[The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor] is more than an epistolary autobiography of a great American writer. It is also a "good read," and then some. Like everything O'Connor wrote, no matter how serious, it is very funny. The book intertwines the developing stories of her career, her many friendships, the progress of her omnivorous education, and her ordeal by disseminated lupus erythematosus, which ended her life at the age of 39….

Flannery O'Connor was a master of paradox, as in her famous story "Good Country People."…

O'Connor's spreading wide of her narrow hands to unite the worlds of scholarly learning and ignorant truth is characteristic of her. So in her letters, O'Connor testifies over and over about such delectable items as Tube Rose Snuff commercials, religious aberrations, absurdities from the newspapers, etc., while at the same time commenting on her progress through Proust or her reading...