of the house and the buildings around the property. Just to say they'll be back in better shape soon. There's a man in charge and a foundation has even been developed and the man in charge works hard to preserve you ... your place. Still.
Heading back home up Highway 441 in my truck, I passed a couple of Georgia roadside markers of another kind--those homemade crucifixes people stick into the ground near where a family member was killed in a car or truck or motorcycle accident. You never know. When you see one, and you see a lot of them in the South, all you know is that death happened right there and somebody wants you to by-God know it.
But it's never at that intersection you write about. You always see those crosses on some long, straight stretch of highway or country road. I think of you as I travel my long stretch of road and across fields of living fire, sometimes in a straight line and sometimes real crooked ... as your voice strikes up in my mind ... your voice climbing upward, on key, into a starry field ... and those who love you so much come to that moment of your grace on that road sooner rather than later if we're paying attention and we thank you for it ... battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs and those who have always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right ... we honk our truck horns in your honor ... and shout hallelujah.
Todd Sentell is a Georgia native and author of the social satire, Toonamint of Champions
Wonderful Writer June 20, 2007
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
I have never before spent all that much time with O'Conner's work. I was pretty damn impressed.
Her observations on race were spot on--not dated in the least. Compared perhaps to certain writers who write of an experience that is only (most often) echoed today. There seems to be a certain timelessness to O'Conner's perception. Similar in ways to Twain, and perhaps to a lesser extent, Faulkner. I wonder if her Catholicism has anything to do with it, and the fact that she was a woman--these markers giving her an insight and subtlety of understanding that Protestant white men wouldn't necessarily have.
It was interesting that both O'Conner and Richard Yates do not shy away from multiple points of view in a short story. Many if not most of the Yates stories shift POV. I have always inclined toward shifting POV, but was warned (scolded) away from it in my first writing workshops. I tend to like the way O'Conner handles shifts, it is more seamless than Yates. In O'Conner's work it is almost imperceptible (I am thinking particularly of "The Artificial Nigger" and the shifts between the grandfather and the boy). Yates tends to use paragraph breaks and will give entire sections of a story to a particular character's POV. O'Conner moves from perspective to perspective through brief paragraphs, shifting within the narrative line of the story without pause.
And I have a soft spot for the gothic. I appreciate O'Conner's use of the physically maimed and the mentally disabled. I like her use of religion. Some of her stories read almost as twisted parables--sort of a Biblical Twilight Zone or Old Testament Alfred Hitchcock.
But for my own work, I paid especially close attention to the intimacy O'Conner creates between her characters. I am thinking at the moment of "Good Country People." She does such a brilliant job of showing the tension, desire, misinterpretation and intimacy between Joy/Hulga and the Bible salesman. O'Conner holds Joy/Hulga's anger and ugliness and even her intellectual aggression in contrast to the unexpected vulnerability she shows the Bible salesman. It does indeed bring life and complexity to her character. And then of course when the Bible salesman reveals his motivation and his true desire, something really remarkable happens--it is as though in these moments I can see the story take a breath.
"Good Country People" is such a good story--there are so many elements of craft, elements that I am working on in my own writing. O'Conner does a spectacular job not only with complexity of character, but also with complexity of circumstance. She creates a situation in which a seemingly immobile Joy/Hulga is poised on the precipice of change. The reader feels as though she really could--or might not--fall in love with the Bible salesman. There are moments of living possibility when anything (or nothing) can happen.
There are many remarkable stories in this collection that demonstrate similar mastery of craft--The Barber, The Life You Save May Be Your Own, Greenleaf, Everything That Rises Must Converge, A Good Man is Hard to Find...
And along with these excellent stories, there are others that do not quite shine, stories that read as slice-of-life vignettes, interesting and pleasant enough to read, but not quite living: Wildcat, The Crop, Turkey, A View of the Wood, Revelation.
I would like to read O'Conner's novels. And I am sure I will reread her short stories. And should I ever have the chance, I would love the opportunity to introduce her work to students.
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