BOOKS BY Flannery O’Connor NOVELS Wise Blood The Violent Bear It Away STORIES A Good Man Is Hard to Find Everything That Rises Must Converge with an introduction by Robert Fitzgerald NON-FICTION Mystery and Manners edited and with an introduction by Robert and Sally Fitzgerald The Habit of Being edited and with an introduction by Sally Fitzgerald Flannery O'Connor THE COMPLETE STORIES Farrar, Straus and Giroux New YorkEarrar, Straus and Giroux 19 Union Square West, New York 10003 Copyright © 1946. 1948, 4956, 1957. 1458, 1960. 1961, 1a, 1Gt5, 1p, 196 1971 by the Fstate of Mary Flannery O'Connor, Copyright © 1949. 1952, 10 1962 by Flannery O'Connor Introduction copysight © 1971 by Robert Giroux All rights reserved Distributed in Canada by Douglas & Melntyre Le Printed in the United States of America tore Published in 1971 by Parra, Straus and Giroux ‘Quotations from letters are used by permission of Robert Fitzgerald and of the Estate and are copyright © 1971 by the Estate of Mary Flannery O'Connot. The ten stories From a Good Man ts Hard to Find. copyright © 1953, 1954, 1955 by Flannery O'Conton, sate used by special arrangement with Harcourt Brave Jovanenishy ne Library of Congress catalog card number Paperback ISBN-13:978-0-374:51536-2 Paperback ISBN-10:0-374-51536-0 Designed by Herb Jobson, wwwetigbooks.com 58 60 G2 64 os 03 O59 Contents Inteopuction by Robert Giroux The Geranium The Barber Wildcat The Crop The Turkey The Train The Peeler The Heart of the Park A Stroke of Good Fortune inoch and the Gorilla A Good Man Is Hard to Find A Late Encounter with the Enemy The Life You Save May Be Your Own The River A Circle in the Fire The Displaced Person A Temple of the Holy Ghost The Artificial Nigger Good Country People You Can't Be Any Poorer Than Dead Greenleaf A View of the Woods 5 26 33 2 4 63 Be 95 108 “7 a 145 157 175The Enduring Chill The Comforts of Home Everything That Rises Must Converge The Partridge Festival The Lame Shall Enter First Why Do the Heathen Rage? Revelation Parker's Back Judgement Day Nores Contents / vi 357 383 95 4a 465 483, 88 510 530 5st Introduction Flannery O'Connor's first book has never, up to now, been published. It was entitled The Geranium: A Collection of Short Stories and consists of the first six stories in this volume. The title page of the original manuscript, in the library of the University of Towa, bears the legend, “A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts, in the Department of English, in the Graduate College of the State Uni- versity of Towa.” It is dated June 1047 and a separate page carries a dedication to her teacher, Paul Engle. [At their first meeting in his office, in 1946, Mr. Engle recalls,* he was unable to understand a word of Flannery’s native Georgian tongue: “Embarrassed, I asked her to write down what she had just said on a pad. She wrote: ‘My name is Flannery O'Connor. 1 am not a journalist. Can I come to the Writer's Workshop?” . . . I told her to bring examples of her writing and we would consider her, late as it was. Like Keats, who spoke Cockney but wrote the purest sounds in English, Flannery spoke a dialect beyond instant compre- hension but on the page her prose was imaginative, tough, alive just like Flannery hersclf. For a few weeks we had this strange and yet trusting relationship. Soon I understood those Georgia pro- nunciations. The stories were quietly filled with insight, shrewd about human weakness, hard and compassionate . . . She was shy about having them read, and when it was her turn to have a story presented in the Workshop, I would read it aloud anonymously. Robert Penn Warren was teaching a semester while Flannery was at the University of Lowa; there was a scene about a black and a white man, and Warren criticized it . . . It was changed. Flannery + Lewer ty Robert Giroux dated July 3, 1974