Post 1.

For my American author proposal, as well as the rest of this unit, I’ll be reading, analyzing and writing papers on Flannery O’connor.
Flannery O’connor was an American author born March 25^th 1925, and was initially famous not for her many books of short stories, but for teaching her chicken how to walk backwards, an action that would get O’connor filmed, and make her briefly famous.
When O’connor grew to adulthood, she graduated from the Peabody Laboratory School, and graduated in 1942. She also became Robert Fitzgerald’s roommate.
Flannery O’connor wrote 31 short stories, separated into 3 books, along with two novels, commentaries on various issues, and an archive of letters she would send to her friend, Bettey Hester.
A subject Flannery O’connor explores in her writing are religious themes, usually invlolving protestan characters, despite the fact that she was raised as a roman catholic herself.
The reason why I want to do my American Author paper on Flannery O’connor is because my parents told me about her, and after doing a bit of reserch, I discovered that all her short stories are, for the most part, serious, but blended with humor in order to make a very unique type of storytelling.
I also think that this is a good Author for me to focus on during the upcoming project because she has written several stories that can be analyzed and comapared but they are short enough that I won’t be tearing my hair out trying to get all of the read.
Short stories have always interested me because of they way that they’r able to sometimes convey the same character development, story arcs, and messages that novels are able to convey, but they’re in a compressed space, so if I get bored with them, then I won’t be stuck reading that particular section for long.
As for the books and short stories I’m going to read, I think I’m going to start by reading “Wise Blood” due to it being her first novel. Since the idea of the project is to cover as many different styles and stories any given author produces, I thought it would be a good Idea to start with the book the first long story that she wrote.
In any case, I look forward to reading these books. I haven’t read any short story collections before, and very few books with southern origins. These books should be able to help me expand my horizons a little bit.