The reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that critics often misunderstand or misjudge the true essence of artistic works.
In this quote, Flannery O'Connor implies that reviewers may focus on superficial or inappropriate aspects of a work, missing its deeper meanings and intentions. This highlights the disconnect that can exist between creators and critics, emphasizing that the relationship between art and interpretation can sometimes lead to misrepresentation of the artist's true message or craft.
In practice
In a creative writing workshop, when discussing the impact of reviews, one might quote O'Connor to underline the importance of understanding an author's intent before passing judgment.
Let me make no bones about it: I write from the standpoint of Christian orthodoxy. Nothing is more repulsive to me than the idea of myself setting up a little universe of my own choosing and propounding a little immoralistic message. I write with a solid belief in all the Christian dogmas.
What people donβt realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.
If you live today, you breath in nihilism ... it's the gas you breathe. If I hadn't had the Church to fight it with or to tell me the necessity of fighting it, I would be the stinkingest logical positivist you ever saw right now.
There won't be any biographies of me because, for only one reason, lives spent between the house and the chicken yard do not make exciting copy.
Knowing who you are is good for one generation only. You haven't the foggiest idea where you stand now or who you are
He loved her because it was his nature to do so, but there were times when he could not endure her love for him. There were times when it became nothing but pure idiot mystery.
With my writing, I try to do stuff I have not done before. Each time I sit down, I want to have a new experience, and by extension, I want my readers to have a different experience.
There's a half-conscious state you enter when you're actually generating prose, and you are simply a better writer in that place. In fact it's the only place where you even are a writer.
I love that because that's what I'm supposed to be doing - whether it's accepted b everybody or not. I'm supposed to be pushing that envelope and trying new things. And people are supposed to say, Hov, you might have went too far.
An artist's concern is to capture beauty wherever he finds it.
Art made tongue-tied by authority.
A young man is afraid of his demon and puts his hand over the demon's mouth sometimes and speaks for him. And the things the young man says are very rarely poetry.
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