Today is the 49th anniversary of the death of Mary Flannery O'Connor. She was 39 years old when she died.
Last year we took a weekend trip to Savannah, GA. Yes, plenty of people from here take day trips there but we wanted to relax & see something of the city. One of the things we saw was the Flannery O'Connor House. It was interesting in the same way all the homes of historical personages in general & writers in particular are. To me, very interesting. To you, maybe not so much, maybe plenty.
Edward O'Connor, her father, was diagnosed & eventually died from lupus, as did Flannery herself many year later. In between she wrote some of the creepier southern gothic fiction. You can get your feet wet with "Everything That Rises Must Converge" a piece that gets timelier ever year (& if you think it doesn't spend a weekend in a rural southern town), the title story of short story collection. Then dive in head first with "A Good Man is Hard to Find", again the title story of a collection.
Flannery O'Conor has two other celebrity connections. The second: her work was the subject of Tommy Lee Jones' senior thesis when he was at Harvard, but more interesting (to me anyhow), she was a YouTube star before YouTube with "Do You Reverse?" (it takes a bit to load, I have no idea why). She spent her final years raising poultry, including exotic peafowl, ostriches & emus. I have been thinking I would like some peahens for a while now, maybe this year.
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