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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780156364652
ISBN number: 0156364654
Label: Harvest Books
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 264
Printing Date: August 23, 1977
Publishing house: Harvest Books
Sale Popularity Level: 55089
Studio: Harvest Books
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Product Description:
The collection that established O’Connor’s reputation as one of the american masters of the short story. The volume contains the celebrated title story, a tale of the murderous fugitive The Misfit, as well as “The Displaced Person” and eight other stories.
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Rated by buyers -
This is a well-written collection of short stories. O'Connor draws on the southern tradition of writing (similar to Eudora Welty). The writing is simple, and dialogue is flawlessly written. Recommended.
Rated by buyers 
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If you every had any thoughts on what the South was like pre 1964, then this certainly is the book for you. Ms O'Connor packs us in and takes us for a long journey into the South. What do we see along the way? Greed, ignorance, hatred under the guise of religion, and even cold bloodied murder. None of the stories come off as preachy, nor are the characters people that we would be drawn to or run from. They are in fact versions of people that we have know in our lives and see every day.
What we see is a glimpse of their core what motivates them. The stories show us that we are a products of our enviornment and the risks of being consumed by it.
Rated by buyers -
O'Connor is one of my three favorite Southern writers, along with Carson McCullers and William Faulkner. I just love all that gothy/dark humor, the grotesque characters with their own unique beauty twisted with the ugliness of pride, involved in complex and deformed situations, the bizarre and twisted obsession with Christianity into a warped sense of morality. O'Connor's stories mainly focus on female protagonists that lose a grip on their power over their world, fall from grace and pride, mostly due to shady male figures. She spins fascinating and tragic, yet beautiful tales with a poetic, real style with the third-person limited perspective. Besides Good Country People, my favorite story in this collection was A Temple of the Holy Ghost and A Late Encounter with the Enemy. Excellent short stories from an amazing author. Grade: A
Rated by buyers -
This is probably one of the best collections of short stories out there. Nobody did short stories better. Written fifty years ago, sure, but reading and re-reading these stories over the years, I have to say that O'Connor was one of the best short story writers of the past century, hands down.
I don't care if it's southern gothic or grotesque or whatever O'Connor is labeled in Academia, or whatever her place in literary history may be, or if some readers disagree and find her stories boring or depressing (sigh); these stories are so effortlessly masterful, and when you read an O'Connor story, it's like hearing a unique singer's voice, Johnny Cash or Otis Redding: you know it's O'Connor the second you start the story. Each one begins at just the right moment, the dialogue and characters and situations are so REAL, despite the outward absurdity of them, she convinces you through her rendering, that these events happened.
Think of it her as the reality TV of the fiction world, as horrible as that may sound. Her characters don't "act" and aren't pawned into position, they are real, and they speak realistically, they behave realistically, and the stories are told in such a way that you feel you aren't reading a story at all, but imagining the same dream she had when she wrote them. She never betrays her characters, never condescends or makes fun of them, and her metaphors, BTW, are the best their were ("her face was as broad and innocent as a cabbage"); the way she dropped into a story, pieced out the characters, how she developed tension and situations that often yield tragic circumstances, her language...well, she does it so convincingly, and I am not one easily convinced.
O'Connor was the genuine article, and this book is the evidence of her indisputible greatness. It's been said that O'Connor claimed she wrote all these stories as parables, and I think when you read them you'll see (and what many people have trouble with) is that her stories do have a picaresque quality to them, and the characters at times do seem like stock southern characters. But its how well she knows these characters, how she protrays them that makes them so memorable. She rose to fame being one of the voices of the South - and perhaps some of the book is therefore dated and not as cutting edge as it was then. But it has endured, on the strength and appeal of the stories.
Is O'Connor for everyone? Heck no. But I guarantee you - guarantee you - if you read one of her stories, even if you don't like it, it'll haunt you for years, you'll remember all the little moments as if you'd dreamt them yourself. And you'll come back, whether by accident or purposefully, and you'll re-read the story, and it'll mess you up. She's THAT good.
Rated by buyers -
Flannery O'Connor is one of great American writers of the 20th century, a Southern Gothic stylist of the very first order. She won the National Book Award for the posthumous 1972 collection, 'The Complete Stories'.
O'Connor sets her stories in the rural South and populates them with flawed, grotesque, and twisted characters - this is not the imagined noble, glorious, and chivalric South, but rather the real South of the poor and middling whites of the 1950's(race is mostly in the background). She catches the nuances of human behavior. Her stories have powerful, unexpected and disturbing endings.
Pick up a story and read just one paragraph and you will be hooked.
"The old woman and her daughter were sitting on their porch when they saw Mr. Shiftlet come up their road for the very first time. The old woman slid to the edge of her chair and leaned forward, shading her eyesfrom the piercing sunset with her hand. The daughter could not see far in front of her and continued to play with her fingers. Although the old woman lived in this desolate spot with only her daughter and she had never seen Mr. Shiftlet before, she could tell, even from a distance, that he was a tramp and no one to be afraid of..."
Absolutely the highest recommendation.
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