Sign Language: Reading Flannery O'Connor's Graphic Narrative by Ruth Reiniche (review)

Drawing from unpublished manuscripts, a wide-ranging knowledge of art history, and O'Connor's own substantial interest in the visual arts, Ruth Reiniche provides a reading of O'Connor's fiction based on the pictorial quality and visual constructions found within her texts. Shifting the focus from O'Connor the cartoonist to an analysis of Wise Blood, Reiniche points out that the "business of exaggerating cultural atrocities has always been the business of cartoonists" (43) and begins to trace other influences: O'Connor's "verbal snapshots" (119) are often announced by a "burst of light" (149) and framed by a window, or are narrated as if in the process of being framed from behind a camera—Rayber's face as seen framed by a window, the aerial view of a street from a high-rise office window, the sight of Bishop in his too-large pajama bottoms with the string tied around his neck to hold them up.