Sunday, October 13, 2019

Quote of the Day (Flannery O'Connor, on Storytellers and the ‘Redemptive Act’)


“There is something in us, as storytellers and as listeners to stories, that demands the redemptive act, that demands that what falls at least be offered the chance to be restored. The reader of today looks for this motion, and rightly so, but what he has forgotten is the cost of it. His sense of evil is diluted or lacking altogether, and so he has forgotten the price of restoration. When he reads a novel, he wants either his sense tormented or his spirits raised. He wants to be transported, instantly, either to mock damnation or a mock innocence.”—Southern novelist and short-story writer Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964), Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, edited by Sally Fitzgerald (1969)

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Interesting lady.

As an English major, I read extensively. "A Good Man is Hard to Find," is widely acknowledged to be the American best short story of the last century.

Her personal story is weird.