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Weather: Mostly sunny. A chance of showers and thunderstorms in the morning, then showers with thunderstorms likely in the afternoon. Highs in the upper 80s. Chance of rain 80 percent.
- Daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
- Drought conditions here. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?).
- Check today’s tides in Daytona Beach (a few minutes off from Flagler Beach) here.
- Tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
The Saturday Flagler Beach Farmers Market is scheduled for 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. today at its new location on South 2nd Street, right in front of City Hall, featuring prepared food, fruit, vegetables , handmade products and local arts from more than 30 local merchants. The market is hosted by Flagler Strong, a non-profit.
Coffee With Commissioner Scott Spradley: Flagler Beach Commission Chairman Scott Spradley hosts his weekly informal town hall with coffee and doughnuts at 9 a.m. at his law office at 301 South Central Avenue, Flagler Beach. All subjects, all interested residents or non-residents welcome. The gatherings usually feature a special guest.
Grace Community Food Pantry, 245 Education Way, Bunnell, drive-thru open today from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The food pantry is organized by Pastor Charles Silano and Grace Community Food Pantry, a Disaster Relief Agency in Flagler County. Feeding Northeast Florida helps local children and families, seniors and active and retired military members who struggle to put food on the table. Working with local grocery stores, manufacturers, and farms we rescue high-quality food that would normally be wasted and transform it into meals for those in need. The Flagler County School District provides space for much of the food pantry storage and operations. Call 386-586-2653 to help, volunteer or donate.
Chatter: Between her fixation on grace and her more strident fixation on the N-word, it is often difficult to read Flannery O’Connor’s fiction and her letters. Her wit, her insights, the energy of her stories compensate and then some. I suspect that had she lived past the Mozartian age of 39, her maturity would have eventually tired of the fixations, though as a fan of Goldwater, we can only quake at what new fixations she might’ve discovered. There’s no question that she would have found Donald Trump unbearable–and voted for him enthusiastically. There’s no question that she would have been the important writer she became with or without the N-word. But I posed the question to ChatGPT anyway: If Flannery O’Connor hadn’t used the n-word, would we have ever heard of her? The answer (with my brief replies in italics):
That’s a sharp and provocative question.
Flannery O’Connor’s work is often remembered both for its brilliance (her mastery of Southern Gothic, Catholic-infused theology, grotesque characters, and ironic moral clarity) and for the discomfort it causes, particularly around her use of racist language and the racism embedded in her stories and letters.
If she hadn’t used the n-word—or more broadly, if she hadn’t engaged racism so explicitly—she would almost certainly still be known. Here’s why:
- Literary innovation: O’Connor’s reputation rests heavily on her artistry—her short stories like A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Everything That Rises Must Converge are considered among the finest in American literature, and her essays and letters also display rare wit and depth.
- The grotesque and theological vision: She carved out a distinctive voice by blending violent, grotesque events with deep theological and moral concerns. That unique combination, rather than the racial slurs themselves, is what secured her a place in the canon.
- The Southern context: Racism was deeply woven into the mid-20th-century South she was writing about. If she had avoided racist language entirely, it might have changed the texture of her work—but not necessarily its core themes. She was documenting, often critically, a social reality.
- Historical reception: Early critics and scholars celebrated her for her craftsmanship and religious depth, not for her use of racist language. The debates over her racism have come more to the fore in recent decades, as we reevaluate canonical authors through a different lens.
So—while the n-word and the racist framework of her time are part of her legacy, they are not the reason she is remembered. If anything, they complicate her legacy today rather than being what made her famous.
Would you like me to give you a sense of how critics today are reassessing O’Connor—how much the racial element weighs against the artistic one in her lasting reputation?
Sure, go ahead.
Alright — here’s the broad picture of how Flannery O’Connor is being reassessed today:
1. Her artistry is still revered.
Most critics still rank her among the greatest American short story writers of the 20th century. Her command of irony, her compressed storytelling, her ability to shock readers into moral reflection, and her unique blending of grotesque realism with theological vision remain central to why she’s taught and studied.
2. Her racism complicates, but doesn’t erase, her standing.
In her stories, the racism of her characters is often depicted unsparingly, sometimes satirically, but not always in ways that sit comfortably with modern readers. In her letters, however, O’Connor’s own attitudes toward race are more difficult to excuse: she used racial slurs casually, expressed opposition to integration, and revealed a kind of elitist Catholic detachment that didn’t amount to active hatred but certainly to prejudice.
This makes her legacy thorny: the art isn’t “racist propaganda,” but the artist herself was far from free of the racism of her time.
3. Different critical camps have emerged.
- Traditionalists: Emphasize her artistry, Catholic vision, and moral seriousness, seeing the racism as historically contextual but not essential to her work.
- Reassessors: Argue that her racism should be foregrounded because it shapes her characters, her worldview, and the Southern society she depicts.
- Radicals: Some suggest she should be de-centered in the canon, or at least taught alongside critical discussions of race, rather than celebrated without caveats.
4. Institutional debates reflect the tension.
In 2020, Loyola University Maryland removed O’Connor’s name from a dormitory after students raised concerns about her racist language in her letters. At the same time, major publishers continue to reissue her works, and she remains a fixture in college syllabi, but increasingly with added context.
5. Her place in the canon is shifting, not disappearing.
Where once she was treated almost reverentially as a Southern Catholic genius, she’s now often taught in tension: Yes, brilliant writer. Yes, deeply flawed human being. Yes, her work embodies the contradictions of the American South.
In other words: her racism has become part of the conversation about why she’s important, not the reason she’s remembered in the first place.
👉 So, in response to your first question: if she hadn’t used the n-word, she’d still be famous—but the modern reassessment of her legacy would look very different, and perhaps less fraught.
Would you like me to sketch what teaching O’Connor looks like today—how professors tend to balance her literary brilliance with her racism in the classroom?
No.
—P.T.
The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
September 2025
Flagler County Government Tax and Budget Hearing
Nar-Anon Family Group
Palm Coast Charter Review Committee Meeting
Bunnell City Commission Meeting
Palm Coast City Council Workshop
Flagler County School Board Information Workshop
Flagler County Affordable Housing Committee Meeting
Book Dragons, the Kids’ Book Club, at Flagler Beach Public Library
Budgeting by Values: A Virtual Class to Learn Budgeting Skills
NAACP Flagler Branch General Membership Meeting
Flagler County School Board Meeting
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
River to Sea Transportation Planning Organization (TPO) Meeting
Separation Chat: Open Discussion
The Circle of Light A Course in Miracles Study Group
For the full calendar, go here.
About bad taste, I don’t know, because taste is a relative matter. There are some who will find almost everything in bad taste, from spitting in the street to Christ’s association with Mary Magdalen. Fiction is supposed to represent life, and the fiction writer has to use as many aspects of life as are necessary to make his total picture convincing. The fiction writer doesn’t state, he shows, renders. It’s the nature of fiction and it can’t be helped. If you’re writing about the vulgar, you have to prove they’re vulgar by showing them at it. The two worst sins of bad taste in fiction are pornography and sentimentality. One is too much sex and the other too much sentiment. You have to have enough of either to prove your point but no more. Of course there are some fiction writers who feel they have to retire to the bathroom or the bed with every character every time he takes himself to either place. Unless such a trip is used to further the story, I feel it is in bad taste. In the second chapter of my novel, I have such a scene but I felt it was vital to the meaning. I don’t think you have to worry much about bad taste with a competent writer, because he uses everything for a reason. The reader may not always see the reason. But it’s when sex or scurrility are used for their own sakes, that they are in bad taste.
–From Flannery O’Connor’s letter to Eileen Hall, March 10, 1956.
Dennis C Rathsam says
The economy is ticking up, gas is the cheapest its been in 4 years, & woke is 80% dead. And as far as Cracker Barrel, the old man in the chair is a cracker. The food is good, comes out hot. As for Olive Garden, they serve crap…. SALT is thier main ingredient. No real Itailians eats there. Mr Clay, You don’t know where to eat.
YankeeExPat says
Dennis C
The reason the Food at Cracker Barrell is hot is because it is pre made and microwaved before being served to the customers.
might as well get a taquito from the roller grill at Racetrack, as it is just as much “Southern Cuisine “
Pogo says
@As stated
A word from the dead, on her own behalf.
https://www.google.com/search?q=flannery+o'connor
“Beware of the man who denounces woman writers; his penis is tiny and he cannot spell.”
― Erica Jong
Sherry says
After those “pesky judges” TRY to uphold “Law and Order” it will be interesting to see if the “Crooked and Corrupt Supreme Court” actually anoints trump as “Lord Dictator”!
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has audaciously claimed virtually unlimited power to bypass Congress and impose sweeping taxes on foreign products.
Now a federal appeals court has thrown a roadblock in his path.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled Friday that Trump went too far when he declared national emergencies to justify imposing sweeping import taxes on almost every country on earth. The ruling largely upheld a May decision by a specialized federal trade court in New York. But the 7-4 appeals court decision tossed out a part of that ruling striking down the tariffs immediately, allowing his administration time to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The ruling was a big setback for Trump, whose erratic trade policies have rocked financial markets, paralyzed businesses with uncertainty and raised fears of higher prices and slower economic growth.
Skibum says
The latest self-induced missteps by the idiots within the Cracker Barrel corporation just prove to me once again that they have no idea what the hell they are doing as they continue to cause more and more damage to their own brand. Cracker Barrel used to be our go-to breakfast restaurant until a couple of years ago when the boneheads made one too many changes to their legacy breakfast menu… and completely ruined it!
The straw that broke the camel’s back so to speak for me was when they absolutely destroyed their legacy hashbrown casserole recipe by going to rehydrated, freeze dried potatoes! I wanted to vomit the first time I ordered breakfast after that horrible taste in my mouth, and could not even finish what I had on my plate. After calling the manager over, thinking someone in the kitchen made a mistake when preparing it, she sadly reported that I was not the first customer to complain about the change, and told me it was a corporate decision that was implemented in all of the chain’s restaurants.
Since then, after a succession of horrible changes, I unfortunately now have to call Cracker Barrel the Bottom of the Barrel. Many other longtime customers have also gone to social media to lambast the chain for ruining it:
https://www.reddit.com/r/CrackerBarrel/comments/165q4yr/hash_brown_casserole/?rdt=44304
So Dennis, you go right ahead and gobble up the garbage at Bottom of the Barrel just like you gobble up the daily garbage from your maga savior, your dear leader, the felon-in-chief sexual predator of women and young girls. You obviously have no better taste in restaurants than you do politicians… go figure!
Wage slave says
The guardians just make up lies and fake crisis then go play golf.
Prices are up on everything! Check our consumer or producer price index. It’s not going down! Energy, groceries, cars, utilities, insurance, education, medical! No it’s not going the right direction still going up. Consumers have only taken on 20% of the tariff cost so far but that will be 100% in the coming months. Republicans Economic terrorism!!
Cracker Barrel? Who cares release the files! Pedo protectors!
Dennis C Rathsam says
My breakfast was always good, hot eggs dont come from a microwave, niether do pancakes…. You picked the taters….. With so many places to go for breakfast go elsewhere. Every place is cutting corners to save a buck not just Cracker Barrel. Kids enjoy it & the service is top shelf.
BillC says
@ Dennis C “No real Itailians eats there.” You can’t even spell Italian… some food expert!
Sherry says
WOW! WOW! WOW!
So many so easily distracted by this “mountain out of a molehill” Cracker Barrel story. Meanwhile, trump is laughing as he rubs his disgusting “sexually assaulting” hands together while he plots his next move to completely destroy our Democratic Republic! Pay no attention to the “fascist” goings on behind that curtain!
How’s about reading how “Climate Change” is rapidly progressing while trump says “Drill Baby Drill”? Or, how you are likely swimming in feces while trump put the brakes on the Biden Infrastructure legislation that would have helped clean up our waters? What? Not infantile enough for you? No wonder so many voted for that “Lying,Twice Impeached, Sexual Abusing, Convicted Felon”!!!
Laurel says
Yeah, can you imagine that the President of the United States takes the time to whine about a logo? He should go back to plastering the Oval Office with tasteless, gaudy, gold garbage. So much to do…