who the heck is flannery o'connor?

prior to leaving for what i am making out to be our month-long excursion, i made the trip to borders to get a book for the plane because, God knows, i didn't have a thing to take with me.

i happened across the book, "the life you save may be your own -- an american pilgrimage" compiled by paul elie. i flipped over to the back cover to read the description, which you can read fully if you click on the link above in my title. it had me interested, but mine didn't (admittedly) contain any pictures...turned it to the spine and saw photographs of thomas merton, dorothy day, walker percy and flannery o'connor.

you already know that by merton & day alone, the book would be mine. oh yes, it would be mine. but i was intrigued by the two mentioned that i hadn't heard of before. can you imagine? where are my voracious reader pallies to hit me with a wet noodle? i am not too far into this book, but i am already enamored by this read. allow me to provide you with a bit of it so you can be intrigued, too...

The child had been to the fair before, and now, seeing it in her mind's eye, she longs to be there, among the "faded looking pictures on the canvas of people in tights, with stiff stretched composed faces like the faces of the martyrs" -- and now, in a way at once proud and pious, she longs to be a saint or martyr herself. Sainthood is out, she reflects, because "she was born a liar and slothful and she sassed her mother" and "was eaten up with the sin of Pride, the worst one" -- but she thinks "she could be a martyr if they killed her quick."

is this a gal after my own heart or what? i will probably post more quotes as i go along, but that one made me giggle. out loud. on a plane.

will now submit (humbly) to wet noodling.