Dear Flannery,
I read your story, "Greenleaf," again last night. At the end, it seemed I had been holding my breath and when I finally breathed out my soul emptied itself of everything it didn’t need, and then felt wonderfully fresh and small, just the right size, and enriched somehow. It was as if it were suddenly concentrated down, full strength, like frozen orange juice.
All of your stories, which I read and reread from time to time, tend to have the same distilling effect on me, as far as I have come to grasping them, but there are four I loved best right from the start, and "Greenleaf "is one of those. I mean, she gets gored through the heart, if that isn’t the most wonderful thing (you know what I mean). The first time I read it, now going on four years ago, I had to reach over and poke my husband awake and read the two last paragraphs again out loud to him and he said it was wonderful, too. (He's sweet the way he tries to wake up for important things.) I think your stories are transcendent. They mean something huge.
Lately I have been reading for the first time lots of short works---by Henry James and Edith Wharton and Thomas Hardy and Franz Kafka, and more --- and they are very good. I especially like what Joseph Conrad seems to be saying but his style is terribly difficult for me to wade through, still, I plan on reading more of him. Of course James Joyce sure could write but so far I have found him more cynical than having anything to say of any value, but then I’ve only read The Dubliners so far. (I would be tossed out of any college English class for saying that, I know.) Anyway, great as these famous stories may be, I don’t like any of them as well as yours for how they speak to my infant soul. As Conrad said, they make me hear, feel, see, and find “that glimpse of truth for which [I] have forgotten to ask.”
Still concentrating,
A Reader
