Flannery O’Connor a Hoya After All

It was surprise enough to learn, half a century after her death, that there was an unpublished work by Flannery O’Connor: a “prayer journal” she kept in 1946 and 1947 while a student at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

It was an even greater surprise to see it show up as a file attachment on my phone — sent to me by the publisher — and to read it in one go.

It was a further surprise to open the bound proofs and see there the printed facsimile of the marble composition book in which she wrote out the prayers in her parochial-school-nurtured neat hand.

And it was a surprise on top of surprises to open the finished book and see, as the frontispiece, a photograph of Flannery O’Connor at Iowa wearing a Georgetown sweatshirt.

That’s a muskrat-fur coat either side of Jack the Bulldog, by the way. She’s wearing it in a photograph in The Life You Save May Be Your Own.

The Prayer Journal is just out; I’ll be writing about it for The New Republic and speaking about it on On Point. And I’ll be looking into the question of how O’Connor came to possess that sweatshirt.

"Will I ever know anything?" That question comes straight from the (composition) book.

• 10 November 2013