Flannery O'Conner . . . Cartoonist

Yes, we know about O'Conner the short story master, but did you know she grew up wanting to be a cartoonist? Yep, and they're quite funny. The Guardian delves into the story here, as does Austin Kleon. There's a new book celebrating her cartooning talents for the first time that may be worth the purchase for completists. I know it's on my list.

Interestingly, John Updike also had great interest in being a cartoonist, but ended up in prose as well.

Dead Authors Tweet!

But of course they do!

The Atlantic has a fun slide show on Flannery O'Conner, Charlotte Bronte, Shakespeare, Chaucer, and this gem from Mark Twain:

Typical tweet: If the world comes to an end, I want to be in Cincinnati. Everything comes there ten years later.

Appendix A: Justifying the Grotesque

In her essay "The Fiction Writer and His Country," Flannery O'Connor writes this:

The novelist with Christian concerns will find in modern life distortions which are repugnant to him, and his problem will be to make these appear as distortions to an audience which is used to seeing them as natural; and he may well be forced to take ever more violent means to get his vision across to this hostile audience. When you can assume that your audience holds the same beliefs you do, you can relax a little and use more normal ways of talking to it; when you have to assume it does not, then you have to mke your vision apparent by shock--to the hard of hearing you shout, and for the blind you draw large and startling figures.

• Do you think O'Connor's is an effective means of communicating truth?
• Is there a chance for the Christian writer to become addicted to the "distortions" and no longer feel repulsed by them?

Just food for thought, folks!

Appendix A: Toibin, Munro, Flannery

• If you’re writing fiction today, you’re likely to find Colm Toibin’s first few answers (especially) very helpful.

• Short story master Alice Munro won the Man Booker Prize.

• A fascinating review of the first full-length bio of Flannery O’Conner (by Joseph O’Neill, the highly regarded author of Netherland, the winner of the Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction.

• Harper ’s has video interviews with authors.