"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 that it does not, then
you have to make your vision apparent by shock — to the hard of hearing you
shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures."
Mary Flannery O'Connor (March 25,
1925 – August 3, 1964) was an American writer and essayist. An important
voice in American
literature, O'Connor wrote two novels and 32 short stories, as well
as a number of reviews and commentaries. She was a Southern writer
who often wrote in a Southern
Gothic style and relied heavily on regional settings and grotesque characters.
O'Connor's writing also reflected her own Roman Catholic faith, and frequently
examined questions of morality
and ethics.
