Prof. Ralph Wood (pictured above), from his book, Flannery O’Connor And The Christ-Haunted South:
O’Connor is reputed to have altered, with her typical candor, the final word of the dominical saying found in John 8:32: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.” Even when rejecting the Gospel, we remain irremediably defined and de-centered by it. Hence O’Connor’s celebrated reply when asked why Southern fiction contains such a surfeit of freaks: “I say it is because we are still able to recognize one.” In the Bible belt, there is a transcendent norm for measuring anomalies. The biblical plumbline reveals that the real deviant is not the shouting street preacher but the thoroughly well-adjusted man, the completely self-controlled woman, the utterly successful American.
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