Eternal O’Connor

Aficionados of Southern literature are preparing to commemorate one of the giants of the genre, honoring Georgian author Flannery O’Connor on the 40th anniversary of her death.

The “Remembering Flannery” event next week will take place at Andalusia, the author’s home in Milledgeville, Ga., which has been open to the public since March 2003.

Starting at 15 minutes after midnight — exactly 40 years from the moment of the writer’s death on Aug. 3, 1964 — all of Miss O’Connor’s stories from the collection of “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” will be read for 24 hours.

An evening Mass on the lawn will be followed by a blessing in the main house.

“Coupled with the spiritual nature of her fiction, deeply rooted in the Catholic faith, we thought it would be a good idea to celebrate her death,” says Craig R. Amason, executive director of the Andalusia Foundation, which will organize the program.

“The themes of grace and salvation are central to O’Connor,” he says. “For real fans of O’Connor, the commemoration of her death is an opportunity for a joyous occasion, under the aspect of eternity.”

Miss O’Connor died at age 39 from complications of lupus, an autoimmune disease. Her small body of work earned her a reputation as one of America’s best fiction writers.

Holding the commemorative event at the O’Connor farm will allow her readers to behold the environment in which she worked, says Bruce Gentry, editor of “The Flannery O’Connor Review.” He is a professor of English at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville, where Miss O’Connor studied.

“Every time I go out to Andalusia, I think about the connection between the stories and the land,” he says. “It’s really quite a spooky thrill.”

Miss O’Connor knew her time was short because of her disease. She shaped her writing for people who would read her work after her death, says Paul Elie, who wrote about Miss O’Connor in his book “The Life You Save May Be Your Own.” She didn’t waste time on cultural or religious controversies of the era, Mr. Elie says.

“She focused on metaphor and imagery and the central drama of Christianity, the moment of grace with Christ,” he says.

“She stylized her work for posterity. … Flannery O’Connor once said she wished books could be written and deposited in a slot for the next century. … She said that a serious writer would gladly swap 100 readers now for 10 readers in 10 years or one reader in 100 years.”

Her body of work consists of two novels, “Wise Blood” and “The Violent Bear It Away,” and two collections of short stories, “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and “Everything That Rises Must Converge.”

Two other volumes of her writing have been published since Miss O’Connor’s death: “Mystery and Manners,” including various articles, unpublished essays and lectures, and “The Habit of Being,” a collection of her letters.

“She is better known and more widely read today than when she died,” Mr. Elie says. “She was very well-known around serious writers, but her books didn’t have large sales. They didn’t win prizes.”

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