{"product_id":"mystery-and-manners-occasional-prose-9780374508043","title":"Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eThis bold and brilliant collection is a must for all readers, writers, and students of American literature\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen she died in 1964, Flannery O'Connor left behind a body of unpublished essays and lectures as well as a number of critical articles that had appeared in scattered publications during her lifetime. The brilliant pieces in \u003ci\u003eMystery and Manners\u003c\/i\u003e, selected and edited by O'Connor's lifelong friends Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, are characterized by the boldness and simplicity of her style, a fine-tuned wit, understated perspicacity, and profound faith.\u003cbr\u003e The book opens with \"The King of the Birds,\" her famous account of raising peacocks at her home in Milledgeville, Georgia. There are three essays on regional writing, including \"The Fiction Writer and His Country\" and \"Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction\"; two on teaching literature, including \"Total Effect and the Eighth Grade\"; and four on the writer and religion, including \"The Catholic Novel in the Protestant South.\" Essays such as \"The Nature and Aim of Fiction\" and \"Writing Short Stories\" are gems. Their value to the contemporary reader--and writer--is inestimable.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFlannery O'Connor\u003c\/b\u003e (1925-1964) was one of America's most gifted writers. She wrote two novels, \u003ci\u003eWise Blood\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Violent Bear It Away\u003c\/i\u003e, and two story collections, \u003ci\u003eA Good Man Is Hard to Find \u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eEverything That Rises Must Converge\u003c\/i\u003e. Her \u003ci\u003eComplete Stories\u003c\/i\u003e, published posthumously in 1972, won the National Book Award that year, and in a 2009 online poll it was voted as the best book to have won the award in the contest's 60-year history. Her essays were published in \u003ci\u003eMystery and Manners\u003c\/i\u003e and her letters in \u003ci\u003eThe Habit of Being\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Farrar, Straus and Giroux","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50620411281682,"sku":"9780374508043","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_8e0a208a-4373-435a-9064-e2731b86d101.jpg?v=1732565671","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/mystery-and-manners-occasional-prose-9780374508043","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}