The promotion of The Violent Bear It Away, Flannery O'Connor's second novel, plus the recent promotion of her career indicate that she is being groomed as A Current Great Writer…. Where she has succeeded and how raise several questions in both literature and public relations.

At an increasing rate since World War II judgment has dwindled in literary criticism, academic and non-academic, and prestige in letters has come proportionately to rest on personality. As with Hollywood figures, we now learn about the writer, and by inference his writing, through his public image. (p. 147)

Must we acknowledge that she is writing literature simply because her stories are negative—along with Nabokov's and Bellow's and [Jack] Kerouac's? Should we—as indeed we have with Truman Capote and James Jones—accept the avowal of her serious intention as adequate justification for her work? Must we accept her work as "Catholic" because...