The Return of Flannery and Chesterton

By popular demand, the audio of Flannery O'Connor and G.K. Chesterton have returned. They can be downloaded from the links below.

Chesterton on Canada
O'Connor on Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Literature
O'Connor reads A Good Man is Hard to Find

The O'Connor audios are also available at Black Market Kidneys, where they can be found as mp3s. Thanks, guys!

Chesterton on Canada

As a follow-up to the last Chesterton snippet, here's a rare and more substantial piece. Here, G. K. Chesterton gives an address to the Canadian Authors' Association, on December 31st, 1933.

Note: File has been re-uploaded as of January 15, 2010

Chesterton on Canada (12 min, 34 sec)

Chesterton!

After the success of the audio recording of Flannery O'Connor's voice, I've decided to try and put up rare recordings of other famous literary figures. For the most part, these are very hard to find, so bear with me. First up, Chesterton. This is from Holy Cross College, Dec. 1930:

STUDENT - Mr. Chesterton, since you are one of the foremost crusaders in the modern world of letters, we wish to adopt you into the humble ranks of the Holy Cross Crusaders.

CHESTERTON -I have to thank you for this very great honor and I do so with all my heart. I can only say that I am not much of a crusader but at least I am not a Mohammedan and many people will testify to the fact. I should like to take this opportunity of thanking you all for your enormous kindness, especially Father Earl for having received me so hospitably today.

Student Audio

Chesterton Audio

Flannery!

Here's something you won't hear every day. Flannery O'Connor, a year before her death at 39 from Lupus disease, gave a lecture at Notre Dame. It consisted of a short talk on some aspects of the grotesque in southern fiction (along with some insightful remarks on what it means to be a Catholic writer) and a reading of her short story A Good Man Is Hard To Find. I went looking for a recording of the talk, and found that the only place it was available was if you ordered a copy from ND's archives, which was way too expensive. After a bit of researching, I found an obscure internet radio station that had obtained a copy and had broadcasted it a while back. I streamed the radio episode from their website with Realplayer, recorded the lecture with an audio capture program, converted the .wav file to .wma (mp3 was too lossy) and uploaded it to the internet.

Anyway, for those of you interested, here's The Morning Oil exclusive of one of Catholicism's best writers ever reading her own work (you've got to love that accent).

Note: The files have been re-uploaded as of January 15, 2010

1. Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction
2. A Good Man is Hard to Find

Also, check out the recording of Chesterton here.