Brad Gooch,
Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor.
I find everything about Flannery O'Connor interesting, so I was bound to like this book as long as the author demonstrated some kind of basic competence. However, I have to say that Gooch's research and writing are so admirable that I'm thinking about reading his biography of Frank O'Hara even though I have no interest in Frank O'Hara. I mention his research because he's the first author in twenty-five years to tell me anything about Flannery O'Connor that I hadn't heard before, and his writing because he tells it all so well. This is a book I'll want to read more than once.
And of course Miss Flannery is always entertaining. For instance, when
Wise Blood was published, some people compared her to Kafka, and people asked her mother about it.
Regina is getting very literary. "Who is this Kafka?" she says. "People ask me." A German Jew, I says, I think. He wrote a book about a man that turned into a roach. "Well, I can't tell people that," she says.
for instance, and
One reason I like to publish short stories is that nobody pays any attention to them. In ten years or so they begin to be known but the process has not been obnoxious. When you publish a novel, the racket is like a fox in the hen house.