"Everything That Rises Must Converge" by Flannery O'Connor

1.9.22

Hello! I want to share that I am having a sale on subscriptions. For the next week, you can become a paying subscriber at a 20% discount. If you’re reading often, please consider supporting this newsletter with your subscription.

“Everything That Rises Must Converge”

Flannery O’Connor was a prolific short story writer from Georgia who also wrote novels. To be honest, I don’t know a lot about O’Connor. Like Carver, she attended the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, maybe the most famous (and one of the first) MFA programs in the United States. Many of her stories are morally driven, like parables, but less didactic. O’Connor unflinchingly wrote about racism and bigotry. She herself was disabled (she lived with and died because of lupus, an autoimmune disorder). There has been a recent debate about whether O’Connor was racist herself. This piece was published in The New Yorker and this piece was published in Commonwealth Magazine as a rebuttal. In my own naive interpretation, I think O’Connor must …