Monday morning Flannery

Why is it almost poignant to read the biography of Flannery O'Connor (by Brad Gooch), a woman writer whose lack of sentimentality sometimes reads like a deficiency?

But who raised peacocks?

And who responded to a certain fellow Catholic literary luminary's conclusion that the Eucharist was "a symbol, and a very good one too," with a "well, if it's a symbol, then to hell with it" ?

And who said that she'd rather die for her Catholic faith than taking a "bath" for Her at Lourdes?

The poetry of Flannery O'Connor, I suspect, is sealed in that statement she made about herself that she really is "a hill-billy Thomist."