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Article Excerpt
FLANNERY
A Life of Flannery O'Connor
By Brad Gooch
Little Brown
416 pp. | $30
Fiction writers often resist biography because, among other reasons, it goes against the grain of what they do. Biographies seek to explain a life; novels and stories embrace metaphor. Flannery O'Connor, more than most writers perhaps, also believed mystery to be at the core of existence itself: "Mystery isn't something that is gradually evaporating; it grows along with knowledge." She could be famously stubborn when asked to penetrate that mystery, snapping at a television interviewer who asked her if she would "like to tell our audience what happens" in a story. "No I certainly would not," O'Connor replied, "I don't think you can paraphrase a story like that."
It would be interesting to know whether O'Connor's authorized biographer, Sally Fitzgerald, was held back by such considerations. Fitzgerald, one of O'Connor's dearest friends, worked on her life of Flannery for more than two decades without ever finishing it. She did, however, play a crucial role in shaping O'Connor's posthumous reputation by editing...
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