Instruments for good

Books: Novelist Flannery O’Connor “speaks” on the work of fiction and aspiring fiction writers | Marvin Olasky

A reader asks: "I'm trying to get started as a novelist. Could you recommend something about fiction writing by a Christian writer?" Easy answer: Read Flannery O'Connor's Mystery and Manners, available in paperback (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1969), an exceptionally clear book that reads almost as if the author were answering questions.

O'Connor wrote two novels—Wise Blood (1952) and The Violent Bear It Away (1960)—and 31 published stories before dying in 1964 at age 39 of complications from lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease. Had she lived she would now be 82 and WORLD would want to interview her. So let's do it anyway, using Mystery and Manners.

All the words of the answers are O'Connor's own, with the exception of a few connecting and explanatory words in brackets. Readers will see that she was acerbic toward what passed as "religious fiction," but Christian novel-writing has changed over the decades, so her critique from over 40 years ago should not necessarily be applied to current efforts.