The Catcher in the Rye, by J. D. Salinger, and Rabbit, Run, by John Updike, also explore the search for meaning in a seemingly empty and cruel world. Salinger's novel was published in 1952 and is particularly interesting since its main character, Holden Caulfield, is a teenager. Updike's novel was published several years after O'Connor's story. Both of these novels are set in the Northeast, rather than the South.

James Joyce published several stories and novels which depict religion quite differently than do O'Connor's stories. His novel Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and some of his stories in Dubliners often depict religion as oppressive.

"The Church and the Fiction Writer" is included in Mystery and Manners, a collection of O'Connor's essays and prose. This piece explains O'Connor's concern with what she called the "added dimension" of religious spirituality...