Take that back. I was never that miserable.
She managed to write some memorably, spectacularly miserable characters, but Flannery herself wasn't miserable. I read all 700-some odd pages of her collected letters, and she really does come across as a Buffista before Buffistas were: snarky, sly, occasionally outright goofy, and equally capable of being mockingly delighted by the awfulness of kitsch and moved by the emotion behind it; full of geeky passions and delights; interested in the world outside her town and the universe inside her own mind. Sometimes a little terse when the lupus was excruciating, but often darkly witty even then.
Eloquent as Nutty and ita combined in her cold dissection of lousy writing and lazy logic; as simultaneously passionate and wry as Cindy writing about her faith; as irritated by, occasionally resentful of her dependency on, and kindred-spirit snarkily proud and loving of her mother as erika; tender in her notation of the green and growing and fruiting products of her land as Betsy; fiendish as MM in her elaborate scorn of hypocrites and monstrous fools; loyal to her friends as any Buffista, willing to sprint around the world for them when she couldn't walk to her own front door. And able to deliver a biting, delicious quip while she was at it.
For someone with one fuck of a lot to be miserable about, O'Connor was somehow really not so miserable at all.
t /just a teeny bit defensive of my biggest literary girlcrush