Over the weekend, I finished Flannery O'Connor's short story collection, A Good Man is Hard to Find. I'd read two of the stories for a class I took several years ago, and thought I'd read some of her other stuff. Thank goodness this wasn't a novel, because I think I would have needed some kind of intervention. The stories are really good, don't get me wrong, but Ms. O'Connor is pretty dark. If someone doesn't die in the story, it's because they've been swindled or hosed by someone else.
I think my favorite story in the collection was the final one, "The Displaced Person," in part because there's a peacock, and the description is amazing:
The priest let his eyes wander toward the birds. They had reached the middle of the lawn. The cock stopped suddenly and curving his neck backwards, he raised his tail and spread it with a shimmering timbrous noise. Tiers of small pregnant suns floated in a green-gold haze over his head. The priest stood transfixed, his jaw slack. Mrs. McIntyre wondered where she had ever seen such an idiotic old man. "Christ will come like that!" he said in a loud gay voice and wiped his hand over his mouth and stood there, gaping.
