Thomas Merton would play this over and over laughing so hard that tears ran down his cheeks

"When Flannery died, Merton was not exaggerating his estimate of her worth when he said he would not compare her with such good writers as Hemingway, Porter and Sartre but rather with “someone like Sophocles … I write her name with honor, for all the truth and all the craft with which she shows man’s fall and his dishonor.”"