Beyond the Bedside Summa
A Closer Look at Flannery O'Connor's Bookshelf
This list is drawn from writings, chiefly letters, of Flannery O’Connor, and is meant to be, with minimal commentary, a sampling of writers and works she enjoyed.
Missing are those writers she simply didn’t favor, e.g. Franz Kafka: “I can see that it’s beautifully visualized but to me it’s like a ladder with the bottom rungs missing.” (Letter to Ashley Brown, 22 May 1953), as well as those she actively disliked, e.g. Ayn Rand: “She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.” (Letter to Maryat Lee, 31 May 1960)
Also missing are works of poetry, or those works mentioned directly in her published criticism — both of which will be dealt with in a subsequent post for this journal.
“The silence of the Catholic critic,” she wrote, “is so often preferable to his attention.” With that in mind, we approach our topic gently, suggesting only that a fuller appreciation of Miss O’Connor’s reading habits might go a long way toward rescuing her memory from her admirers.
Foundationally:
Edgar Allan Poe
The Humorous Tales of E.A. Poe — Poe had an immeasurable influence on scores of artists in the United States and Europe including Baudelaire, Bloy, Huysmans, Walter Benjamin, O’Connor and Johnny Cash.
“But always the largest thing that looms up is The Humerous Tales of Edgar Allen Poe [sic]. I am sure he wrote them all while drunk too.” (Letter to A., 28 Aug. 1955)
Leon Bloy
The Pilgrim of the Absolute — excerpts from various writings of Bloy, edited by Jacques and Raïssa Maritain.
Bloy’s novel The Woman Who was Poor impacted the work of Bernanos, Mauriac, Dorothy Day, Georges Rouault, Berdyaev, Borges, Jacques and Raïssa Maritain and many, many others.
“Bloy has come my way. The awful thing is that we can go back to ourselves being ourselves after reading him.” (O’Connor, A Prayer Journal, 30 May 1947)
Particular Authors & Titles:
James Agee
The Morning Watch
Kingsley Amis
Lucky Jim
“Lucky Jim is his only good novel.” (Letter to A., 8 Nov. 1958)
St. Thomas Aquinas
Summa Theologica
De Veritate
Hannah Arendt
Eichmann in Jerusalem
“I’m reading Eichmann in Jerusalem. My what a book.” (Letter to Cecil Dawkins, 16 Sep. 1963)
Machado de Assis
Epitaph of a Small Winner
Erich Auerbach
Mimesis
Karl Barth
The Word of God and the Word of Man
Michael de la Bédoyère
The Archbishop and the Lady: the Story of Fenelon and Madame Guyon
The Life of Baron Von Hügel
Saul Bellow
Henderson the Rain King
The Victim
Georges Bernanos
The Diary of a Country Priest
St. Bernard of Clairvaux
Letters
Alice Dayrell Caldeira Brant
The Diary of Helena Morley
“My mother got hold of it first and could not help reading it aloud every now and then so I feel I have read it twice already.” (Letter to Elizabeth Bishop, 6 Feb. 1958)
Emily Brontë
Wuthering Heights
Cleanth Brooks & Robert Penn Warren
Understanding Fiction
Bruno de Jésus-Marie, O.C.D.
Three Mystics: El Greco, St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila
Martin Buber
The Eclipse of God: Studies in the Relation Between Religion and Philosophy
George Burchett & Peter Leighton
Memoirs of a Tattooist
“The old man that wrote it took tattooing as a high art and a great profession. No nonsense. Picture of his wife in it — very demure Victorian lady in off shoulder gown. Everything you can see except face & hands is tattooed. Looks like fabric. He did it.” (Letter to A., 17 Jul. 1964)
Joyce Cary
Herself Surprised
The Horse’s Mouth
To Be A Pilgrim
St. Catherine of Genoa
Treatise on Purgatory
St. Catherine of Siena
The Dialogue
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Journey to the End of the Night
Brainard Cheney
I Choose to Die
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.
Creative Evolution
The Divine Milieu
The Phenomenon of Man
Richard Chase
The American Novel and Its Tradition
Joseph Conrad
The Secret Agent
Under Western Eyes
Jean Daniélou, S.J.
Holy Pagans of the Old Testament
Cecil Dawkins
The Quiet Enemy
Nigel Dennis
A Sea Change
“A wonderful novel has just been written by a man named Nigel Dennis called A Sea Change. You should get your hands on that one.” (Letter to Betty Boyd, 17 Oct. 1949)
Isak Dinesen
Out of Africa
Seven Gothic Tales
T. S. Eliot
Murder in the Cathedral
Euripides
Alcestis
Medea
William Faulkner
The Hamlet
Light in August
Elizabeth Fenwick
Poor Harriet
Ford Maddox Ford
The Good Soldier
E.M. Forster
Passage to India
Where Angels Fear to Tread
Eric Gill
Autobiography
Étienne Gilson
History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages
Painting and Reality
The Unity of Philosophical Experience
Rumer Godden
An Episode of Sparrows
Nikolai Gogol
Dead Souls
Caroline Gordon
Aleck Maury, Sportsman
How to Read a Novel
The Malefactors
John H. Griffin
The Devil Rides Outside
Nuni
Dom Aelred Graham, O.S.B.
Christian Thought in Action
Zen Catholicism
Günter Grass
The Tin Drum
“That Grass is really something. I’ll be all year reading it.” (Letter to Maryat Lee, 20 Jul. 1964)
Graham Greene
The Lost Childhood: And Other Essays
Romano Guardini
The Lord
The Church and Modern Man
The Rosary
The End of the Modern World
“Have you read Romano Guardini? A German of Italian descent. His master work is something called The Lord. In my opinion there is nothing like it anywhere, certainly not in this country.” (Letter to A., 28 Aug. 1955)
Jean Guitton
The Virgin Mary
Elizabeth Hardwick
The Simple Truth
Joel Chandler Harris
Seven Tales of Uncle Remus
John Hawkes
The Lime Twig
Second Skin
Sara Henderson Hay
Story Hour
“I’m intriegued (sp?) by the crystallized violets and delighted with the book of poems. I enjoyed them thoroughly — the poems — and thought the illustrations were funny too.” (Letter to Charlotte Gafford, 10 May 1964)
Hiram Haydn
The Hands of Esau
Erich Heller
The Disinherited Mind
Joseph Heller
Catch-22
Ernest Hemingway
The Old Man and the Sea
Hermann Hesse
Magister Ludi
Granville Hicks
editor, The Living Novel: A Symposium
Paul Horgan
Humble Powers -- Three Novelettes: The Devil in the Desert; One Red Rose for Christmas; To the Castle
Baron Friedrich von Hügel
Essays and Addresses
Letters to a Niece
The Mystical Element in Religion as Studied in St. Catherine of Genoa and Her Friends
Philip Hughes
The Reformation in England
Richard Hughes
The Fox in the Attic
A High Wind in Jamaica
Henry James
The Aspern Papers
The Ambassadors
The American Scene
The Portrait of a Lady
The Spoils of Poynton
What Maisie Knew
“…when I read James I feel something is happening to me, in slow motion but happening nonetheless.” (Letter to A., 28 Aug. 1955)
Samuel Johnson
The Life of Dryden
The Lives of the Poets
Madison Jones
The Innocent
Johannes Jørgensen
Catherine of Siena
James Joyce
Dubliners
C. G. Jung
Modern Man in Search of a Soul
Nikos Kazantzakis
The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel
Russell Kirk
The Conservative Mind
Beyond the Dreams of Avarice
Arthur Koestler
The Lotus and the Robot
Hans Küng
The Council, Reform, and Reunion
Giuseppe Lampedusa
The Leopard
“I am in the midst of The Leopard and agree with you that that is very fine.” (Letter to A., 12 Nov. 1960)
Harper Lee
To Kill a Mockingbird
Maryat Lee
Dope!
C.S. Lewis
Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer
Miracles
Wyndham Lewis
The Demon of Progress in the Arts
Rotting Hill
Self-Condemned
Tarr
Percy Lubbock
The Craft of Fiction
William Lynch, S.J.
Christ and Apollo
The Image Industries
Andrew Lytle
The Velvet Horn
“I read The Velvet Horn [sic] and I was entirely taken with it.” (Letter to John Hawkes, 13 Sep. 1959)
Robie Macauley
The End of Pity and Other Stories
Norman Mailer
The Deer Park
Bernard Malamud
The Assistant
The Magic Barrel
André Malraux
Man’s Fate
The Voices of Silence
Gabriel Marcel
The Mystery of Being
Jacques Maritain
Art and Scholasticism
François Mauriac
The Lamb
Lines of Life
Questions of Precedence
John L. McKenzie, S.J.
The Two-Edged Sword: An Interpretation of the Old Testament
Herbert Marshall McLuhan
The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man
Henry Miller
The Colossus of Maroussi
“…a travel book on Greece by Henry Miller. Never read Henry Miller before but this book is very fine.” (Letter to A., 8 Nov. 1958)
Marion Montgomery
Darrell
The Wandering of Desire
Iris Murdoch
The Bell
Under the Net
Vladimir Nabokov
Bend Sinister
Lolita
Pnin
The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
St. John Henry Cardinal Newman
The Grammar of Assent
Boris Pasternak
Doctor Zhivago
“I am reading the Pasternak book… I was suspicious of all the praise given it; I thought it was just because Pasternak was a ‘good’ Russian. But not so. It is a great book. At one point he has Dr. Zhivago say that ‘art has two constant, two unending concerns: it always meditates on death and thus creates life. All great, genuine art resembles and continues the Revelation of St. John.’ Perhaps it is right that this should have been wrung out of Russia. I can’t fancy its being wrung out of American right now.” (Letter to Dr. T.R. Spivey, 16 Nov. 1958)
Walker Percy
The Moviegoer
William Alexander Percy
Lanterns on the Levee: Recollections of a Planter's Son
Katherine Anne Porter
Ship of Fools
Beatrix Potter
Peter Rabbit
“I was strictly a Peter Rabbit man myself.” (Letter to A., 14 Jun. 1958)
J. F. Powers
Morte D’Urban
The Presence of Grace
Prince of Darkness
Marcel Proust
Remembrance of Things Past
James Purdy
The Color of Darkness
The Nephew
Karl Rahner, S.J.
On the Theology of Death
Etienne Robo
Two Portraits of St. Teresa of Lisieux
James Ross
They Don’t Dance Much
J.D. Salinger
The Catcher in the Rye
“I certainly enjoyed the Catcher in the Rye. Read it up the same day it came. Regina said I was going to RUIN MY EYES reading all that in one afternoon.” (Letter to Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, 1951)
Elizabeth Sewell
Now Bless Thyself
The Structure of Poetry
William Shakespeare
Antony & Cleopatra
King Lear
Richard II
The Tempest
Frank Sheed
Born Catholics
Sophocles, trans. Fitzgerald & Fitts
Oedipus at Colonus
Oedipus Rex
Muriel Spark
The Girls of Slender Means
Memento Mori
“I am reading a very lively one called Memento Mori by Muriel Spark.” (Letter to Maryat Lee, 6 May 1959)
Jean Stafford
The Catherine Wheel
The Mountain Lion
Boston Adventure
Short Stories
Karl Stern
A Pillar of Fire
The Third Revolution
Edith Stein (St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross)
The Science of the Cross
Elizabeth Stevenson
The Crooked Corridor: A Study of Henry James
William Styron
Lie Down in Darkness
Allen Tate
The Man of Letters in the Modern World
Allen Tate & Caroline Gordon
editors, The House of Fiction: An Anthology of the Short Story
George Tavard, A.A.
Transiency and Permanence: The Nature of Theology according to St. Bonaventure
Peter Taylor
The Widows of Thornton
A Long Fourth and Other Stories
St. Teresa of Avila
Interior Castle
Honor Tracy
The Straight and Narrow Path
Anthony Trollope
The Last Chronicle of Barset
Frances Trollope
Domestic Manners of the Americans
Twelve Southerners
I'll Take My Stand: the South and the Agrarian Tradition
Evelyn Underhill
Mysticism
Sigrid Undset
Kristin Lavransdatter
“I read Kristin Lavransdattar long years ago and remember being much gripped with that love and that writing…” (Letter to A., 25 Nov. 1955)
John Updike
The Poorhouse Fair
Rabbit Run
“It [Rabbit Run] is the best book illustrating damnation that has come along in a great while…” (Letter to Fr. James McCown, 4 Dec. 1960)
Bruce Vawter, C.M.
A Path Through Genesis
Eric Voegelin
Order and History (Volume 1): Israel and Revelation
Order and History (Volume 2): The World of the Polis
Dietrich Von Hildebrand
The New Tower of Babel
Robert Penn Warren
All the King’s Men
Brother to Dragons
Evelyn Waugh
The End of the Battle (her favorite of the Sword of Honour trilogy)
The Loved One
Richard M. Weaver
The Ethics of Rhetoric
“Sometime at your library you might see if you could find The Ethics of Rhetoric [sic] by R.M. Weaver. I once had a copy but I gave it to somebody for a graduation present and now I’m sorry I did.” (Letter to Janet McKane, 26 Jul. 1964)
Simone Weil
Letter to a Priest
The Notebooks
Waiting for God
“Never read Beauvoir. Never aim to. I think myself that Simone Weil is a trifle monstrous, but the kind of monstrosity that interests me.” (Letter to A., 25 May 1963)
Morris West
The Devil’s Advocate
Nathanael West
The Day of the Locust
Victor White, O.P.
God and the Unconscious
C. Vann Woodward
The Burden of Southern History
“Southern history usually gives me a pain, but this man knows how to write English.” (Letter to A., 25 May 1963)
