SOURCE: An introduction to A Good Man Is Hard to Find, by Flannery O'Connor, Rutgers University Press, 1993, pp. 3-9, 17-24.

Asals is an American educator and critic. In this excerpt, he lauds thematic and stylistic aspects of "A Good Man Is Hard to Find, " praising, in particular, the significant role of the grandmother in the story.

"A Good Man Is Hard to Find" is probably now, as during her lifetime, the single story by which Flannery O'Connor is best known. She herself may have had something to do with this: when she was asked to give a reading or a talk to students, "A Good Man" was the story she usually proposed. As she wrote to John Hawkes, she preferred a reading with commentary to a lecture because "It's better to try to make one story live for them than to tell them a lot of junk they'll...