Wise Blood, Flannery O’Connor’s
astonishing and haunting first novel, is a classic of twentieth-century
literature. Focused on the story of Hazel Motes, a twenty-two-year-old
caught in an unending struggle against his innate, desperate fate, this
tale of redemption, retribution, false prophets, blindness, blindings, and
wisdoms gives us one of the most riveting characters in twentieth-century
American fiction.
From Publisher's Page at
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Wise Blood is a comedy with a fierce, Old Testament
soul. Flannery O'Connor has no truck with such newfangled notions as
psychology. Driven by forces outside their control, her characters are as
one-dimensional--and mysterious--as figures on a frieze. Hazel Motes, for
instance, has the temperament of a martyr, even though he spends most of
the book trying to get God to go away. As a child he's convinced that "the
way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin." When that doesn't work, and when he
returns from Korea determined "to be converted to nothing instead of
evil," he still can't go anywhere without being mistaken for a preacher.
(Not that the hat and shiny glare-blue suit help.) No matter what Hazel
does, Jesus moves "from tree to tree in the back of his mind, a wild
ragged figure motioning him to turn around and come off into the dark..."
Adrift after four years in the service, Hazel takes a train to the city of
Taulkinham, buys himself a "rat-colored car," and sets about preaching on
street corners for the Church Without Christ, "where the blind don't see
and the lame don't walk and what's dead stays that way." Along the way he
meets Enoch Emery, who's only 18 years old but already works for the city,
as well the blind preacher Asa Hawks and his illegitimate daughter,
Sabbath Lily. (Her letter to an advice column: "Dear Mary, I am a bastard
and a bastard shall not enter the kingdom of heaven as we all know, but I
have this personality that makes boys follow me. Do you think I should
neck or not?") Subsequent events involve a desiccated, centuries-old
dwarf--Gonga the Giant Jungle Monarch--and Hazel's nemesis, Hoover Shoats,
who starts the rival Church of Christ Without Christ. If you think these
events don't end happily, you might be right.
Wise Blood is a savage satire of America's secular, commercial culture, as
well as the humanism it holds so dear ("Dear Sabbath," Mary Brittle writes
back, "Light necking is acceptable, but I think your real problem is one
of adjustment to the modern world. Perhaps you ought to re-examine your
religious values to see if they meet your needs in Life.") But the book's
ultimate purpose is Religious, with a capital R--no metaphors, no
allusions, just the thing itself in all its fierce glory. When Hazel
whispers "I'm not clean," for instance, O'Connor thinks he is perfectly
right. For readers unaccustomed to holding low comedy and high seriousness
in their heads at the same time, all this can come as something of a
shock. Who else could offer an allegory about free will, redemption, and
original sin right alongside the more elemental pleasure of witnessing
Enoch Emery dress up in a gorilla suit? Nobody else, that's who. And
that's OK. More than one Flannery O'Connor in this world might show us
more truth than we could bear.
from amazon.com (Mary Park)
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