All the characters in the very powerful stories of Flannery O'Connor are abnormal: that is to say they are normal human beings in whom the writer has discovered a relationship with the lasting myths and the violent passions of human life. It would be fashionable in America to call [Everything That Rises Must Converge] Gothic: it certainly has the curious inner strain of fable—replacing the social interest—which is a distinguishing quality of the American novel…. The Southern writers have sometimes tended to pure freakishness or have concentrated on the eccentricities of a decaying social life; but this rotting and tragic order has thrown up strong, if theatrical themes. Flannery O'Connor was born too late to be affected by the romantic and nostalgic legend of the tragic South; the grotesque, for its own sake, means nothing to her. In the story called 'Parker's Back', an absurd truck-driver...