About the Episode

The first feature-length documentary with full access to the Flannery O’Connor trust, Flannery explores the life and legacy of the literary icon with never-before-seen archival footage, original animations, O’Connor’s newly discovered personal letters and excerpts from her stories read by actress Mary Steenburgen. Featuring new, original interviews with Mary Karr, Hilton Als, Alice Walker, Tobias Wolff, Tommy Lee Jones, Alice McDermott and others, alongside archival interviews of friends and family.

A devout Catholic who collected peacocks and walked with crutches due to lupus, O’Connor’s illness, religion and experience as a Southerner informed her provocative, sharply aware stories about outsiders, prophets and sinners seeking truth and redemption. With her distinctive Southern Gothic writing style and characteristic wit and irony, the film investigates how O’Connor didn’t shy away from examining timely themes of racism, religion, socioeconomic disparity and more. Over the course of her short but prolific writing career, she published two novels, 32 short stories, numerous columns and commentaries, and won many awards, including the National Book Award and three O. Henry Awards, the annual award given to short stories of exceptional merit.

“As one of the best short story writers the nation has ever produced, O’Connor holds a mirror up to our contemporary moment, navigating the issues of racism, religious faith and disability that still haunt us today,” said co-director Mark Bosco, S.J.

“O’Connor managed to see the humor and the ridiculousness of society while documenting its injustices and imagining moments of redemption,” added co-director Elizabeth Coffman.

American Masters: Flannery is the winner of the first Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film. Ken Burns called the film, “an extraordinary documentary that allows us to follow the creative process of one of our country’s greatest writers.”

Features

Clip | Why did Flannery O’Connor detest “Gone with the Wind”?

Living with a Peacock by Flannery O’Connor

Clip | Why are Flannery O’Connor’s stories so timely?

6 Books to deepen your understanding of Flannery O’Connor

Flannery is a production of Long Distance Educational Media in association with THIRTEEN’s American Masters.

About American Masters
Launched in 1986 on PBS, American Masters has earned 28 Emmy Awards — including 10 for Outstanding Non-Fiction Series and five for Outstanding Non-Fiction Special — 14 Peabodys, an Oscar, three Grammys, two Producers Guild Awards, and many other honors. To further explore the lives and works of masters past and present, American Masters offers streaming video of select films, outtakes, filmmaker interviews, the American Masters Podcast, educational resources and more. The series is a production of THIRTEEN PRODUCTIONS LLC for WNET and also seen on the WORLD channel. The series is available for streaming simultaneously on all station-branded PBS platforms, including PBS.org and the PBS Video app, which is available on iOS, Android, Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Chromecast. PBS station members can view episodes via Passport (contact your local PBS station for details).

About WNET
WNET is America’s flagship PBS station: parent company of New York’s THIRTEEN and WLIW21 and operator of NJTV, the statewide public media network in New Jersey. Through its new ALL ARTS multi-platform initiative, its broadcast channels, three cable services (THIRTEEN PBSKids, Create and World) and online streaming sites, WNET brings quality arts, education and public affairs programming to more than five million viewers each month. WNET produces and presents a wide range of acclaimed PBS series, including NATURE, GREAT PERFORMANCES, AMERICAN MASTERS, PBS NEWSHOUR WEEKEND, and the nightly interview program AMANPOUR AND COMPANY. In addition, WNET produces numerous documentaries, children’s programs, and local news and cultural offerings, as well as multi-platform initiatives addressing poverty and climate. Through THIRTEEN Passport and WLIW Passport, station members can stream new and archival THIRTEEN, WLIW and PBS programming anytime, anywhere.

- One critic called her perhaps the most naturally gifted of American novelists: Flannery O'Connor.

(light music) - A Good Man Is Hard To Find.

- Wise Blood.

- Mystery and Manners.

- Everything That Rises Must Converge.

- She's one of the best writers of the 20th century.

I've read everything that she's written.

- Flannery O'Connor is one of the writers least afraid to look at the darkness.

- 'We've had an accident!' the children screamed in a frenzy of delight.

'But nobody's killed,' June Star said with disappointment.'

- You think it's this bitter old alcoholic who's writing these really funny, dark stories, and then you find out she's a woman and that she's devoutly religious.

(light music) Flannery O'Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia into an Irish Catholic community.

- You get someone who's writing out of a specific time, civic set of manners.

What she found was mystery.

I think that a serious fiction writer describes an action only in order to reveal a mystery.

- How was she going to find the stories?

Cause she knows she needs to tell.

and how is she going to tell them?

(light music) (typewriter clicking) - I do not want to be lonely all my life, but people only make us lonelier by reminding us of God.

- It's unbelievable.

- She was so sick.

- She never stopped writing.

- It was the illness that made her the writer that she is.

I feel that the grotesquity of my own work is intensified by the fact that I'm a servant and a Catholic writer.

- She's really funny.

She's often funny in a very dire way.

- She ignored the disapproval of her religion.

She ignored the disapproval of her fiction.

She just saw the mystery of the craziness.

(light music) (bird cooing)