Pleasant surprise to see my favorite author on HN! If you're interested in her writing as opposed to what she read (what this article if focused on), I'd recommend starting with her short story collection A Good Man Is Hard To Find and Other Stories [0], which includes my favorite short story, the eponymous A Good Man Is Hard To Find.
My favorite is "Good Country People." A fable, in some sense, for those of us who sometimes find that we're a little more confident than we have a right to be.
I'll put in a strong second for this collection. My favorite, however, is "Everything That Rises Must Converge".
She was also constantly refactoring her work. She rewrote, and rewrote, and rewrote. And ultimately produced some of the most remarkable stories ever written in English.
Also fun - while she sets the bar for being crisp and clear and precise and economical, her Georgia accent was apparently so strong that her editor had trouble understanding her when they spoke. She's just the best.
My favorite story of hers is "The Geranium". This was the first story she published and part of her MFA thesis. This story must have held a special place for her because she revisited it in her last years and republished in drastically rewritten form as "Judgment Day", which was her last short story.
I haven't read her stories since I was in my late teens/early 20's. I didn't understand them at all then but I sensed that they weren't just trying to be weird and had some deeper point that I was missing.
I suppose if I gave them another shot I'd understand them better.
Flannery O'Connor is great. I'm curious if anyone else heard about her through the TV show Lost. Some of my favorite parts of that show were the references.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Good_Man_Is_Hard_to_Find_and...