Today is Flannery O'Connor's birthday.   The author of A Good Man is Hard to Find, and other classics of Southern literature, would have turned 91 years old.  

Here is O'Connor -- in a charming and fascinating 9 minute, 19 second audio clip -- talking about the Southern Grotesque tradition, and explaining what she says what she answers "whenever I'm asked why Southern writers particularly have a penchant for writing about freaks":

Flannery O'Connor Reads "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Literature"