Flannery O'Connor Quote

Fiction is an art that calls for the strictest attention to the real - whether the writer is writing a naturalistic story or a fantasy. I mean that we always begin with what is or with what has an eminent possibility of truth about it. Even when one writes a fantasy, reality is the proper basis of it. A thing is fantastic because it is so real, so real that it is fantastic. Graham Greene has said that he can't write, I stood over a bottomless pit, because that couldn't be true, or Running down the stairs I jumped into a taxi, because that couldn't be true either. But Elizabeth Bowen can write about one of her characters that she snatched at her hair as if she heard something in it, because that is eminently possible.I would even go so far as to say that the person writing a fantasy has to be even more strictly attentive to the concrete detail than someone writing in a naturalistic vein - because the greater the story's strain on the credulity, the more convincing the properties in it have to be.

Flannery O'Connor

Fiction is an art that calls for the strictest attention to the real - whether the writer is writing a naturalistic story or a fantasy. I mean that we always begin with what is or with what has an eminent possibility of truth about it. Even when one writes a fantasy, reality is the proper basis of it. A thing is fantastic because it is so real, so real that it is fantastic. Graham Greene has said that he can't write, I stood over a bottomless pit, because that couldn't be true, or Running down the stairs I jumped into a taxi, because that couldn't be true either. But Elizabeth Bowen can write about one of her characters that she snatched at her hair as if she heard something in it, because that is eminently possible.I would even go so far as to say that the person writing a fantasy has to be even more strictly attentive to the concrete detail than someone writing in a naturalistic vein - because the greater the story's strain on the credulity, the more convincing the properties in it have to be.

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About Flannery O'Connor

Mary Flannery O'Connor (March 25, 1925 – August 3, 1964) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. She wrote two novels and 31 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries.
She was a Southern writer who often wrote in a sardonic Southern Gothic style and relied heavily on regional settings and grotesque characters, often in violent situations. An unsentimental acceptance or rejection of the limitations, imperfections or differences of these characters (whether attributed to disability, race, crime, religion or sanity) typically underpins the drama.
Her writing reflects her Roman Catholic faith and frequently examines questions of Catholicism-defined morality and ethics. Her posthumously compiled Complete Stories won the 1972 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction and has been the subject of enduring praise.