In a column I wrote awhile back for The Inquirer I had this to say about O'Connor's Prayer Journal:
Relativism was not a problem for Flannery O'Connor, whose A Prayer Journal was written more than half a century ago, was never intended for publication, and is only 37 pages long (it has been published along with a facsimile of the pages of the copybook she wrote it in). Written in 1946 and 1947, between the ages of 20 and 22, when she attending writing workshops in Iowa City, it is an extraordinary testament of living faith, both religious and artistic, though the two seem to have been one for O'Connor:
Dear God, tonight … you have given me a story. Don't let me ever think … that I was anything but the instrument for Your story — just like the typewriter was mine. Please let the story, dear God, in its revisions, be made too clear for any false & low interpretation … . I wish you would take care of making it a sound story because I don't know how, just like I didn't know how to write it but it came."Dismiss this if you will. But only after reading Wise Blood.
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