[LarryLied]

How well known is she? Southern writers have such a following I'm surprised no one has told me about her until this post.

[JMJ333]

Flannery is very UN-PC. Some colleges have banned her because of her use of the "n" word, and branding her a racist, but anyone who reads her work can't help but notice that its just the opposite. I think she would have been very surprised at that label. She wrote about what she observed in a morose picture that grabs the brain in early 50s south. Enjoy! =)

[Romulus]

Mr. Head stood very still and felt the action of mercy touch him again but this time he knew that there were no words in the world that could name it. He understood that it grew out of agony, which is not denied to any man and which is given in strange ways to children. He understood it was all a man could carry into death to give his Maker and he suddenly burned with shame chat he had so little of it to take with him. He stood appalled, judging himself with the thoroughness of God, while the action of mercy covered his pride like a flame and consumed it. He had never thought himself a great sinner before but he saw now that his true depravity had been hidden from him lest it cause him despair. He realized that he was forgiven for sins from the beginning of time, when he had conceived in his own heart the sin of Adam, until the present, when he had denied poor Nelson. He saw that no Sin was too monstrous for him to claim as his own, and since God loved in proportion as He forgave, he felt ready at that instant to enter Paradise.

The Artificial Nigger, by Flannery O'Connor Taken from The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor" Published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux; New York, 1971

Her personal favorite.