Comparing Southern writers to Dostoevsky

Check out the really interesting premise of Benjamin Saxton's thesis at Rice University. He analyzes the "Southern grotesque" of Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers, and William Faulkner and argues that they were influenced by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Put very simply, both the Southern writers and the Russian writer used "grotesque" misfits to illuminate truths about the world at large. Saxton takes Southern literature to a whole new level!