Flannery O'Connor, Hermit Novelist

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments during the years of work on this book, I have accumulated a number of debts. My thanks first go to Fordham University for the two faculty fellowships that gave me the time to develop and complete the manuscript. When I initially tested my ideas with other scholars, their positive response heartened me about the importance of the study. Portions of this work have appeared earlier, in different form, in Christianity and Literature, Flannery O’Connor: New Perspectives (published by the University of Georgia Press), Literature and Belief, and Religion and Literature. I am grateful to the editors of these journals and the Georgia collection of essays for permission to reprint the essays. Here I should like to acknowledge, in particular, Emily Rogers, acquisitions editor at the University of Illinois Press, whose interest in the project helped to give it life. The manuscript found other friends in two readers for the University of Illinois Press. By his sensitive evaluation of the argument as a whole, Arthur Kinney helped me to improve this study. Again, John Desmond meticulously read the typescript, and I have profited greatly from his insights and suggestions for changes. Over a number of years, the community of Cistercian monks at St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, has provided me with a place of rest and silence in which to share in their life and think about some fundamental issues. Finally, many colleagues and friends have enthusiastically supported my research. For their encouragement and help, I would like to express my appreciation to J. Robert Baker, Gary Ciuba, Mary Erler, Rose Adrienne Gallo, Eve Keller, Edward John Mullaney, Joyce Rowe, Philip Sicker, Joseph Wholey, and Margaret Smith Wholey. xviii Acknowledgments All of this generosity from so many people and all the assistance rendered while writing this book have brought home to me one of the central teachings of the desert. For the ancient hermits, their quest for God in solitude was inextricably bound to their concern for others. The same attention to personal ties animates the life and work of Flannery O’Connor. Those human bonds have held my work together, for friendship lies at the heart of my pursuits and obligations. The dedication of this book to Frank D’Andrea and Joseph Sendry expresses a debt that I have felt to two friends for their decades of unfailing loyalty and guidance. ...