Since O'Connor read so widely, one can find without real effort evidence that she was influenced by Henry James, James Joyce, Sherwood Anderson, and any of the long list of modern short story writers. She owned many collections by a number of fiction writers, in addition to six titles by William Faulkner, nine titles by Joseph Conrad, and fifteen by the French Catholic author, Francois Mauriac. She owned and read works by a number of different contemporary theologians and philosophers as well as literary critics.

Everything that enlarged her thought was grist for her mill, along with any number of examples from popular culture that created the raw material of the society on which she could work, transmuting it into a testimony to Christ or better, to His absence from the scene.