Jugdment Day

Last story in Everything that Rises Must Converge (FSG, 1965)

Note: Sally Fitzgerald, editor of the Library of America edition of O’Connor’s

collected works, believes the title should be spelled “Judgments Day,” following one
of O’Connor’s typscripts, but the story was first printed (in CS) as “Judgement Day”

Middle version title “An Exile in the East”

Published posthumously in South Carolina Review in 1978

“Judgment Day” written “in extremis”

To Robert Giroux (21 May 1964)

…however, there is a story [“Judgment Day”] that I have been working on off
and on for several years that I may be able to finish in time to include. If not, I would
rather have six or seven good stories than six or seven good and one bad…

To Catharine Carver (27 June 1964)

Will you look at this one [“Judgment Day”] and say if you think it fitten for the
collection of if oyu think it can be made so? It’s a rewrite of a story that I have had
around since 1946 and never been satisfied with, but I hope I have it now except for
details maybe.

To Catharine Carver (15 July 1964)

I do thank you and I’ll get to work on this one [“Judgment Day”] you sent
back. I can see the point about the daughter’s coming being too close to his
encounter with the doctor. As for the “on his back” business—that’s a cherished
Southern white assertion—that the Negro is on his back and in a way it’s quite true.
But you have to be born below the M.D. line to appreciate it fully.

The Geranium
Published in 1946 in Accent without compensation
Title story for O’Connor’s 1947 thesis for the master of fine arts at University of
Iowa.

Also appeared in Complete Stories (FSG, 1971) and Collected Works (Library of
America, 1988)

To Maryat Lee (25 February 1957)

At Emory they had a list of questions for me to answer and the first one was:
Do you write from imagination or experience? My inclination at such a point is
always to get deathly stupid and say, “Ah jus writes.” This has anyway never
occurred to me except as a theoretical consideration, of no concern to anybody
seriously engaged in the act of writing. I draw the line at any kind of research and
even object to looking up words in the dictionary. I think you probably collect more
of your experience as a child—when you really had nothing else to do—and then
transfer it to other situations when you write. They first story I wrote and sold was
about an old man who went to live in a New York slum—no experience of mine as
far as old men and slums went, but I did know what it meant to be homesick. I
couldn’t though have written a story about my being homesick.

A Critical Companion to Flannery O’Connor: a Literary Reference of her Life and

Work. Connie Ann Kirk. 2008. New York : Facts on File