We always read in the context of other media that we are exposed to, and in my case what immediately sprung to mind was the docuseries Woodstock 99: the violence broiling just underneath the surface, ready to erupt at any moment; the entitlement that no one bothers to offer an excuse for; the tragedies that are never mourned or brought to justice. In O’Conner’s day, northern critics rubbernecked at her “southern” violence (I’m paraphrasing from the introduction); in Woodstock 99, the violence was chalked up to a Gen X sense of entitlement. But I do see similarities between the two and that brings me to my point: Flannery O’Conner is not merely a Southern writer nor a Catholic writer, but an American writer. Her “sardonic wit”—which, as far as I can tell, is an acknowledgement of the pitifulness, irony, and hypocrisy in her characters—makes me think millennial Twitter humor comes from an older American tradition of recognizing a problem and laugh-crying at our inability to change the tides of cultural influence. Finally, I see the connections between O’Conner and Shirley Jackson as outsiders caught in the web of small town tradition, illness, and a challenge to the popular imagination of 1950s womanhood.