Good Things Out of Nazareth: The Uncollected Letters of Flannery O'Connor and Friends

A literary treasure of over one hundred unpublished letters from seminal American author and  National Book Award-winner, Flannery O'Connor, the subject of the biographical film, "Wildcat" (2024) starring Maya Hawke (directed by Ethan Hawke).

Good Things Out of Nazareth contains many of O'Connor's previously unpublished letters. These epistolary gems deepen our knowledge of this master of the short story in ongoing "revelations"  The letters enable "moviegoers" just discovering O'Connor, as well as her enduring readers to deepen their understanding as O'Connor traces her efforts in the 1960s to write the searing stories later featured in "Wildcat." The letters reveal O'Connor's own comments about her fiction and the writings of her peers.. The collection also contains the beautiful letters from O'Connor's Jesuit priest/ friend consoling those mourning her death..
 
Good Things is the only collection that  features invaluable historical context of the tumultuous times when O'Connor was writing in the 1960s. The editor, Ben Boatwright Alexander, studied with one of O'Connor's teachers himself.  He knew some of her literary friends and visited with O'Connor's family in Milledgeville, Georgia.  He even read in 2004 at a literary event "Good Country People" aloud in the wee hours at O'Connor's house, Andalusia. These rare experiences enable Dr. Alexander to provide an historical backdrop to O'Connor's letters little known or taught today. His collection forms a riveting literary portrait of O'Connor as well as her friends--— such as fellow believers, Walker Percy (The Moviegoer) and Caroline Gordon (None Shall Look), famed publisher, Robert Giroux and movie critic, Stanley Kauffmann. Here we find their joys and loves, as well as their trials and tribulations as they struggle with doubt and illness while relying on faith to chart a path in an uncertain world. 

Praise for Good Things Out of Nazareth

"An epistolary group portrait that will appeal to readers interested in the Catholic underpinnings of O'Connor's life and work . . . These letters by the National Book Award-winning short story writer and her friends alternately fit and break the mold. Anyone looking for Southern literary gossip will find plenty of barbs. . . . But there's also higher-toned talk on topics such as the symbolism in O'Connor's work and the nature of free will."—Kirkus Reviews
 
"A fascinating set of Flannery O'Connor's correspondence . . . The compilation is highlighted by gems from O'Connor's writing mentor, Caroline Gordon. . . . While O'Connor's milieu can seem intimidatingly insular, the volume allows readers to feel closer to the writer, by glimpsing O'Connor's struggles with lupus, which sometimes leaves her bedridden or walking on crutches, and by hearing her famously strong Georgian accent in the colloquialisms she sprinkles throughout the letters. . . . This is an important addition to the knowledge of O'Connor, her world, and her writing."—Publishers Weekly

Flannery O’Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1925. She lived most of her life on a farm in Milledgeville, Georgia, where she raised peacocks and wrote. She was the author of two novels (Wise Blood and The Violent Bear It Away), thirty-one short stories, and numerous essays and reviews. She died at the age of thirty-nine. Her complete short stories, published posthumously in 1971, received the National Book Award for fiction.

Benjamin B. Alexander, PhD, a dynamic classroom teacher with over forty years of experience, has lectured widely on American, medieval, and African-American literature, as well as political theory and public policy. Dr. Alexander is currently crafting a critical study of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson and Shakespeare, as well as reviewing the unpublished essays of Walker Percy and Ralph Ellison for possible publication.