SOURCE: "The Genesis of Flannery O'Connor's 'A Good Man Is Hard to Find'," in Studies in American Fiction, Vol. X, No. 2, Autumn, 1982, pp. 227-31.

In the following essay, Lasseter explores the real-life incidents that probably inspired O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find."

Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" begins as Bailey reads the sports section of the Atlanta Journal (the evening edition of the Constitution). The tableau is appropriate: a study of the genesis of "A Good Man" shows that from 1950 to 1952 O'Connor found substantial pieces of her short story in the Atlanta newspaper; her transformation of newspaper clippings into a tale of theology and violence on a Georgia back road provides insights into her creative process.

O'Connor frequently used newspaper accounts as source material for her fiction. Harvey Klevar has shown how O'Connor used advertisements and news articles from the Milledgeville Union...