The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor

Reading Flannery O'Connor's letters, one feels the living presence in them. Their tone, their content, and even the number of those she corresponded with, reveal the vivid life that was in her, and much of the quality of a personality often badly guessed at.   Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Special Award   I have come to think that the true likeness of Flannery O'Connor will be painted by herself, a self-portrait in words, to be found in her letters . . . There she stands, a phoenix risen from her own words: calm, slow, funny, courteous, both modest and very sure of herself, intense, sharply penetrating, devout but never pietistic, downright, occasionally fierce, and honest in a way that restores honor to the word.--Sally Fitzgerald, from the Introduction   "To compare her with the great letter writers in our language may seem presumptuous and would have elicited from her one of her famous steely glances, but Byron, Keats, Lawrence, Wilde and Joyce come irresistibly to mind