The problem of the novelist who wishes to write about a man’s encounter with God is how he shall make the experience—which is both natural and supernatural—understandable, and credible, to his reader. In any age this would be a problem, but in our own, it is a well- nigh insurmountable one. Today’s audience is one in which religious feeling has become, if not atrophied, at least vaporous and sentimental.
ATTRIBUTION:
Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964), U.S. fiction writer and essayist. Mystery and Manners, part 5 (1969).
From “Novelist and Believer,” a paper given in March 1963 at a symposium at Sweet Briar College, Virginia. O’Connor was a devout Roman Catholic.
