Everything That Rises Must Converge

That line is from one of the nine stories in Flannery O'Connor's posthumous collection of short stories. It comes close to summarizing how for me O'Connor presents life -- as "an ugly mystery". Since she was a devout Roman Catholic, she herself probably did not view life to be either ugly or a total mystery. But I do not grasp her theology, so much of what I am left with is the ugliness and the mystery.Still, her stories should be read -- for their power and for the distinctiveness of her voice. I came to O'Connor much too late in my reading career. I was staggered by her first collection of short stores, "A Good Man Is Hard to Find", when I read it about four years ago. EVERYTHING THAT RISES MUST CONVERGE is almost as good. It contains one story ("The Lame Shall Enter First") that strikes me as rough, much like a first draft (O'Connor wrote most of the stories in the book in her last years, when suffering from the Lupus that would kill her). But five of the stories are top shelf, as fine in my opinion as the best of Alice Munro, or James Joyce, or John Updike.The stories are set primarily in rural and small-town Georgia of the late 1950's and early 1960's. Most end with a twist and in apocalyptic fashion. Three themes dominate. One is the theological. The first three stories seem Old Testament in nature, while the latter six partake of the New Testament, especially the Holy Ghost. (I can see preachers using many of these stories as texts for what could be enthralling sermons.) Another theme has to do with what I will call domestic relations, particularly those between an older parent and an adult child. For the last twelve years of her life, O'Connor lived with her widowed mother, who supposedly provided O'Connor a supportive and tranquil environment as she struggled with Lupus. However, the strained and bitterly antagonistic parent-child relationships of many of these stories make me wonder whether O'Connor's last years with her mother were truly all that peaceful for her. The third theme has to do with the relationship between blacks and whites in what was then still very much Jim Crow Georgia. These stories are not P.C. (indeed, O'Connor would have mocked, trenchantly, the very notion of P.C.), and if you are offended by the "n-word" regardless of context (much like Mark Twain and "Huckleberry Finn") you will be offended repeatedly. But as several of the stories indicate, and as one character says when he proposes to drink from the same glass as one of his mother's Negro workers, "the world is changing."The book's title, by the way, is also the title of the first, and probably best, story. Towards the end of her life, O'Connor read a lot by the French philosopher and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. In a piece called the "Omega Point", Teilhard wrote: "Remain true to yourself, but move ever upward toward greater consciousness and greater love! At the summit you will find yourselves united with all those who, from every direction, have made the same ascent. For everything that rises must converge."

There seems to be a theme in most of the stories in Everything That Rises Must Converge, and that is sudden violence... usually at the end. I'm not giving anything away, because the read is the important part. O'Connor creates very authentic southern characters, that are funny, disgusting, bigoted, warm and all around human. There seems to be a slight O'Henry in O'Connor in that she likes to surprise you... some may say suddenly end things, quite dramatically. But it is with this ease that her writing is that much more disturbing. On the surface, the south she portrays is gentle and simple. Yet with sudden ferocity, she turns it on its head. To read O'Connor is really enthralling. The intensity and description in which she writes makes each story in this collection seem like a novel. I read Wise Blood a few years ago and liked it, but I will have to read it again as well as her other works after the great fulfillment this collection gave me.

I always think that after an author dies, and the work doesn't die with them, my opinion of the work is irrelevant. But, for the record, Flannery O'Connor was one of the best "Southern Gothic" writers. She was Catholic and deeply religious and seems to have imagined that her fiction was an exemplary presentation of Catholic dogma. I was raised a Catholic but dropped religion, all religion, like a rock as soon as I left home for the Air Force in 1962. I look in her work in vain for anything that resembles the Catholicism that the nuns tried to drum into me. O'Connor seems to have a good feel for just how close normal southern life is to violence. Sudden explosions of violence are common in her work, as is love, often expressed bizarrely, and what looks to me like irrational behavior. Her people live in a magical world and their being God-drunk doesn't help them reach a peaceful place where kindness might be discovered.

An amazing woman and writer. Her stories are gripping and so true of the south i grew up in. Such a genteel lady to write such hard edged stories but she captures the atmosphere and speech of the south. One of the really good American writers.

Everyone with an open mind would do well to read this book and learn from it.If you are easily offended, you should probably skip it.

Who doesn't love Flannery O'Connor? My great aunt is buried a few graves away from hers in Milledgeville, Georgia and on the last trip I took there to visit my relative, I was touched to see a rosary draped across Ms. O'Connor's stone. Such is the enduring power of her prose.Often uncomfortable and disconcerting, Everything That Rises Must Converge offers glimpses into the darker aspects of ordinary folks. The grotesque, the hypocrisy, and the venal are described with clear eyed and beautiful language.Such a poet, was our Ms. O'Connor, and what a treasure is this collection.

I cannot give this book anything less than five stars....If my review would show up ONLY for the audiobook, I'd give it two stars. I haven't finished listening to it, but already during two stories there are missing chunks and bits of audio from one story in the middle of another.This is shameful. I was over the moon to find out Flannery O'Connor's books are being released on audio, but Blackstone audio did a very sloppy job on this one.And I would have chosen different readers. There's nothing worse than a fake Southen accent. Few actors who aren't from the South can pull it off, and even some who are FROM the South can't!Blackstone, please fix this! Everything That Rises Must Converge

The edition in the picture is not the edition that is shipped. Everything else is fine--high-quality FSG Classics publication, same introduction; it just has the wrong cover art.

Excellent quality and service.

the writing is beautiful but you need to understand the history of the US to really appreciate.

Fiction may we’ll be the most powerful way that humans learn and grow... And Flannery O’Connor, in her gift at creating characters, is a brilliant teacher. The weakness and desperation of white supremacy is powerfully revealed in the saturated wisdom of this extraordinary short story

9 separate stories drawn from the author's experience of her local experience, like modern 'morality plays', rather dark, but they make a point