A Prayer Journal

October 7, 2013
At age 20, Catholic writer O'Connor moved from Georgia to Iowa City to enroll in graduate school. While in Iowa, she created what editor Sessions, an emeritus English professor at Georgia State University, terms a "prayer journal"âheartfelt odes to God, scribbled in a black-and-white composition notebook. At the outset of the journal, O'Connor makes clear that she has not abandoned the "traditional prayers" of the church; she simply wants to supplement them with prayers she feels more deeply. Throughout, O'Connor bemoans her inability to love God as she feels she should. She also prays about writing, asking that a Christian sensibility would pervade her writing, and asking that God would help her remember that she is not the ultimate author of her work, but an "instrument" for the words God gives her. In his illuminating introduction, Sessions suggests that although the prayers appear "spontaneous," they were in fact astutely crafted and reveal a masterful writer at work. Both O'Connor devotees and students of the life of Christian prayer will find this slender volume, which contains a facsimile reproduction of the journal, only recently discovered, a wonderful addition to their library.

October 1, 2013
A devotional journal from the author's student days finds her grappling with issues of Christian spirituality that would soon inform her fiction. The renowned Southern novelist plainly experienced a profound sense of displacement when she moved from her native Savannah to the University of Iowa. She began as a journalism major but switched to the Iowa Writers' Workshop, all the while trying to understand and deepen her faith amid "all sorts of intellectual quackery." O'Connor began the journal (which is missing its first few pages) in 1946 and ended it abruptly a year and a half later. During that period, she also began writing what would be her first published fiction. Among the concerns she agonized over were commercialism, egoism and her insistence on her own mediocrity. Of her inspiration, she writes that God has "given me a story. Don't let me ever think, dear God, that I was anything but the instrument for Your story." The author asks for grace and to become a great writer--not for her own acclaim, but as a testament to her faith. Most of all, she asks to know God with an almost erotic ardor: "Dear Lord, please make me want You. It would be the greatest bliss. Not just to want You when I think about You but to want You all the time, to have the want driving in me, to have it like a cancer in me. It would kill me like a cancer and that would be the Fulfillment." Yet just three days later, she ends the journal with a short entry that begins, "My thoughts are so far away from God. He might as well not have made me." It ends, "There is nothing left to say of me." There's metaphysical mystery at the heart of this short journal, followed by a facsimile of her handwritten notebook, as well as the seeds of the spiritual life force that coursed through her fiction.

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October 15, 2013
Those familiar with O'Connor's oeuvre know that her strong Roman Catholic faith informs all her work. This is one reason that her recently discovered prayer journal, penned while she attended the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1947 and 1948, is such a significant find. Although extremely brief, this series of heartfelt prayers and musings offered up by one of the most gifted writers of her generation provides a uniquely intimate glimpse into the heart, soul, and mind of a deeply religious genius. Guaranteed to excite American-literature buffs and O'Connor scholars, this slim volume also includes photocopies of the original handwritten texts.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

June 15, 2013

Written in 1946-47 while O'Connor was at the Iowa Writers' Workshop and only recently discovered, this devotional journal shows the author speaking directly to God, working out both her religious sentiments and her literary aspirations. Fans will appreciate the insight into her work.

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