by Molly (’15)

I have a crush on Flannery O’Connor.

No, not that kind of crush. A literary crush. We all have one, right? That one particular author who makes us so excited we could kiss the book, or whose sentence structure makes us melt a little inside? Even though literary crushes are common, people seem to think my “thing” for Flannery takes it to the next level. Maybe it’s because I squeal whenever her name is said, or because my eyes go wide when the words “Southern” and “fiction” are used in the same sentence, or because I want to raise peacocks on a dairy farm in Georgia instead of going to college like I’m supposed to.

I don’t know what these feelings are, but they are very strong. This happens to me a lot, but I have never had such intense feelings for a person whom I’ve never even met, whom I have only grown to know through biographies and letters and stories, a person whom I know I’ll never meet due to my cruel placement in the twenty-first century.

The weirdest part is that I can’t even explain to myself why I like her so much. You’d think it would be her fiction, and I’m not denying that her fiction is spectacular (that is such an understatement), but there must be some greater pull. All I can do is guess, but I think my love for Flannery O’Connor stems from the fact that she has opened my mind so much that it hurts. She has introduced me to religion and its importance, removing me from the annoying close-minded atheist position I held previously. This isn’t to say I’m suddenly a militant Catholic, but I’m less sure of the world than I was before, which I find to be a positive change. What she’s done is forced me to think. Flannery, although so removed in time and space, has had a huge impact on my life.

Plus she’s really pretty.