Light On Dark Water

Here's an interesting piece at First Things by Micah Mattix comparing Flannery O'Connor and Walker Percy, and concluding that O'Connor is the better fiction writer. I agree with many of the specific observations made by the author, but I have two objections:

One: O'Connor and Percy are so different, and they're attempting such different things, that to pronounce one superior to the other seems unwarranted.

Two: I disagree that by normal critical standards O'Connor is superior. It's true that O'Connor's plots have a narrative focus and intensity that Percy's don't, but so do Dashiell Hammett's, and in my opinion he doesn't rank with either of them. Percy's narratives are certainly more diffuse, but they almost have to be, as he is dealing with broad and complex philosophical ideas through his characters, while O'Connor is interested in the moment when God's grace strikes like lightning.

And I disagree that either O'Connor's characters or her plots are more fully realized. She has only a few main types: the ignorant and half-crazy fanatic who is nevertheless more right than wrong; the smug skeptic with a hollow and useless education; the fierce and upright, often self-righteous, old lady. And her plots are usually some variation of that lightning strike. I'm not saying this as criticism of her, because she used these somewhat limited tools to produce extremely important work. But I wouldn't say she is, speaking broadly, the better novelist.

I wouldn't want to be without either of them (which, I should note, Mattix is not suggesting, at all). It's significant that their work is so different, and yet in each case so thoroughly animated and informed by the Catholic faith.