You can't read Flannery O'Connor with spring fever

I recently pulled out Flannery O'Connor's Everything That Rises Must Converge to reread. It was a rainy February, damp and chilly in an endless cycle it seemed, and the stories fit. I'd first read this book in high school (it was THE book that cemented my going into college as an English major) and was amazed at the flow, the tight stories, the spot-on characters with deadly demises.

I'd also taught this book in Southern Literature, and my classes, esp. the ones at Belmont Abbey, had a lot to say about it. So all that's to say, I thought I knew this book.

Whoa, this book is depressing. Let's just say, things do not end well. Men have problems with their mothers and women have problems with their egos. "The Greenleafs" matched my mood one day, "Everything that Rises Must Converge" another. I was reading it differently this time, looking for the writing clues, using it as a learning tool. Yes, it was depressing but beautifully depressing like a scarred desert landscape (or something).

But then a redbud tree bloomed, and that was it. Forget the scarred landscape. I can't read Flannery O'Connor when I have spring fever.