Flannery at the Grammys: Flannery O'Connor and Popular Culture (with Irwin Streight)

In this episode, Prof. Irwin Streight (Royal Military College of Canada) discusses the unexpected legacy of short story writer Flannery O'Connor on popular singers and songwriters such as Bruce Springsteen, U2, Lucinda Williams, and Nick Cave.


Works mentioned (in order of appearance):

Lucinda Williams, “Get Right With God”, from Essence (Lost Highway, 2001).
Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, dir. by Andrew Douglas (UK, USA, 2003).
Borat, dir. by Larry Charles (USA, 2006).
Irwin Streight, Flannery at the Grammys (University Press of Mississippi, 2024).
Bruce Springsteen, The River (Columbia, 1980).
Bruce Springsteen, Nebraska (Columbia, 1982).
Bruce Springsteen, Devils & Dust (Columbia, 2005).
Bruce Springsteen, The Ghost of Tom Joad (Columbia, 1995).
Bruce Springsteen, Western Stars (Columbia, 2019).
Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run (Simon & Schuster, 2016).
U2, The Joshua Tree (Island, 1987).
Mary Gauthier, “Wheel Inside the Wheel”, from Mercy Now (UMG Recordings, 2005).
Nick Cave, Carnage (Goliath, 2021).
Nick Cave, And the Ass Saw the Angel (Harper Collins, 1989).
Mark McGurl, The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing (Harvard University Press, 2009).

O'Connor’s stories mentioned:

From A Good Man is Hard to Find (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1955):
- “A Good Man Is Hard to Find”
- “Good Country People”

From Everything That Rises Must Converge (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1965):
- “Greenleaf”
- “Parker’s Back”
- “Revelation”
- “Judgement Day”
- “Everything That Rises Must Converge”


Podcast intro and outro credits: Shield, Leroy, Taylor Holmes, and Robert W Service. The shooting of Dan McGrew. 1923. Audio. Retrieved from the Library of Congress.