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    A Prayer Journal
    A Prayer Journal
    A Prayer Journal
    Ebook101 pages33 minutes

    A Prayer Journal

    By Flannery O'Connor and W. A. Sessions

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    "I would like to write a beautiful prayer," writes the young Flannery O'Connor in this deeply spiritual journal, recently discovered among her papers in Georgia. "There is a whole sensible world around me that I should be able to turn to Your praise." Written between 1946 and 1947 while O'Connor was a student far from home at the University of Iowa, A Prayer Journal is a rare portal into the interior life of the great writer. Not only does it map O'Connor's singular relationship with the divine, but it shows how entwined her literary desire was with her yearning for God. "I must write down that I am to be an artist. Not in the sense of aesthetic frippery but in the sense of aesthetic craftsmanship; otherwise I will feel my loneliness continually . . . I do not want to be lonely all my life but people only make us lonelier by reminding us of God. Dear God please help me to be an artist, please let it lead to You."

    O'Connor could not be more plain about her literary ambition: "Please help me dear God to be a good writer and to get something else accepted," she writes. Yet she struggles with any trace of self-regard: "Don't let me ever think, dear God, that I was anything but the instrument for Your story."
    As W. A. Sessions, who knew O'Connor, writes in his introduction, it was no coincidence that she began writing the stories that would become her first novel, Wise Blood, during the years when she wrote these singularly imaginative Christian meditations. Including a facsimile of the entire journal in O'Connor's own hand, A Prayer Journal is the record of a brilliant young woman's coming-of-age, a cry from the heart for love, grace, and art.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateNov 12, 2013
    ISBN9780374709693
    A Prayer Journal
    Author

    Flannery O'Connor

    FLANNERY O’CONNOR (1925–1964) was born in Savannah, Georgia. She earned her MFA at the University of Iowa, but lived most of her life in the South, where she became an anomaly among post–World War II authors: a Roman Catholic woman whose stated purpose was to reveal the mystery of God’s grace in everyday life. Her work—novels, short stories, letters, and criticism—received a number of awards, including the National Book Award.  

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    Reviews for A Prayer Journal

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    • 4/5
      Beautiful, thoughtful and vulnerable.. writings, musings, prayers of O'Connor.
      Very short book, took me less than a day to read. Very inspiring. Only wish there had been more entries.
    • 4/5
      This small book contains a somewhat corrected transcription and a facsimile of a prayer journal kept by author Flannery O'Connor in 1946-1947. She kept it in one of those old Sterling notebooks with the marbled paper cover and lined pages. It contains the prayers of her heart. Some pages are missing, and in some cases at least, O'Connor herself tore them out. The book offers us a glimpse into O'Connor's spiritual life as she was embarking on her writing career. She desired to be a good writer and prayed for that. She seemed to be somewhat sporadic in her journaling as are most persons. She wrote daily for awhile and then was absent for periods of time. At other times she wrote some days but not others. The editor of the published volume did try to note where pages had been torn out. The journal itself even begins mid-sentence because of torn-out pages. In some instances, I wondered what led her to write that day's entry. She seems to be well-versed in philosophy. This small volume is important to those studying O'Connor's fiction works. We can only wonder about future works she might have created if her life had not been cut short by lupus at age thirty-nine.
    • 4/5
      A short book of which half is photocopies of O'Connor's journal. As a writer myself, and a person of deep faith in a Divine Being (whatever one wishes to call that Divinity), I was fascinated by her struggle to keep faith in God & herself, and by her constant pleas to God to grant her ambitions to be more than a mediocre writer (possibly because they echo my own prayers) However, cynically, I wondered who tore out the missing pages - was it the publishers themselves(to keep the journal focused on he writing prayers) and were they really missing when the journal was found? I'm not a fan of living celebreties biographies and advice books - but O'Connor is no longer living, and her talent has stood the test of time. Thus, this journal could have been a great inspiration to unpublished authors. It is fascinating seeing her insecurities & ambition laid bare. I did, however, expect a prayer journal to cover other aspects of her life, and that was missing from this very short book. I did, however, like the photocopies of the actual journal and seeing her actual handwriting.
    • 5/5
      A fascinating insight into the inner world of one of the twentieth centuries better authors. It is remarkable to see the depth of her comments. You feel like you are sharing with her as you read. It is truly inspirational to read these.
    • 4/5
      This is short book filled with inspiration as well as insight into the mind and spiritual life of Flannery O'Connor. The book consists of short prayers that the author wrote in her personal journal and give us a picture of the things she valued and wanted to achieve both personally a professionally. Through the author's pen we see that she feels a strong connection between art and the creator.

    Book preview

    A Prayer Journal - Flannery O'Connor

    The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

    Contents

    Title Page

    Copyright Notice

    Introduction by W. A. Sessions

    Editor’s Note

    A Prayer Journal

    Facsimile

    Notes

    Also by Flannery O’Connor

    Copyright

    INTRODUCTION

    BY W. A. SESSIONS

    From January 1946 to September 1947, Flannery O’Connor kept a journal that was, in essence, a series of prayers. She was not twenty-one years of age when she began this journal, and at twenty-two, when she wrote the last entry, it was clear that her prayer journal had already made a difference in her life.

    In this journal, written in Iowa City, where she had initially gone to study journalism but ended up in writing workshops, O’Connor reckoned with her new life. Here, she consecrated herself to a force that had surrounded her, so she believed, since her birth, in Savannah, Georgia, on March 25, 1925. Iowa City, in the American heartland, seemed the polar opposite of the racially mixed but segregated port city, which in her time was exotic (the last great port southward, before Cuba and the Caribbean). For her, Savannah had opened up more than the diversity of human existence. There a series of Catholic rituals and teachings had offered her young life a coherent universe. By 1946, Savannah had for O’Connor ceded to the university world of Iowa, where new influences, including intellectual joys, brought with them questions and skepticism.

    In that freedom, O’Connor began her journal and initiated a rare colloquy. She began to compose entries that soon transcended simple meditations on the perplexities of life. From the start (we do not have the first pages) the journal contained lyric outcries that became a singular dialogue. In fact, she seemed to be inventing her own prayer form. Abrupt, truncated, and serial, the individual entries convey great intensity: Oh Lord, she cries out toward the end of the journal, make me a mystic, immediately. This urgency was present even in her final cry of disappointment. By then she knew that she would not have an immediate answer from the

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