flannery o’connor. a southern gothic legend is hard to find.
“She could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.” – A Temple of the Holy Ghost, Flannery O’Connor
More than any other American fiction writer of her time, her influence has gone beyond literature to the realm of American popular culture. Tommy Lee Jones, who wrote his college thesis on O’Connor, seemed to be directing under her spell in his film “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.” Randy Newman and Bruce Springsteen have both recorded albums that sound like background music to her world; Springsteen admitted he wrote and recorded his album “Nebraska” while reading O’Connor. The chilling ending of “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” is echoed in the title song from that album. In O’Connor’s story, two escaped convicts murder a family, including a grandmother, in cold blood..
