Wise Blood: A Novel (FSG Classics)

My grandson advised me that he needed this book for a summer reading project. I tried to get it at the library and couldn't get it for a few weeks. So I went to my next best thing!!! the store had the book and I received it in a few days!!!Great job!!!Thanks for always being there for me.

Not good at all. The way this is written reminds me of a freshman girl in high school making her first attempt at writing a novel, and trying to be "controversial" at the same time. I don't have anything against 14-yr-old girls, but they shouldn't be writing novels. Nice try, but epic fail.

In her letter (O’Connor was a prolific letter writer) responding to reader Ben Griffith (3/54), O’Connor remarked halfway through about Wise Blood: A Novel (FSG Classics)this way: “…it is entirely Redemption-centered in thought….perhaps it is hard to see because H. Motes is such an admirable nihilist.” And, indeed, it would seem redemption is the theme, as in the end Motes does come back as a corpse to his landlady Mrs. Flood, who sums things up succinctly: “Well, Mr. Motes, I see you’ve come home!” Of course, as readers discover after a bit of consideration, there’s more to see here in addition to and mostly in support of the redemption idea.

For Motes’ return concludes a rough journey that turns on the conflict of free will vs. determinism, but which also allows O’Connor to address other concerns, among them the question of what constitutes truth, blind faith vs. empiricism, humankind’s spiritual aspiration vs. animalism, human isolation even in a crowded world, and violence.

Some of these strike the reader immediately and on nearly every page of the novella, most particularly the conflict between free will and determinism. For example, Motes is in full rebellion against religion in which he had been inculcated since boyhood. Returning home from war a wounded vet, he rejects religion and even tries establishing and proselytizing his own anti-religion, the Church Without Christ. To no avail, though, as to everybody who sees him, he appears marked as a preacher. The suit and hat certainly don’t help much, nor his constant ranting about Truth. He cannot seem, no matter how hard he tries, to escape his fate; it has been ordained for him. The Truth he espouses is the empirical: what we see, feel, and experience in our temporal world. This doesn’t allow for religious trappings, like a soul, redemption, or salvation, The Truth to the vast majority, including O’Connor.

O’Connor paints a pretty bleak picture of Taulkinham, barren lands, dirty streets, confining rooms, and a preponderance of pigs roaming the landscape, not to mention a citizenry that often feels alien in its grotesqueness. Among these folks are Asa Hawks (the ersatz blind preacher), Sabbath Lily Hawks (the 15-year-old daughter who sets about to seduce Motes, providing a sin for redemption), Onnie Jay Holy (the charlatan preacher who steals and corrupts Motes’ church and Motes’ concept of Truth, prompting another sin by Motes), Mrs. Flood (the landlady), and Enoch Emery, the 18-old-boy in search of human companionship.

Enoch lives up to his name in his dedication to Motes, in spite of Motes constantly ignoring and outrightly rejecting him. More, though, Enoch aspires to one thing: friendship. Pitched out as a child and shunned by Taulkinham, he bemoans the town as thoroughly unfriendly. Warm companionship is purely aspirational for Enoch, for his Wise Blood, his instinctual driver, forces him to do things quite alienating, like peeping on women at the local swimming pool, indulging in sweets (his animal desires), regularly insulting people, and the like. He also holds a fascination for animals (the animal nature of humans) and works at the zoo. In the end, his aspiration for friendship falls away and he finds himself in a kind of hell; that is, in an ape costume spurned by humankind.

Further on this concept of baseness, Mrs. Flood exhibits distrustfulness. It’s interesting that Motes comes to spend a version of eternity with her in his little hermit's nest, for she has been suspicious throughout the story that Motes is trying to put something over on her. She can’t figure out what it is but she knows it’s there. (This, as an aside, is a trait Othello would have benefited from regarding Iago.)

As for the other concerns of the novel, isolation and violence, you’ll find ample examples scattered throughout, not the least of which is Motes’ withdrawal from the world, characterized by his self-blinding and tiny room, and the brutal treatment of children and the murders committed by the key characters.

In short, while Wise Blood may appear simple, and certainly is short, O’Connor crowds and layers its pages with a lot of weighty contemplation on the salvation of humankind, thought provoking ideas that force readers to slow down and dig deeper into the text and themselves.

Hazel Motes has just left the army and is wandering, looking for his place. He takes a train ride south, near to his home town but not quite there. He decides to become a preacher in Taulkingham, the small town he winds up in. But he doesn't preach Jesus, rather he proclaims the "Church without Christ," and looks for a new jesus that isn't all wrapped up in sin and redemption and forgiveness. Haze wants the freedom to behave the way he wants. He runs into a blind preacher, Asa Hawks, who has a young daughter. Asa is much more successful as a preacher and Haze follows him around. Haze is also befriended/stalked by Enoch Emery, a slightly younger man who also wants to live his own way but thinks he has a greater destiny. His destiny is written in his blood (the "Wise Blood" of the title) and his blood often leads Enoch along without letting him in on what the plan is. This story is Haze's, though, so it all comes down to him and his spiritual crisis in the end.

The tale spirals around, coming from different character's perspectives as the chapters change and the story progresses. The book reads quickly and is fascinating but also opaque. Few obvious explanations or interpretations are handed to the reader. The ending is fairly clear and perhaps sheds light on the preceding events. This book would definitely reward re-reading, which I will have to do after some time to mull it over.

Recommended (maybe highly recommended after I re-read it?).

Wise Blood is a strange and powerful novel. It is a religious novel through and through and it is difficult to separate it from its theology. That makes it a difficult novel to review. Flannery O'Connor was clearly a talented writer. Her style is direct - but is not without its own inherent poetry - and she manages to create a stark and brutal world, that is also vivid and full of strange and fascinating characters. However, her novel lacks subtlety. It is quite clear that O'Connor is trying to make a number of theological points, and she is also trying to critique the reigning ideologies of materialism, nihilism, atheism, and individualism. I am relatively sympathetic to some of the points she is trying to make - less sympathetic to others - but I do not particularly like the way she goes about making them.

So, I am a bit torn. I really enjoyed reading the novel. I found it fascinating, profoundly interesting, and emotionally powerful. However, I felt like I was being manipulated into drawing certain conclusions I do not necessarily agree with - and even when I did agree with them I did not particularly like the way I was being manipulated into agreeing with them.

The narrative of Wise Blood centers around Haze Motes. Haze was born into a devoutly religious family and assumed he would become a preacher like his grandfather. However, as a young man he is sent to war, and he winds up losing his faith when his fellow soldiers tell him he has no soul. Haze decides he agrees with them. He comes to believe that notions like "sin" and "salvation" do not refer to anything real and his longing for salvation is really just a longing for home. Even as a boy Haze knows that the best way to avoid Jesus is to avoid the notion of sin. If there is no sin, there is no need for salvation. Haze's desire to avoid Jesus is a desire to avoid the "ragged figure motioning him to turn around and come off into the dark...where he might be walking on the water and not know it and then suddenly know it and drown" (16).

One area where I agree with Flannery O'Connor is this: in modern debates between theism and atheism it is often assumed that theists are irrational and unwilling to face up to the harshness of reality. Atheists consistently argue that theists flee from the meaninglessness and indifference of the universe by believing in comforting illusions. O'Connor turns the tables on the argument: it is the nihilists who are fleeing from the burden of moral responsibility implied by the notion of sin, the terror of the unknown that we feel when confronted by the abyss of faith, and anxiety over our eternal salvation. I am not, by the way, claiming that the theists are right and the atheists are wrong. I just think it is a mistake to assume that people believe in God because they are fleeing from reality. The religious life has its own set of burdens and difficulties and terrors. Religious people are not all ostriches burying their heads in the sand.

After Haze's conversion from Christianity he becomes a kind of anti-preacher. He preaches a nihilistic Gospel: no Jesus, no sin - and with no sin - no need for redemption. It is also a doctrine of relativism, "I preach there are all kinds of truth, your truth and somebody else's, but behind all of them, there's only one truth and that is that there's no truth" (165) O'Connor is critiquing the individualistic notion of truth. If there are multiple truths, then really there are no truths. Relativism leads inevitably to nihilism. Her Catholicism is making itself felt here. The splintering of the Protestant Reformation has led to a loss of Truth. Personally, I think O'Connor would have done well to reflect on the parable about the blind men and the elephant. The fact that different people have different perspectives on the truth does not imply that there is no truth.

Most of the novel is taken up with Haze's anti-preaching. Haze becomes obsessed with a blind preacher who claims to have blinded himself out of faith. It is clear that Haze is both disturbed and attracted by the preacher's faith. He follows the preacher around. His conscious aim is to convince the preacher that he is deluded and convert him to his own nihilism but, I think, he secretly wants to be converted by the preacher back to Christianity. So, when Haze discovers that the preacher is in fact a fraud, and not blind at all, it has a profound effect on him. I am skipping over a great deal, and leaving out a number of important characters, but I do not want to give everything away. In the end, Haze is converted into an ascetic. He blinds himself and begins wearing barb wire under his shirt and puts broken glass in his shoes. Haze trades the light of his eyes for the light of faith.

The other central character in the novel is Enoch Emery. I actually think Enoch is a far more sympathetic character than Haze, though I suspect O'Connor would disagree with me. He has been dumped in the big city by his father and he has no friends. Indeed, the most touching moment in the novel, in my opinion, is when Enoch goes to meet a famous ape with the intention of insulting him, but when the ape - who is really a man in an ape costume - extends his hand "It was the first hand that had been extended to Enoch since he had come to the city" and instead of insulting the ape, Enoch begins blabbering like a little boy, "My name is Enoch Emery...I attended the Rodemill Boys' Bible Academy, I work at the city zoo. I seen two of your pictures. I'm only eighteen year old but I already work for the city. My daddy made me com..." (181 - 182). We finally see that what Enoch wants more than anything is just some kind of human connection.

One of the things I don't like about the novel is: O'Connor seems to present two paths: the path followed by Haze and the path followed by Enoch. O'Connor clearly prefers the path followed by Haze. Haze winds up a kind of mystic while Enoch is reduced to being an ape. But, I think, Enoch is a much more sympathetic and human character. Haze is totally uncompromising and brutal. He has no human virtues at all, even after his conversion. He does not seem to care about anyone else. He is entirely preoccupied with his own salvation. Enoch, on the other hand, is at least searching for some kind of human connection.

Another thing I did not like about the novel is: O'Connor seems to have very little compassion or sympathy for humanity. O'Connor is critiquing the modern world but there are other authors - like Faulkner - who also wrote "critiques" of their own society, but Faulkner's disgust and frustration is always mixed with loved and admiration. Faulkner both loves and hates the South and you can feel his sympathy even with the worst of his characters. O'Connor seems to feel only disgust for the modern world and there is very little compassion for human failings or flaws in her book. Her book is quite humorous in places but, as some readers have pointed out, her humor is often bitter and sarcastic. To me, humor is at its best when it holds up universal human traits, and allows us to laugh at our own failings, as opposed to being used as a weapon to attack the failings we perceive in others. Humor is - or can be - a means of accepting our shared humanity, with all the flaws that go along with it. I feel like O'Connor tends to absolve herself from her own attacks. At least that is the sense I get.

I also think O'Connor pulls a a number of sleight of hand tricks. I take it that one of O'Connor's points in the novel is: religion is inescapable. The world without religion is a brutal world that no one would want to live in. However, her picture of the world without religion is totally distorted. There are no "virtuous pagans" in her world. This is why she is accused of Jansenism by some readers. There is a radical separation of nature and grace in her world. The world of nature is a world that is not at all recognizably human. It is a world without love, community, morality friendship or any other purely human virtue. Of course we feel there is something missing from such a world. O'Connor wants to convince us that what is missing is religious faith and salvation. But, if she really wanted to convince us that the world demanded salvation, she should present humanity in its best light, and show that something is STILL missing, not in its worst light.

Another sleight of hand she pulls is in her critique of relativism. It seems to me that she is attacking modern forms of toleration or pluralism. But Haze does not really represent relativism or pluralism. If he was a true relativist he would not be preaching his brand of nihilism and trying to convert others. He believes his nihilism is the Truth, with a capital "T". That is why he is totally intolerant. Again, if O'Connor wanted to critique what she took to be modern forms of relativism, she should have presented them in their best form, not their worst. At its best, pluralism attempts to respect different views, even if it thinks they are wrong. O'Connor is attacking a philosophical position by creating a ridiculous caricature.

One final sleight of hand: one of the characters I have not mentioned is a character named Mrs. Flood. Mrs. Flood is sort of a pragmatist. She is someone who does not have strong opinions about things one way or the other. She is more concerned with her little pleasures than questions of eternal salvation and thinks that she is perfectly capable of being moral without believing in Jesus. O'Connor again lacks subtlety though. Mrs. Flood comes across as shallow, insipid, superficial and ultimately immoral, which was certainly O'Connor's intention. The reader finds her distasteful and automatically feels the same distaste for the "philosophical" positions she espouses or represents. But that is a kind of guilt by association. Ultimately, O'Connor's critiques of empiricism, nihilism, pragmatism, pluralism, etc. would lose their force if she presented a morally engaged, inquisitive, virtuous character who espoused one of those philosophical positions - someone like Albert Camus or John Dewey.

Despite all those criticisms, I still heartily recommend this novel. It is beautiful, full of tragic force and emotion, and extremely thought provoking. Despite my theological and philosophical disagreements with the novel, I cannot deny: I really enjoyed the book and intend to read more O'Connor in the future.

I feel this is one of the best examples of "Southern Gothic" literature that exists. I almost feel guilty admitting how much I love the work of Flannery O'Connor. Viewed in a vacuum, I think one could read this novel and think, "What in the world was that?". However if one studies the progression of the Southern Gothic genre in general and studies Flannery O'Connor specifically, one can quickly gain a great appreciation of both. There are times I find Southern Gothic to descend to a form of ugliness that I find genuinely disturbing and distatsteful. Erskine Caldwell's "Tobacco Road" had that effect on me. There are other times that I find Southern Gothic grotestque but hilarious. In general, Flannery O'Connor always strikes that balance with me. I cannot pretend to tell you why this is so.

If you have read this novel and have never read any other Southern Gothic work, and accordingly, no other work by Flannery O'Connor, I would respectfully recommend "The Complete Short Stories" of Flannery O'Connor and perhaps "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, along with "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter" by Carson McCullers and "Norwood" by Charles Portis.

In terms of short stories by Flannery O'Connor, some that come to mind are "A Good Man is Hard to Find", "Judgement Day", and "A View of The Woods" as a quick study of the sense of humor of Flannery O'Connor. (And Maybe of Me!) All of these can be found in The Complete Short Stories of Flannery O'Connor. If you have not read Wise Blood yet, and nothing by Flannery O'Connor, consider trying one or more of these short stories to get aquainted.

"Wise Blood" takes place in an unnamed part of lost America, in a small town with small minded people in a part of the country left behind and ignored by the big cities and the media. At the center of the book stands Hazel Motes, a twenty-two year old returning home from war without family or friends to welcome him back or support him. For reasons unexplained, Motes obsesses over Jesus and sets about becoming a preacher of the Church Without Christ, and in doing so, encounters religious leaders and con men all with agendas of their own, none of which jibe with Motes' intentions.
"Wise Blood" is a brilliantly written, somewhat depressing novel that captures some of the nihilistic thinking and existential struggles of small town America. Treading on similar territory as Faulkner, but in a much more digestible manner, O'Connor has created a work of fiction that stands proud in the annals of twentieth century literature. Tackling the subjects of religion, individuality, and the conflicting norms of American society, "Wise Blood" entertains and thought provokes at the same time, and while it is not the most uplifting book you will read, it will stick with you for awhile once you put it down.

Hazel Motes, recently out of the army, travels to the fictional city of Taulkinham to, as he told a stranger on a train, do some things he’d never done before. It’s fairly clear that Taulkinham is in the United States and that it gets cold there in the winter, but otherwise the city’s location is a mystery. Judging from the behavior of the characters in the book, it may be on another planet, or perhaps in hell. Nearly all of the people are insane, ugly, and mean. They do not appear motivated by the things that motivate normal men and women. For example, Motes is obsessed with having everyone whom he encounters know that he does not believe in Christ and that Christ does not exist. If someone tries to make small talk with him, he either ignores them or scowls and insists to them that he’s clean because he doesn’t believe in Christ. He preaches his Church Without Christ to people in the streets. He viciously shuns all attempts at friendship, such as those of young Enoch Emory, who is even more unbalanced than Motes. Emory lives his life according to the wishes of his “wise blood.” It is his blood, but it isn’t him. It’s like a separate mind flowing through his veins. It leads him, often contrary to his own will, on irrational and criminal errands. The insanity of Emory and Motes becomes more evident as the novel progresses. No one in the book seems to like anyone else. There is no love, only trickery and deceit. Everyone is godless. Even the preachers are atheists. There is one exception to the unrelenting coldness—the quiet one-armed man who makes a brief appearance in the middle of the novel. Otherwise, there is only animal ignorance and darkness.

It is obvious after reading the first few sentences that O’Connor was born to write. There are no cliches. She described the world through the eyes of an artist, taking the unexpected as a matter of course. Her exaggerations of evil and madness illustrate how terrifying one’s own life is in light of the hollow, illusory self. In Wise Blood, there are no diversions to mask the terror. Politeness doesn’t disguise anything. The book is a stark picture of lives that are utterly alone. Yet, Motes’s quest to lose Christ and his subsequent determination to be purified through self-mutilation and self-torture hint that the void at the center is not inevitable.

In a letter to a friend, Flannery O' Connor noted that most Christian writers have the tendency to turn their writing into "apologetic fiction"--meaning, in short, that the majority of Catholic novelists feel an undue obligation toward the public to soften (or change entirely the actual doctrines of Original Sin, Redemption, etc for the average reader's benefit. Though this letter dates from May of 1963, O' Connor's prophetic remark has only been proven more legitimate with time. As a Roman Catholic I have more than once wanted to vomit reading the well-intentioned attempts of both priests and lay people who do not write books but smear frosting on the mysterious, quite serious matters of Christian spirituality. This phenomenon is the result of believers who feel the constant need to appease the mass of readers who instinctually reject Christianity, often for reasons unbeknownst to themselves.

What makes "Wise Blood" so special is that within the scope of 131 terrifying (and drop dead hilarious) pages we learn that Miss O' Connor intends to make us familiar with a different company of Christians indeed. Haze Motes may be disturbed, but he is as uncompromising a believer/non believer as they come. A boy who once put rocks in his shoes as penance for sin, he is now as intent on getting that ragged, shadowy figure moving in the trees out of his mind and soul by any means necessary. O' Connor puts him in the town of Taulkinham--a Southern version of Dante's Inferno.

Here he encounters every manner of depravity: prostition ("Momma don't care if you ain't a preacher!") false witness to God (Asa Hawks,a "blind" preacher with a news clipping that does not include his whole history) and Sabbath Lily Hawks, who is often misread as being a mere whore when in fact she is one of the more sympathetic and lovable characters in the story. Perhaps the most hopeless of this crew is Enoch Emery, a deranged adolescent who is disowned by his father and who wanders the streets merely to be around people. He is so desperately lonely that one point he steals a Gorilla suit from the local museum just to endear himself to the general population.

Out of all the false prophets and madness, Haze is the most fiercely lucid and his anger is actually righteous, for all his talk about "The Church of Christ Without Christ". Each attempt he makes at becoming a horrible sinner fires him in the exact opposite direction. One might say he is an Albigensian of sorts, a Christian turned inside out, but apart from one appalling act he is never quite far enough from Christ to earn that title. His sin and blasphemy fuel his madness and vice versa, until...

While to most his act of redemption will seem like nothing but madness, it is no less an authentic act of moral outrage than Sophocles' Oedipus. The difference is that Oedipus was acting on a principle of despair, whereas the hope Haze never could not leave behind broils to the breaking point and shows him exactly what he is.

The point is that for Haze, Christ is all or nothing. There is no middle of the road, no middle class preening, no posing or falsehood. There is not one bit of falsehood in his being.

This certainly ranks up there with the greatest literature produced by Faulkner as far as the climate of the South goes. This is one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, perhaps more relevant now than ever.

Since Flannery O'Connor is my second favorite author, I'm surprised that I have not included one of her books on either year of the 52 books assignment. I wanted to, but I often try to save her for special occasions, as she only has two novels, and I don't want to tire of them or her.

Wise Blood tells the story of Hazel Motes, a young man returning disillusioned from the Army. Something happened to Motes that caused him to see the folly in believing in God or Jesus Christ. To rebel against this belief, he begins a new career as a street-corner preacher proclaiming the freedom in the gospel message of his church, the Church without Christ. No God. No Jesus. No guilt. In all his proselytizing, it seems that Motes is running from a God that he preaches against, as if the hound of heaven chases him.

The cast of characters is a collection of misfits, hypocrites, and outcasts, all living in a world that they tell themselves is without God. Sometimes, as we run from God, we can run right into Him.

This is not a Christian novel, and much of the content will cause some frowning from the Left Behind fans. It is a novel about a worldview that refuses to acknowledge God, but he will continue to pursue us anyway. God's chasing after Hazel Motes mirrors Hosea's chasing after his adulterous wife (which is itself a metaphor for God chasing after the unfaithful Israel).

Flannery comments well on this novel that helps to explain the pursuit:
"For (non-believers) Hazel Motes' integrity lies in his trying with such vigor to get rid of the ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of his mind. For the author Hazel's integrity lies in his not being able to. Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do?"

Even without this deeper meaning, Wise Blood is an excellent, strange, and funny story that most will enjoy. After reading, you may see how the "ragged figure" is moving from tree to tree in the forest of your life.

This is the story of Hazel Motes, who is desperately running from Jesus, running to cure himself of belief. He founds the Church of Christ Without Christ and preaches his message of non-redemption from the hood of his "rat-colored" car. In the course of his flight he meets a cynical "blind" preacher and his corrupted 15-year-old daughter, a grifter who wants to use him to make money, and Enoch Emory, a young man with "wise blood," who provides him with a mummified child to serve as his new Jesus. His struggles end as he punishes himself for his failure to destroy his belief. (Anyway, that's how I interpreted it.)

In an Author's Note at the beginning of the book, O'Connor describes the book as a "comic" novel, but it is certainly not comic in the generally accepted sense--the irrational and often seemingly meaningless actions of the characters have a grotesque quality that is disturbing, amusing only in the way that David Lynch and Quentin Tarentino, for example, are amusing. In this way O'Connor was, perhaps, ahead of her time.

This is a profoundly religious book, though it would not seem so from the description. However, it is not the kind of feel-good literature of most religious fiction, but rather a more subtle examination of the nature of belief. Wise Blood will stay in my mind for a long time.

Just a thought: This could be classified, along with most Faulkner novels, as Southern Gothic. Is it any wonder that many Northerners think of Southerners as deranged degenerates?

Set in the deepest parts of the rural South in the early 1950's, this highly exaggerated story, though definitely mesmerizing, portrays a South replete with grotesque, ignorant, and disturbed characters who can scarcely be comprehended. Religion literally suffuses the entire culture - all are always aware to what degree their thoughts and actions are consistent with the teachings of Jesus.

The story is centrally concerned with the short, troubled life of twenty-something Hazel Motes, a veteran, who returns home to find it abandoned and uninhabitable and then sets forth on a journey of indeterminate destination and purpose. Hazel is in a constant battle with the influence of his deceased father and grandfather, who were preachers. His strategy of avoiding belief issues by simply not sinning gives way before a stronger desire to associate with sleazy women.

Hazel is a man of few words, but has an inclination to ask others if they are redeemed, a question that seems to not be out of the ordinary in this culture. He purchases a rat-colored, dilapidated car from which he preaches the message of his Church without Christ. There are any number of immensely quirky characters who cross Hazel's path. For example, there is the blind preacher Asa Hawks and his aggressive 15-year-old daughter Lily Sabbath, both of whom Hazel is drawn to but cannot work out just what kind of relationship he wants to have. And there is the totally bizarre 18-year-old Enoch Emery, who is new in town, works at the zoo, has "wise blood," and cannot be dissuaded from pestering Hazel. Ultimately, the conflicted Hazel sees all of these characters as hindrances to his unspoken mission.

There is a certain terseness and incompleteness that pervades the entire story. Eccentric characters appear almost out of the woodwork with a predilection for weird behavior that is hard to totally grasp. The overall landscape is one of deprivation, if not devastation. There is a shortage of money, clothes, food, living space, etc, yet the characters are hardly aware of such.

The writing both reflects and exposes this spare, strange environment. It is brusque, pithy, incisive, colloquial, and repetitive, reflective of these deformed characters. The story is, in a way, fascinating, despite the fact that it is difficult to fully digest. Part of the struggle to fully appreciate this book has to do with the era, which is so far removed from modern life as to be almost beyond understanding. Nonetheless, it is entirely obvious that the author has a tremendous facility with language to be able to create and capture an extraordinarily rich scenario.

Wise Blood is Flannery O'Connor's first book and it is a beautiful, brutal work of art. We are introduced to Hazel Motes on a train with his army-issued duffel bag being annoying by the woman next to him on the train. He is completely dislocated, as we see in the first sentence:
"Hazel Motes sat at a forward angle on the green plush train seat, looking one minute at the window as if he might want to jump out of it, and the next down the aisle at the end of the car." He is on the border between this life and some other death: "In his half sleep he though he was lying was like lying in a coffin." Now a days, it sounds like a case of PTSD but in this book, he just seems eternally lost. He refuses to communicate with the overly-talkative Mrs. Hitchcock in the train and instead gets obsessed with the black porter who claims to be from Chicago but whom Hazel believes is from his own hometown Eastrod. 
The atmosphere in the novel is that of the religiously obsessive South and the language reminds one of O'Connor's primary influences: O’Connors style seems to be quiet and subtle but she knows how to turn it into quality interesting writing that really lets you enjoy the book. The narrative frame shifts from Hazel to Sabbath to Enoch back and forth before settling on his landlord, Mrs. Flood. Ultimately, none of the characters really achieves relief in the bleakness of their lives. However Hazel gets some kind of enlightenment towards the end when he says, "If there's no bottom in your eyes, they hold more." I think O'Connor was trying to show that in the insane acts of Hazel and his ultimate mimicry of the blind preacher, that truth cannot be obtained by looking for it in others, but can only come from oneself. As Mrs. Flood observes at the end of the book, “She sat staring with her eyes shut, into his eyes, and felt as if she had finally got to the beginning of something she couldn't begin, and she saw him moving farther and farther away, father and farther into the darkness until he was the pin point of light."
Having been myself raised in a Southern religious atmosphere to a degree, I found this book to be electric and intriguing. I love the poise and style of Flannery O’Connor’s writing. I enjoyed it and recommend it.

Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood delivers yokums to an alleged city where the main characters' lack of education makes them commit acts which most others would deem violative of common sense or Judeo-Christian ethic. They include: sex with a minor; self-injury; mutilation; murder; theft; assault; battery; stealing from the blind and more. Those committing these acts include preachers, policemen and other trusted persons.

Basically, all of these simple characters ". . . had had a hard life, without pain and without pleasure. . . " Their simple lives deprived of education had been their largest handicap. And, without enough education to know basic wrongs from rights, they do things onto others which assuredly one would not do unto others. Critics say that O'Connor's characters are "grotesques." This book certainly includes grotesque people and personalities.

Religion and blasphemy are the staples of the protagonist Hazel Motes - don't be fooled by the name, this is a man who is 22 and just finished stint as a soldier. Hazel, for whatever reasons, decides that proselytizing his message of truth meant to tell the followers that Jesus did not die for us, but because of us. His Church without walls was to be called Church Without Christ. This church ". . . don't have a Jesus but it needs one! It needs a new jesus! It needs one that is all man, without blood to waste, and it needs one that don't look like any other man so you'll look at him."

Ultimately, the contradictions of this religion are merely formulaic of the book's core. There is another preacher whose pre-deacon days were so full of sin that he showed his devotion to God by blinding himself before a congregation of over 300 people. Later we discover that he scarred his face with lime, but had actually never touched his eyes with the volatile liquid and therefore never lost his sight. That man of the cloth lies, and so Hazel seeks to be of truth by preaching of a Church Without Christ.

So many other contradictions exist, many embroiled with religion. For instance, a girl who is born a [...] is told that the Bible asserts her illegitimate birth denies her soul access to heaven. So she asks herself, why live a good Christian life if the ultimate reward can never be obtained. Like a life-sentenced convict in prison, does any sentence repress her from committing violative acts -- can an inhabitant in a penitentiary really be told to act obediently "or else?" No.

Written in 1951 this book asks questions which probably would not be read by many Americans of that generation. Elmer Gantry received critical and public furor for reciting how clergy can be more common and hypocritical than their parishioners. And, making such twists of stereotype is exactly what Flannery O'Connor does so well.

Wise Blood

Early in `Wise Blood', the boy Hazel Motes goes with his father to a cheap country carnival and sneaks into the nudey tent. He's revolted and runs away. I can share his revulsion; entering Flannery O'Connor's fiction is like peeking into a sleazy freak show. If I got on a bus full of O'Connor's characters, I'd hop off at the next stop. If I found myself sharing heaven with Hazel Motes, I'd ask for a transfer. Hieronymus Bosch never painted an uglier crew of imps in his altarpieces of the Last Judgment. What's the point of all this talk about redemption? If this book portrays the reality of O'Connor's world, she was already in H*ll. If there is to be a religious exegesis of this novel, it will have to be in the language of Zoroaster, of the uneradicable strain of Gnosticism in Christianity. The J*sus that Hazel Motes seeks to `get rid of' is more the Malefactor-Creator of the Gnostic scriptures than the Redeemer of Catholicism, and if that's so, then Hazel is the True Prophet of his Church Without Christ and his self-destruction is sanctified.

Wise Blood is the sort of book that, when you've read ten pages you begin to ask `what's all this,' a question you keep asking until the last page, when you ask `what the hey was that about?' Well, dear friends, I like books that make me ask what they were about. In fact, they're the only kind I like.

With this text, we have two choices: to accept that Wise Blood is about precisely what its author thought it was about, or to assume that the author has no better claim on the meaning of her words than anyone else. Obviously the second choice - fashionable post-modernism - is more fun.

O'Connor chose sides in her one-page preface to the second edition, ten years after the first publication in 1952. She wrote: "It is a comic novel about a Christian maulgré lui." Moi, I find that word `comic' problematic. Despite scene after scene of absurdity, I swear I never laughed once while reading Wise Blood, so I assume that `comic' doesn't mean `funny'. A classical sense of `comedy' would require a happy resolution, and that's hardly what the book delivers. If `comic' means satirical, the term would fit, but to call this a "comic novel" has to be either snarky sarcasm or else a dark stain of sado-masochism in O'Connor's worldview. I'm pretty certain that O'Connor never encountered LSD or peyote -- if she had, it would explain much -- but her imagination came close to the ergot-poisoned fantasies of late Medieval witchcraft trials. I can think of one even better precendent for the sheer nastiness of Wise Blood -- The Satyricon of Petronius, the classic expression of PAGAN moral ambiguity.

Honestly, while I regard this book as a loathsome treasure, I prefer Flannery O'Connor's short stories - those I've read - from the volume "A Good Man is Hard to Find." Compression helps. Some of her best stories wring as much out of me in 15 pages as Wise Blood in 180. It's not an experience you'd want often, to ride an elevator down to H*ll with Hazel Motes, Enoch Emory, Asa Hawks, and Lily Sabbath, the grotesque cast of this Southern Gothic horror story.

Wise Blood is brutally honest, raw with emotion and energy, and hard for many people to read. The author, Flannery O'Connor, has a rare ability to convey the human nature in a terrifyingly honest way. Reading one of her stories is like peering into a dark mirror and seeing the horrible things about the fallen state of the world that still reside within one's own being.

Each of the thirty-one short stories and two novels written by Flannery O'Connor hinge upon guilt, grace, and God. Wise Blood focuses on the young preacher Hazel Motes as he desperately seeks to avoid Christ at any cost. Having been raised to believe that God is little more than a set of strict rules and a guilty conscience, he wholly rejects Christianity. Motes' unbelief is evident in the conversation he has on a train, insisting that he would not believe in Christ "even if He did exist. " Motes' next thought sums up the direction of the novel beautifully . . .

"There was already a deep black wordless conviction in him that the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin."

Motes goes on to interact with colorful characters whose own sin is soon exposed, and he continues to draw deeper within himself. When he is starting his own church, The Church of God Without Christ, a prophetic call is issued for current believers. Written almost 60 years ago, this novel has an astonishing, heartbreaking grasp on that state of the modern church. Hearing a church advertised as a place where you "don't have to believe nothing you don't understand and approve of," a place where people are encouraged to "sit at home and interpit your own Bible however you feel in your heart it ought to be interpited," and finally, a place where "you can know that there's nothing or nobody ahead of you, nobody knows nothing you don't know." This description of a church where mystery, community, and theology are disdained, this church without Christ, is shocking and, sadly, prophetic. Many people will not read this book because it is so raw and makes most people uneasy in their own skin - and that is exactly the reason most people should read it.

I enjoy a lot of Irish writers and even though I have known the name Flannery O'Connor for a long time,this is the first time I have actually read this author. I ,like others ,assumed Flannery was a man and Irish.Before reading this novel,I checked the the store customer reviews and was completely surprised . Then, with some research on the net, that Flannery was a young woman of only 27 when she wrote this book,and rather than being Irish,was from an Old Deep South Catholic family,born in Savannah,Georgia. She was born in 1925,surrounded by poor whites in a Protestant area,left home at 18,graduated from college,wrote mainly Southern Gothic short stories,only 2 novels.She had a great interest in domestic birds,peacocks,pheasants,swans,geese,chickens and Moscovy Ducks. After college she lived on a family farm with her mother,outside Millidville Georgia.She was also a good painter. She was quite frail,never married,like her father,she contacted Lupus and died very young at only 39,in 1964. Her mother outlived her for many years. It is still possible to visit the farm in Millidville,Ga.She had a deep and knowledgeable faith.
As I read this book ,I was continually reminded of other writers such as James Joyce,Erskine Caldwell,Faulkner,Erskine Caldwell,Steinbeck and even some of those bible -thumping movies such as Elmer Gantry.
This is all about having or not having faith. O'Connor understands the difference between Faith and Religion and shows what a difficult thing it can be when someone lacks real faith and attempts to develop one's own through rationalization.Flannery does not make any attempt to preach or conince the reader one way or the other about faith,but she does an admiral job of showing how difficult and all encompassing it can be for some people who have doubts and try to resolve them.
While Flannery's life was all too short ;and we are all the poorer for that;she is remembered by words like these;

"Everything that rises must converge."

"Grace changes us and change is painful."

What an insane book. It's really quite incredible. Flannery O'Connor found all the problems of society, injected them into absurdly weird yet decidedly realistic scenarios and made a book about it.
This book deals with obsession, self worth, and generally a whole bunch of people trying to escape themselves, or at least what they think defines themselves. And to boot, it can be terribly funny in a twisted way. Flannery O' Connor rocks.
It's about Hazel Motes and the various well defined characters that ram into his life, and he doesn't even notice them. There's the ... blind preacher's daughter, and the suburban washup teenager, and the blind preacher, who all play pivotal roles in Motes' existence, though again, he doesn't realize it. Hazel pretty much goes through the book living in his own world, even though he hates his head also. Motes, after all, is a strange character who is desperately seeking peace with himself, and as you'll see he never fails in punishing himself. He's obsessed with Christ and purity, yet he loathes Christianity and purity. So he creates the Church of Christ Without Christ, and as he tries to promote it, a series of terrifying and subtle events occur that will make you bugeyed with wonder and horror and disgust. He descends from what you would think is a good proper religious fanatic, to a degraded near maniacal individual, and that's what really captivates you, though O'Connor provides ample sideshows. And then, the end is as strange and satisfying as the rest of the book.
This is a strange crazy incredibly captivating and overwhelmingly intense book that only lasts a hundred or so pages, but after you'll probably run to Jane Austen. But then in their own funny ways, both Pride and Prejudice and Wise Blood are full of that irony that makes us think about what a bunch of hypocrites we can be to ourselves sometimes.

It took me a while to settle into this book. I think I initially found O'Connor's organization a bit jarring and disconnected. I wasn't surprised to later learn that she initially published parts of it before publishing it as a whole.

Once I got over the structure, I found this to be perhaps the most American fictional portrayal of religion since The Scarlet Letter. O'Connor does a masterful job of showing how and why we believe, how and why we fail to uphold said beliefs, and how we can recover (or not) throughout the process.

Her writing is, of course, brilliant. What impressed me most is her ability to conjure a street, or a home, or an interaction using minimal words that seem perfectly placed every time. Her trademark eye for detail shows itself on almost every page throughout this work.

Recently discharged from the army and without a family, a young man named Hazel Motes arrives in a strange city. He is so completely obsessed by the desire to reject Jesus that, taking inspiration from the actions of a wayward street preacher, he starts the "Church Without Christ," promising no salvation and no kingdom of heaven. With this premise of idolatry turned upside down, O'Connor spins a vaguely abstract tale employing haunting Kafka-esque symbols and images to illustrate her narrative. Hazel thinks of his deceased family members while trying to sleep in the coffin-like berch in the train. He drives out to the country in his newly purchased car and sees a message of salvation, conflicting naggingly with his own beliefs, written on a roadside rock. His newfound acquaintance, Enoch Emery, shows him the object of his fascination, a mummified boy in a museum. The face of a grinning woman reflects eerily in the glass that encases the boy; later the face appears in the window of Hazel's car during a dream. Enoch, whose "wise blood" tells him what to do, finds dread in a picture of a moose that hangs on the wall in his room and donates what he has decided is the "new jesus" to Hazel so that he (Enoch) can return happily to a state of primitivism in a gorilla costume. For such a short novel, "Wise Blood" is incredibly complex and is one of the most inexplicably fascinating books I have read.

All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful. -Flannery O'Connor
Wise Blood is Flannery O'Connor's grotesque picaresque tale of Hazel Motes of Eastrod, Tennessee; a young man who has come to the city of Taulkinham bringing with him an enormous resentment of Christianity and the clergy. He is in an open state of rebellion against the rigidity of his itinerant preacher grandfather and his strict mother. So when one of the first people he encounters is the blind street preacher Asa Hawks and Motes finds himself both attracted and repelled by Hawks' bewitching fifteen year old daughter Lily Sabbath, he reacts by establishing his own street ministry. He founds the "Church without Christ":
Listen you people, I'm going to take the truth with me wherever I go. I'm going to preach it to whoever'll listen at whatever place. I'm going to preach there was no Fall because there was nothing to fall from and no Redemption because there was no Fall and no Judgment because there wasn't the first two. Nothing matters but that Jesus was a liar.
As you can guess the church is singularly unsuccessful, although he does attract a couple of other crackpots: Enoch Emery a young man who works at the zoo and longs for a kind word from anybody; and Onnie Jay Holy, yet another rival preacher who believes Motes when he says he's found a "new jesus."
While at first this cast of bizarre characters, ranging from merely repugnant to truly evil, and the scenes of physical, moral and spiritual degradation through which they pass all seem to be just a little too much, the reader is carried along by O'Connor's sure hand for dark comedy. The book is very funny. But as the story draws to a close, O'Connor's true mission is revealed; Motes loses his fight against faith and he achieves a kind of grace, becoming something like a Christian martyr to atone for his sins. O'Connor has something serious and important to say about the modern human condition and the emptiness of a life without faith. That she is able to disguise this message in such a ribald comic package is quite an achievement.
Reading the book inevitably called to mind Carson McCullers' dreadful book The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1940), which made the Modern Library Top 100 Novels of the Twentieth Century list. It too is a Southern gothic, populated by dismal misanthropes. But it is devoid of humor and has nothing to say about the characters and the world they've created. Wise Blood is a superior novel in every sense and really deserves that spot on the list.
GRADE: A+

This story takes place in the fictional town of Taulkinham. Flannery O'Connor's first novel, Wise Blood, tells the story of a confused and isolated young man who attempts to shed his obsessions with Jesus and Christian redemption. As a child, Hazel Motes felt certain that he was destined to become a preacher like his grandfather. He was soon sent to the military. When he returned he had a totally different mind set.
The author of the novel “Wise Blood” is Flannery O’Connor. This is the second novel she has written. Her first novel was “The Geranium”. O’Connor died of lupus in 1964. Because she died at such a young age she didn’t write any other books. Her style is about the studies of religious themes and southern racial issues, and for combining the comic with the tragic. The title of this novel comes into play when we find out that his “wise blood” drives Enoch instinctually. We see this because he is withholding information from another character in the novel. This title doesn’t really have an underlining meaning of the story. I think it’s more of just a creative title. I think the title of the story is quite interesting. It gives the characters some personalities that may be hard to understand at first glance.
The characters in this novel are: Hazel Motes, Enoch Emory, Esa Hawks, Hoover Showates, Sabbath Lily, Mrs. Floods, Grandfather, Leora Watts. Hazel Motes is a protagonist in this story. He is a twenty-two-year-old grandson to a preacher. Hazel is a loner whose only human contacts emerge from his attempts to escape Christ. The other main character is Enoch Emery, a lonely young man who becomes Hazel Motes’s “prophet.” Like Hazel, Enoch is also a bit of a loner who has yet to find love.
This book is literature fiction. The intended audience for this novel is for the intellectual Christians and for anyone else searching for truth in their world. The propose for this book is for not only Christian readers, but all readers to have a better understanding of the world and how it operates from a Christians stand point.
This novel is not provided with an introduction. However it is provided with an authors note. In the authors note it doesn’t give away any revealing information about the text. A guest author also writes this note. The name of the author was not given in the text. The author gives some judgments or preconceptions of the novel. He or she provides the readers with the knowledge that the story will be about Christianity and about a man who sees a figure moving from tree to tree in the back of his mind. Chapters arrange this book. The cover of “Wise Blood” has a picture of a cross on it. This would provide some kind of detail as to what the story is going to be about. The cross tells readers that the book is going to be about Christianity in some context. On the back cover it gives a summery of the book without giving away any huge details. Underneath the summery it gives a short biography on the author.

The theme that stands out to me the most is characters in the story trying to find Christ. This theme would contribute to the work in a way that many would see as being inspirational or dark. Both go with this kind of theme. I would say this theme helps with people who want to learn more about religion. The author’s style is dark and upsetting at some moments. She also tends to write about religion. If a reader is not a fan of religion or does not wish to learn about it they wouldn’t like this book.
The argument of the novel is to learn your religion and how it is significant in your life. The author supports this when she talks about how Hazel is struggling with his decision to become a Pastor. His life all changes when he is set to fight in a war. Everything works out for Hazel in the end. He finds out what he wants to be in his life not just because of his grandfather but because he wants to.
The main idea of this story or key idea is about a man names Hazel Motes who is struggling with his Christianity and goes to great lengths to prove his disbeliefs. I think this is a groundbreaking point because of the way the author talks about religion so freely. And the way the character has no fear about what he want to be in his life.
The publisher’s price of the book is $9.37. Year published was 2007.

In the author's note to this book, Flannery O'Connor describers it as "a comic novel." And it is, but a very unusual novel filled with black comedy. In black comedy, topics and events that are usually regarded as taboo, such as death, disabilities, religion, child abuse, prostitution, and underage sex, are treated in an unusually humorous and satirical manner while retaining their seriousness. And that is what this book is chock full of. After finishing this very enjoyable read, I got the idea that the author first created the final tableau, and then built scenes with odd characters and situations to reach this conclusion. This may have been the fastest I have ever read a book. The pages zoomed by. If the object of black comedy is to provide the reader with an experience of both laughter and discomfort, O'Connor has hit the bull's-eye.

The "official"... review by Mary... has it all wrong. "Flannery O'Connor has no truck with such newfangled notions as psychology." On the contrary: O'Connor was versed in psychology and expressed in her letters a preference for, of all people, Freud (over Jung)--she suggested that Freud had a good deal in common with St. Thomas Aquinas. Now, in terms of the novel, O'Connor (rightly) believed that the problem with the modern novel is that it's too psychological. Aristotle said that we see character through plot. And that's all we ever really know-the external. The psychological novel grows out of Manicheeism--or, more precisely, Cartesian Dualism--that separates the soul from the body. As a Catholic (and moreover a Thomist), O'Connor understood the direct connection between body and soul. Parks continues, "her characters are as one-dimensional--and mysterious--as figures on a frieze. Hazel Motes, for instance, has the temperament of a martyr[. . .]"
Apparently Parks lacks an understanding of the Saints, a subject of which O'Connor had a deep understanding. Furthermore, O'Connor expressed a distaste for standard hagiography, preferring to see the real depth and personality in the Saints--a depth of understanding she reflects in her characters. The happy ending of _Wise Blood_ is Haze Motes' discovery of how the only way to true happiness is asceticism and self-mortification. "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?" Besides being an "elemental pleasure," Enoch Emery's descent into bestiality is the natural conclusion of his Manicheeism (in a letter, O'Connor dismisses him as a fool). The term allegory is vastly misapplied here. A novel cannot be an allegory. In an allegory, the characters _represent_ ideas. Of all Christian literature, Flannery O'Connor comes perhaps the farthest from allegory. One can't sit down and match up her characters to concepts. The lessons of the novels are learned through experiencing the story--not analyzing it. As T. S. Eliot said, the function of all art and literature is first and foremost to give us experiences (or, as he put it, "feelings"). "Nobody else, that's who. And that's okay. More than one Flannery O'Connor in this world might show us more truth than we could bear." Speaking of Eliot, "Humankind cannot bear much reality." Actually, Parks came closest to the truth about O'Connor here--her stories are about people who can't bear the Truth--the Truth of Christ--and who either know the implications of Christ (like Haze Motes) and try to escape Him; or their minds are clouded (like the grandmother in "A Good Man is Hard to Find") and they need to be awakened to the truth.

I just recently read this novel for a paper. In my research, I read a phrase in the introduction for Flannery O'Connor: The Contemporary Reviews (American Critical Archives) which I think describes the book perfectly. The author refers to Wise Blood as a "quirky and flawed first novel," which calls to light an interesting point that it seems some readers may not realize. Flannery O'Connor was only in her twenties when this book was first published; if some of the plot points seem disjointed, it almost certainly relates to the fact that many of the chapters in Wise Blood are revised versions of short stories O'Connor had written as a student earning her MFA. She's mainly known for her short fiction because, I would argue, that's the arena of fiction in which she most excelled (many of her short stories are quite marvelous). If readers who love O'Connor's short stories are disappointed by this book, they should keep in mind that Wise Blood was her very first major publication and she was still a fairly young writer who was working on honing her craft.

In this reviewer's opinion, Wise Blood is an intriguing book. Sure, the characters are unlikable, the Christian/Catholic symbolism and imagery are laid on too thickly, and there are several plot points that don't seem to make much sense (the Hazel plot and the Enoch plot never quite merge completely), but O'Connor's style is definitely to be commended. All throughout the novel, one can see traces of the wry wit and dark sense of humor which becomes signature in O'Connor's later writing. The novel is certainly not one of my new favorites, but I don't regret reading it. I'd even say it's a must-read for anyone interested in Southern literature, religion, or just Flannery O'Connor in general.

And just briefly, in response to several reviewers who complain of not being able to figure out what the novel means, there is plenty of critical material out there on Wise Blood and the rest of O'Connor's work, and there is much to be learned from her letters (published in The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor) and her essays (published in Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose). One good place to start might be a two-part lecture on Wise Blood from Professor Amy Hungerford of Yale University, the first part of which can be found on YouTube for free. She provides various contexts through which to read the novel and I found what she had to say very interesting and valid.

Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood is a fascinating novel peering into the depths of one man's tortured soul, in his quest to find/run away from God. The novel is quite short and for me read smoothly. The story focuses on Hazel Motes, who after being discharged from the army is wondering around the fictional town of Taulkinham, trying to convert the local residents to his: "Church Without Christ". Mote's main doctrinal beliefs appear to be that the lame do not walk, the blind do not see, and so on. It's easy to view Motes as an absolute nihilist. And as the novel progresses, Motes becomes meaner and darker- to the point that it's nearly impossible to feel sorry for him. Another character, Enoch Emery, is an eighteen year old who is abandoned by his father and lives in Taulkingham. He has no friends and quickly attempts to bond with Motes. There is also a blind preacher, his wayward daughter, and a rival preacher named Hoover Shoats who founds: "The Holy Church Of Christ Without Christ" in an attempt to capitalize on the perception of Motes being a "prophet" in order to make a profit.

This being my first experience with O'Connor's writing, I was really not sure what to expect. The novel ended up being much more depressing than I thought it would (I went into it without having read any reviews). As many of the other reviewers note, there is not much in the way of character development in the story; nearly the beginning, we get a little background on Motes, that casts him in a symphethic light, but shortly after he quickly loses it. Aside of Emory, many of the other characters drift in and out of the story, seemly just to affect Motes, without little character traits. For the most part, I think O'Connor was looking to argue/promote different philosophical and theological arguments, and just used the characters as vessels for that. All of the characters seem to identify with different aspects of protestant theology.

One of the other noteworthy aspects of this novel is the Southern setting. O'Connor had a wonderful ear for dialogue, and is able to perfectly capture the southern dialects. I would say that Mark Twain easily as well writes O'Connor's dialogue as anything I've read.

Overall, I highly recommend this book. It's not pretty and it will not leave you with a happy feeling at the end. But, the prose is beautiful. And, while not well "rounded" the characters depict Christianity in their own unique ways. This novel is defiantly worth checking out.

Hazel Motes, protagonist of "Wise Blood," is an accidental prophet. Though the novel precedes the much better "The Violent Bear It Away," it can be read as a sort of sequel to that novel - what might have happened to young Tarwater if we were allowed to see his adventures in the city.
Motes goes around the city in the evenings, preaching the Church Without Christ, a church in which the individual is free from the 'bleeding stinking mad shadow of Jesus' - freed from tradition, from dogma, from traditional notions of salvation. Motes preaches the coming of a new Jesus - a contemporary that modern (or post-modern) people can relate to.
In his quest, Motes is pursued by two individuals, Sabbath Hawks, the daughter of a blind false prophet, and Enoch Emery, a wannabe disciple. Emery wants very badly to find that new Jesus and receive a revelation from him.
Full of strange and compelling, if somewhat distant characters, including a small mummy and a gorilla suit, "Wise Blood" does not have the plot flow of "The Violent Bear It Away," and it is a little more haphazard, but it is a wonderful first glance into Flannery O'Connor's genius fictional mind, possessed with finding Christ in existentialism with or without Kierkegaard.

Flannery O'Connor's first novel was this rather short book, _Wise Blood_. It is quite thoroughly strange, full of basically unattractive characters, acting in obsessive ways, coming to bad ends. Yet it is a remarkable, rather moving, strikingly written book that really sticks in the mind.
Hazel Motes is a young man from rural Tennessee who has just got out of the Army. (The book, published in 1952, appears to be set immediately after the Second World War.) He's had no contact with his family, what's left of it, for 4 years, and when he comes home he finds his home abandoned and in decay, and everyone dead. We meet him on the train to the "city". He's an unpleasant man, baiting the black porter, pushing his lack of belief in Christ on all and sundry.
In the city, he wanders somewhat aimlessly, encountering first a prostitute, then a blind preacher, Asa Hawks, and his "daughter" Sabbath, then another confused young man named Enoch Emery. Hazel (whose grandfather was a circuit-riding preacher) sets up as a preacher himself, preaching the "Church Without Christ", and advocating blasphemy and sin. He pursues and is pursued by Sabbath Hawks, and also Enoch Emery. Motes is continually unpleasant to all around him. After Hazel rebuffs a confidence man's attempt to cash in on his preaching, he finds himself confronted by a "twin", Solace Layfield, the false prophet, who preaches of "the Church of Christ Without Christ", and who wholly perverts Hazel's nihilistic "message". Meanwhile the pathetic Enoch is trying to steal a "new Jesus" for Hazel, while Sabbath, barely a teen, is successfully seducing Hazel. The end is grotesque and strange -- Hazel becomes a murderer, Enoch a thief, Sabbath is sent to a home, Asa runs off -- and the final two chapters show Hazel mortifying himself, apparently searching for redemption. Whether his redemption is real seems an open question to me, though O'Connor seemed to think it was.
The novel is ostensibly a comedy, and I suppose it is, but a very black comedy. It's full of images and objects and actions heavily weighted with symbolism -- Hazel's decrepit Essex automobile, the gorilla suit Enoch steals, the mummy that is to be the "new Jesus", the blind preacher's eyes, and Hazel's eyes, and much more. The writing, as I said, is striking, with any number of quite memorable phrases, such as the woman whose hair looked like "ham gravy dripping down her head" -- descriptive, and accurate, and very Southern in feel to me. This is a strange and quite compelling novel.

I used to think that Flannery O'Connor was a man. An Irishman who somehow was labeled one of the great souther writerss. But after I read the "Correspondence of Walker Percy and Shelby Foote" I see her peers considered this young Savannah Girl a literary giant. Her name was not an attempt to mask her identify as was the case with George Eliot, the female author of Middlemarch. Flannery, evidently, is female.
Wise Blood is a novel more likely to have occured in the hilly piedmont or mountains than the coast of Georgia. For a dark religious novel set around Savannah or Beaufort would no doubt mention voodoo as it is and has been practiced by the Blacks there. (Dr. Buzzard of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" is only the most famous example.)
Wise Blood starts off kind of boring as its characters slowly are unwound before us. The major characters are holy-roller type street preachers. The type you might find speaking in tongues at any of a thousand Pentacostal churches spread across the South. Higher up in the hills these same holly rollers would be sporting rattlesnakes. These snake handlers say their faith in god protects them from the serpant. That is the literal interpretation of the bible that define the fundamental Christain. These verbatim dogma are the same beliefs for the characters of Flannery O'Connor.
Yet O'Connor's holy man is a Christain without Christ. He preaches at the street corner of a Chruch with no Jesus. Blasphemy is the way to salvation he says. The rivalry between this preacher and another preacher points to another Southern theme--the dangerous violence that lurks beneath so many seemingly pious Southern souls.
The novel ends in a ghastly fashion that still haunts me today. I haven't felt the same horror about a book since I finished John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. (By the way, Steinbeck did not like the South and said so in "Travels with Charlie".) But this is no horror story--rather it is a great work that disturbs the conscious. Isn't that the true definition of art?

Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood has sometimes been described as dark comedy, sometimes simply as satire. Whichever description I eventually decide suits it best, this grotesque 1952 first novel is so disturbing that its characters and their fates will stay with me for a long time.

Haze Motes, recently released from the army after suffering a wound in Korea, returns to his home state of Tennessee where he finds himself, much to his irritation, taken for a preacher by many of the strangers whom he meets. This is an easy mistake to make since Motes has recently exchanged his uniform for the type of suit and hat commonly worn by preachers of the time and the fact that he carries himself like, and has many of the mannerisms and attitudes of, his grandfather, a onetime country preacher himself. But Motes is angered by the very idea of being mistaken for a preacher because he is repelled by the whole concept of Christianity.

After encountering a street preacher, and being disgusted by what he saw and heard, Hazel Motes founds his Church Without Christ, a church based on realism, one in which the blind do not see, the deaf do not hear, the lame do not walk, and the dead remain dead. Not too surprisingly, Haze's message attracts to him the kind of people who either become obsessed with his message or want to turn the Church Without Christ into a vehicle to put easy money into their pockets. There are Enoch Emery, an 18-year old so lonely in the big city that he sees the new church and its preacher as essential to his survival, Sabbath Lily a 15-year old abandoned by her charlatan preacher father, Asa Hawkes, and who sets out to seduce Motes, Hoover Shoates who hires his own false prophet and starts a rival church, and the landlady who decides to marry Motes in order to share his monthly government check.

Flannery O'Connor's writing seldom, if ever, provides the reader with anything like a "happy ending" and Wise Blood, her first novel, is no exception. It is filled with characters who focus exclusively on self-gratification and who are not the least concerned about what they have to say or do in order to get what they want from those who have it. Even the minor characters, in particular the police, are not to be trusted as Motes so painfully discovers near the end of the book. But along the way, O'Connor provides memorable scenes that reflect her sense of humor and irony. I won't soon forget the images of the small, newspaper-wrapped mummy being rapidly carried through the rainy streets after being stolen from a museum nor the man in the gorilla suit who terrified the couple in the woods with whom he only wanted to shake hands.

It occurs to me that, in this short novel, Flannery O'Connor invented "white trash." To say this book is about low-life rabble in the South in the 1940's is an understatement. In fact, she was accused in literary circles of writing about "grotesques." Our main character, Hazel Motes, is so screwed up (although we never learn why) that he becomes an anti-preacher, teaching about the "Church of Christ without Christ." He eventually blinds himself. A father tries to pass off his underage daughter to any available man to be rid of her. Every preacher is a charlatan; every cop is a brutal sadist; every character leads a life of loud and violent desperation. And yet, a fascinating read.

I was required to read this novel for my English class. I thought it was going to be another one of those boring books, but I was surprised to find it far from boring. At first, the characters seem excessively weird and there doesn't seem to be a point to the story. However, if you have proir knowlege to religion, you will probably enjoy this book. Among all the absurd characters of Haze, Enoch, Hawks, and Mrs. Flood there is a point that makes their stangeness make sense. I loved this novel because it was very different from other books that I have read before. Not only does it give you a challenge to discover what all the nonsense means, but it is hilarious at certain times too. I had to laugh the time that Enoch dressed up in a gorilla suit, the thought of him makes me laugh over and over. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in something out of the ordinary that is full of wit, humor, and radical characters.

Flannery O'Connor, born and raised in the American South, is categorized as a Southern Gothic author. A Roman Catholic, her works dealt with religion, ethics and morality. She published over thirty short stories, numerous reviews and commentaries, and two novels. She passed away in 1964, at the age of 39, succumbing to lupus. And for many, her writings still resonate today.

Wise Blood, originally published in 1952, is the first of her two novels. The book's protagonist, Hazel Motes, has just been discharged from the army after a four year stint. Finding both his home and hometown abandoned, he makes his way to the fictional southern town of Taulkinham.

Once there he picks up with a quirky set of characters - Enoch Emery, an 18 year old loser; a "blind' preacher and his not so devout daughter; and a con-man, among others. Our hero Hazel - the grandson of a preacher - becomes a street preacher himself, founding his own "Church without Christ" - membership of one - himself. Hazel's "church" is the hood of his beat up Essex, which he parks on the street, haranguing the town's citizens as they exit movie-theaters.

The book reads as a set of vignettes patched together, which I understand it is; the author modifying at least a few short stories to piece together this novel. And as interesting, intriguing and potentially humorous as the above outline sounds, for this reader both the characters and story were under-developed. Very possibly the subtlety of the writing eluded me, which wouldn't be the first time. There is some wonderful prose here, with poignant descriptions and spot-on dialogue - but personally - with these characters, their personal journeys and the setting - I could have used a little more substance to the story.

Hazel Motes, discharged from the army, sets out to be a car-roof preacher of the Church Without Christ, preaching the fallacies of faith. He becomes obsessed with a blinded preacher, and garners the obsession of a the preacher's sultry daughter, a lost young man who abducts a shrunken mummy, and a widow. Hazel Motes literally and figuratively blinds himself to the truths of life while he navigates a dark world filled with O'Connor's trademark grotesque and bizarre images and characters. Though thought-provoking and oddly beautiful, turning the oddities of life into religious symbols, the novel does not seem to be O'Connor's form. Flannery O'Connor is a refreshing literary voice and one that requires the reader to wrestle with the characters and actions in order to find meaning. Grade: B+

Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor +
This book is about the Bible, Jesus and Religion. But more than any of those things, it's about people. It's about how people react to someone that they don't understand. And no one seems to understand the protagonist of this story. He throws away money, when he doesn't need it. He doesn't have sex with a young girl, when she throws herself at him. He is hard for any of the other characters in the book to understand. He is hard for us the reader to understand. He has something inside him that is driving him to do the things he does. The young man who got off the buss to start the first, "Church without Christ."
The scary thing is the humanity of the protagonist's character. Unlike any of the other characters what he wants i.e., what he cares about the most is bigger than the desires of any of the other characters.
The other characters live in a real world, and their concerns are primal e.g., love, sex and money. But the protagonist wants something else. He wants something that he can't articulate well. And even though most would agree that he goes about it in the wrong way, you have to respect Hazel Motes's drive. And what it suggest about free will and original sin.

A strange and disconnected work full of apparent yet sometimes mysterious themes, Flannery O'Connor delivers less of a commentary on religion here than one on the human condition and its place within society and regarding itself. Hazel Motes, the protaonist, discovers his faith while attempting to shed it, while the enaging yet mysteriously motivated Enoch searches for his niche in less...appropriate manners. Altogether, Ms. O'Connor presents a work of extreme characters pressed together by distant circumstances and circularly obsessed with each others' lives. Each one's uest for their own meaning involves another, and even characters which do not emerge until the last chapter, such as Hazel's landlady, seem to take on a three-dimensional life-altering perspective as they encounter Hazel.
The book raises as many questions as it seems to aspire to answer. Reading it the first time around will produce only puzzlement over the intended themes and coherency of the plot, but further analysis should produce the wonderful existential surprise Ms. O'Connor has hidden within this exteriorly nonsensical narrative.

I'm a huge fan of Flannery O'Connor so when someone asked me to name my favourite novel I picked a little bit-of-a-book and said "Wise Blood".

Partly because the characters are, if not wholly understood, at least wholly familiar. Despite growing up around an assortment of Evangelicals and Foundation types I managed for the most part to maintain a pretty superficial view of them. Things like snake handling and female oppression were odd but ordinary and because of this ordinary I never spent too much time thinking about the misguided spirituality that a lot of it sat upon. Through a glass darkly, and all that.

Mostly, I'm moved to recommend Wise Blood again and again because it's such a brilliantly layered and grotesque comedy with powerful and appealing themes of integrity, the disaffected young and redemption. It's just one of those books you never really walk away from. Not really.

And that's a good thing.

The meaning of "Wise Blood" is hard to discern, since O'Connor writes with such magnificent economy and simplicity. She etches out a dismal picture-full of gray and rain and pain and indifference. I'm not sure exactly what she had in mind, but this is how it struck me...I think Hazel Motes is already dead when the story begins, killed in the war after enduring great physical and emotional pain. He never talks about his combat experiences, and from his bitter silence we can infer his overwhelming sense of guilt and disillusion. He cannot reconcile the inhumanity he's experienced with a notion of Jesus that is just words to him. So when his train reaches Taulkinham, the scene of his cleansing, he preaches the Church Without Christ. He proclaims Jesus to be a liar. Man has not been redeemed. If we were redeemed, there would be some evidence somewhere-but there isn't. And indeed, the townsfolk make his case. Asa Hawks is a loathsome fraud. His daughter, Sabbath, luxuriates in her moral corruption. Enoch Emory-the outsider with "wise blood"-laments that nobody in town will shake his hand. People stare at the street in somber silence as they go through the motions of life. Taulkinham is all hate and crass self-interest, literally a town bereft of redemption. Taulkinham is a dirty reflection of Haze's own soul: his accusatory preaching bounces indifferently off his few pitiful listeners and back into him, driving him to greater exasperation and violence. The more he rails against judgment, the more surely he feels himself judged. The more he feels himself judged, the more he denies his judge. Finally, after a crowning act of defiance, he tries to leave town, but is rebuffed by a policeman who pushes his car off a cliff with the coolness of a man buttering toast. At this point Haze moves from defiance to acceptance, and undertakes to cleanse himself. He subjects himself to every form of pain and torment he can devise, and waits patiently for salvation. Eventually, his landlady, Mrs. Flood, attempts to ease his pain for mainly selfish motives. Haze sees through her easily despite his blindness. He suddenly knows it is time to go; his blood is now "wise"-it tells him what to do without him needing to think it. Go where?, Mrs. Flood asks. He goes off to escape his purgatory, of course, and after a few days wandering around in the freezing cold, he winds up near death, seemingly nowhere. But a policeman's billy club bashed upon his semi-conscious head punctuates his victory. Dead to the world at last, he can live. Jesus has taken him home.

SPOILERS

A short but powerful read which demonstrates the importance of believing in something good and edifying. Haze, the main character, is truly living in a haze throughout the novel -- all he has been taught is a fervent and hateful brand of Christianity, and in his attempts to escape the unnecessary guilt this tradition has placed on him, he becomes a nihilist.

But shunning all spirituality for dependence on material things, like the piece-of-junk car which ends up failing him, ultimately lead him unsatisfied. His ability to do whatever he wants, without the prospect of eternal consequences, brings him no more happiness than did his former Christian beliefs. All that does seem to remain is a guilt, which continues to creep around him, driving him back to the sect he hated enough to leave.

Haze never considers, and never finds, another belief system which might propose hope instead of damnation, that might imbue his life with meaning without constantly filling him with self-loathing. He never finds the golden mean between the two extremes of zealous Christian fundamentalism and zealous Nihilism. What's more, the other characters never find anything constant to believe in, always putting their faith in untrustworthy people or in material facades.

With all these unhappy endings, I think Wise Blood can be safely labeled a depressing book. I think its worth is as a cautionary tale for the reader to find that golden mean, between empty meaningless and vile meaningfulness. It definitely encourages a second read -- I think there's plenty of deeper of meaning I haven't managed to grasp.

Knowing the classical signicficance of this novel, I tried to like it...I really did. Then I figured out that I wasn't supposed to like it. Wise Blood is not one of those books that leave you with a warm, fuzzy feeling inside, and it's not supposed to.
This novel follows the story of young Hazel Motes, the confused grandson of a southern preacher. Throughout his adventures, Motes forms the idea that only the bad know Jesus-and in order to avoid Jesus one must avoid sin. Hazel is doing the right things for the wrong reasons.
Hazel's beliefs leads to the creation of a church without Christ. Motes preaches this religion from the street corners, and it is here that he meets Asa Hawks, a street preacher, and his 15 year old daughter Lily Sabbath. Naturally, the differing beliefs of Asa and Hazel lead to problems.
Flannery O'Connor wrote a novel full of meaning but a little lacking in life. The one-dimensional characters eventually dulled me to the point of sleep and I had trouble getting into the book. The real mystery here is why O'Connor, who shows evidence of excellent writing in her other works, would take a subject that she felt so strongly about and bury her message in a dull story with incredibly bland characters.

This book would be defined as a novella for today’s standards of 800-page novels: barely 232 pages, and it is one of the weirdest, strangest, eccentric and even bizarre novels I’ve read in quite some time. It is beautifully written but the subject matter, the few characters in the novel and their concerns, and the environment it describes are very strange, as if O’Connor were describing aliens living in some weird and exotic alien planet.

In a brief note at the beginning of the novel, the author describes it as “a comic novel… and as such very serious for all comic novels that are any good must be about matters of life and death”. The tone of the novel alternates between comic and serious and the omniscient narrator does not seem to take her characters too seriously. It could be defined as a very dark comedy-drama. Certainly it ends tragically.

It is the story of Hazel Motes a 22-year old Army veteran, discharged from the Army with a pension, so that he doesn’t have a need to work. Motes is clearly insane and the novel describes his failed attempts as a preacher (of the Church without Christ), his encounters with an 18-year old boy called Enoch Emery, also quite crazy, a fake-blind beggar and preacher and his 15-year old daughter, and a couple of other eccentric local characters.

(You can almost hear Father Ted saying, "Those Protestants; up to no good as usual."). A slight but hysterical piece of southern Grand-Guignol in which O'Connor, in stark muscular prose, shows us why warner climes tend to grow lusher fruit (viz,, the evangelists in northern Queensland, the Spanish Inquisition, etc.). O'Connor presents her freak show without explanation, comment or censure and you close the book as if you've just escaped the weird tent, gasping for air.

Wise Blood is an allegorical valentine of hate toward southern protestantism from an intellectually superior catholic, inexpertly cobbled together from some short stories. Its saving grace is that it is very funny, with a kind of deadpan sarcasm borrowed from Ring Lardner. The author also has a talent for creating a kind of dark, forboding, morbid atmosphere throughout the book. Unfortunately that seems to be the only kind of atmosphere she can create, and there is not one remotely believable character or situation in the book. O'Connor seems to miss that her catholic philosophy is nothing more than the merest sophistry designed to convince some people that there is an intellectual basis for a belief system that can be taken only on faith, and is no more or less rationally valid that that of the snake handling church across the holler.

This would probably have been better presented as a series of interrelated short stories- the part about the movie gorilla would've been a highlight. It doesn't make it as a novel, however, and its religious "argument" is unimpressive.

This novel combines startling images and an inscrutable Old Testament sensibility with funny scenes that will make you laugh out loud. It is the novel that helped cement Flannery O'Connor's literary reputation. She's a writer who will be part of the canon in a hundred years -- people will still be reading and discussing her. "Wise Blood" is the story of Hazel Motes, a man determine to strip Christ out of his life and out of the world, but, who, paradoxically, is also obsessed with Him. A walk through a haunted yet still good world filled with men who are made into monkeys, workaday street preachers, broke down autos, this is a kaleidoscope of sense, doubts, guilt, and humor: a must read tour de force.

Wow. Reading O'Connor is like taking a punch in the gut, but what a punch. WISE BLOOD is an uncomprising tale where you get the impression that not one single word is misplaced, that the story states exactly what O'Connor wanted to say. Admittedly, it takes a while to get the mote out of one's eye to see what she is doing, but it is a journey well worth taking for she lays waste to the secular world and its esteemed treasures. Consequently, what is seen is inferior to what is not seen.

Motes' redemption comes when he realizes this is the only truth.
Jesus does win in the end.

Back in these days, books were published mainly for literary merit. They were published because they were good. And this is one of those books - a story that definitely stood the test of time and is deemed as a classic today. It mainly concerns a young man named Hazel Motes, a man questing for his own church - the church of christ without christ - and who blinds himself. I read it a few times and each time enjoyed it more and more, though I have yet to check out the movie. It is one of those books that stays with you for a really long time. I recommend it to anybody who wants to curl up for a few hours with a good, well-written story.

In May 1952, after Flannery O'Connor published "Wise Blood" to mixed notices, she wrote to her publisher, Robert Giroux, and demonstrated her ability to take even the bad reviews with aplomb: "I have a request for a complimentary copy of 'Wise Blood' from Captain W. of the Salvation Army for their reading room and would be much obliged if you would send them a copy.... I'm always pleased to oblige the Salvation Army. According to some of the reviews you have sent me, I ought to be in it."

Throughout 1950s America--and especially in her hometown-the few readers who came across O'Connor's novel were dismayed or shocked by the its violence and its seemingly amoral characters; even two years after publication, still receiving fan letters ("what happened to the guy in the ape suit?") from the scattering of readers who liked it, O'Connor was able to joke, "I have now reached the lunatic fringe and there is no place left for me to go." A half century later, though, O'Connor has the last laugh, because the dark humor that pervades her "Southern Gothic" tale is more readily digested by modern audiences reared on films by the likes of David Lynch and Lars Von Trier

A quick and easy read, "Wise Blood" portrays a series of unforgettably creepy losers in haunting, disturbing scenes. Hazel Motes, a soldier discharged from the army because of an injury, becomes a street-corner preacher for the nihilistic "Church Without Christ" (with a congregation of one). He meets, and can't shake off, a friendless and troubled adolescent, and the two of them subsequently encounter an alcoholic charlatan who pretends to be a blind preacher and who hopes somehow to take advantage of Hazel by getting him to marry his young daughter. Eventually, Hazel acquires a congregant for his atheistic church, but the first disciple rebels and sets up his own ministry. There's so much more that happens, and I certainly won't give away the finale, but those who have already read the book will be intrigued by the knowledge that O'Connor decided how to end the novel after reading Sophocles.

There's no doubt that "Wise Blood" is an influential, memorable novel--just barely short of a classic. Even its fans agree that the book seems disjointed at times--and that's because it was cobbled together from several disparate stories. The first chapter is an expanded version of her Master's thesis, "The Train"; and other chapters are reworked versions of "The Peeler," "The Heart of the Park," and "Enoch and the Gorilla." Sometimes an author can use this approach and jerry-rig previous works into a cohesive whole, but "Wise Blood"--while surely a work of genius--still feels like a patchwork quilt. Fortunately, O'Connor's portrayal of the eccentrics who populate her fictional town of Taulkingham saves the book from the distraction of its all-too-visible seams.

O'Connor is one of my favorite authors and this novel is one of my favorite novels. O'Connor is simply brilliant; her stories are satirical portraits of a secular society that has blinded men and women from the truth and distanced them from God. O'Connor is known for her caustic tone, and this novel is no exception. Be prepared to laugh at the protagonist and to be shocked by his final action. Don't be quick to judge O'Connor's intentions and opinions. She's a tricky woman to understand, and I certainly do not pretend to understand her, but the more of her you read, the better you'll grasp her notions of faith, grace, country folk, and secularism.

Flannery O'Connor was 22 years old when she began writing this story in 1947. I've known that fact for years and have read the book multiple times, but still I cannot grasp how talented, hard-working and brilliant Flannery must have been to create a masterpiece this monumental and perfect at such a young age.

Hazel Motes was already messed up in the head when he left for the War and even screwier when he returned four years later. His hometown dried up and blown away Haze travels to Taulkinham. Once there he visit's a disgusting woman then later stands on the hood of his raddletrap, which is parked outside of a movie theater, and begins preaching about the Church Without Christ. Only a few people pay him any mind, but that's enough to set in motion a series of strange events and bizarre behavior that makes me smile every time I think about it - which is quite often. "I see you," she said in a playful voice.

Not everybody will like this book, just the smart ones.

Flannery O'Connor is one of those authors I feel like I ought to like. Her name pops up from time to time among Christian writers I respect. She's supposedly this great Christian writer, loved by other writers, theologians, and teachers of college fiction classes, but she is simply not to my taste. Does that mean I'm less cultured and intelligent that people who like to read her work? I don't think so. Just a matter of taste, I'd say.

Wise Blood, O'Connor's first novel, follows the travels of Hazel Motes as he tries to run from God. For reasons never made terribly clear, he's never been able to reconcile some dissatisfying or disturbing experiences of his youth with the truth of the gospel. Hypocritical or perverted expressions of Christianity aside, as he matures couldn't he have found what he was looking for: a genuine expression of Christ's love and grace? Instead of looking, he takes on the affectations of a preacher, preaching the Church Without Christ. In the meantime, he hooks up with a prostitute, beds an underaged girl, and ends up murdering a rival.

The thing that bothers me most about this novel is not its attempt at satirizing and challenging complacent Christianity, but the poor story telling. The characters, terribly wooden and one-dimensional, behave in inexplicable ways that do not fit with their portrayal and certainly do not fit with the way real people act in real life. For instance, when a policeman pulls Motes over, Motes informs him that he doesn't have a driver's license, so of course the officer pushes Motes's car off a cliff then offers him a ride back to town. Huh? And the disconnected, rambling plot goes nowhere.

One of my favorite stories about O'Connor, which I read years ago in the introduction to a collection of her stories, tells of her conversation with, as I recall, the director of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. O'Connor, born, raised, and educated in Georgia, could not make herself understood. The midwesterner to whom she was speaking stopped her and said, "Young lady, you are going to have to stop and write down whatever it is you're saying, because I can't understand a word of it," or something to that effect. Maybe if I lived in the deep South, I would have more appreciation for her gothic Southern tone, but for now it's falling on deaf ears.

I won't quit her forever; I understand her short fiction is her best work. It's certainly what she's better known for, so maybe I'll pick some of that up. Like I said, I want to like her, but for now I'll be looking elsewhere for both good storytelling and faith-challenging literature.

Wise Blood was one of the most thought provoking books that I have read. Everything seems inverted - even faith is presented negatively instead of positively. By that I do not mean that O'Conner is saying that faith is negative, what I mean is that the main character, Hazel Motes, tries to abandon his faith which only proves that his faith is real because he is totally unable to abandon it. I believe it was Miss O'Conner who said something to the effect "Maybe a person's integrity consists of what they are not able to do, rather that what they are able to do" ... an interesting perspective.

When I read a novel, I like to be entertained. If I learn something in the process, that's all the better. It's why historical fiction is one of my favorite genres.

I do not like to read to become depressed, nor to become confused. "Wise Blood" did both of these for me. I would have rated it one star, but the author's excellent command of setting and description bumped it up on star. However, the plot was choppy and all over the place, had almost no fluidity, and gave me absolutely no regard or care about the characters.

There were additionally some bizarre and seemingly random moments - Shaking hands with a man in a gorilla suit. Stealing a shrunken man. A cop purposely kicking a man's car over a cliff. Characters just disappeared from the storyline with no resolution to their particular plot thread.

Ugh. Perhaps it's just the genre, which was described as Southern Gothic, and maybe it's just my realization that it's not the genre for me. But, for those who gave it four or five stars, I submit that maybe you have a depth of understanding such prose that I don't have. If you loved it, I'm happy for you. I didn't.

Highly entertaining and unusual story about a man on an anti-spiritual quest in the mid-20th century deep south. Dialogue is superb; characters like you might meet in a nightmare are, though quirky and funny at times, deeply sad and disturbing. Not for the literal minded or easily offended.

This has to be one of the top 10 books that I've read. It starts off a little slow and may come off as boring, but for some reason, these characters grew on me and I just had to find out what happened to Hazel, Enoch, Sabbath, and all those other people. I don't know what Hoover Shoats' problem was - jealousy? He reminds me quite a bit of some girl in school! In fact, the description of him is almost identical to her!!! I thought of her the whole time I read of him! (heh, heh!) These characters were freaks. They were extraordinary. They are almost too hard to understand to describe! What made Hazel tick? I wondered once finishing the book. I suggest that everyone should read this book and see what I mean by weird books that are hard to understand, hard to describe, but too interesting to put down.

Flannery O'Connor's name is on the edge of widely recognized. Fewer know her voice. I am re-reading her stories (as I do every decade or so) and it is still relevant.

Replace n----r with wetbck, and her view reflects the present prejudices, bigotry and hatred of the indigent. Meaning equating material wealth as the measure of a person's worth rather than their character and actions.

"Do you think it is possible to come to Christ through ordinary dislike before discovering the love of Christ? Can dislike be a sign?" - Walker Percy in The Last Gentleman
I've never really grasped what Walker Percy meant by that one until I read Wise Blood, but that's what happens. The opposite of love isn't hate. Rather, it's indifference, and hate is some form of love. In Wise Blood, Hazel does hate Christ, but that hate is emblematic of the belief (and unwanted love) he actually holds for Him. Wise Blood is Hazel's dark journey in a fallen world toward happening onto a bit of grace, painful but merciful at the same time.
Wise Blood isn't a book to read if you want to end up with a warm and fuzzy feeling inside. Its setting is a grim, fallen world, and the characters aren't exactly likeable. Nevertheless, the truth O'Connor has to present through her dark humor is powerful and insightful. This is a wonderful book for intellectual Christians and for anyone else searching for truth in this mess of a world.

A haunting book. Quasi-apologetic for Roman Catholicism, but it might be unrecognizable to most as such; like the characters in this book, many of us are haunted by Christ, but don't even really know who He is. Like Hazel Motes, we grow up in a society that does not understand Jesus, though we talk about Him all the time; like Motes, many of us claim to be above and beyond belief in Christ, yet our obsessions about Christianity and Jesus give the lie to incessant protestations that such things are for the ignorant, and not worth even talking about.

This book leaves you to your own conclusions about Jesus and Christianity. But it shows many characters who lead joyless, drab existences, and perhaps we see ourselves in them; one cannot help but wonder what, or perhaps Who, is missing from all their lives. The answer is to be found on almost every page of the book.

In Wise Blood, O'Connor uses ghastly imagery, foreshadowing,and reoccurring symbolism, to facilitate her criticizing of: the self proclaimed prophets who preach solely for the financial gratification, the disintegration of a hopeless society infatuated with materialism, and those who foolishly run away from the only thing that can save them. O'Connor foreshadows Haze's clash with Christian theology when his early childhood is exposed. Not only born into a Christian family, Haze is expected to become a circuit preacher like his grandfather who" traveled in a Ford automobile."(10) This foresight is evident when Hazel purchases the Essex and becomes the traveling minister of a "Church Without Christ." Clearly stating that "he knew by the time he was twelve years old he was going to be a preacher,"(10) O'Connor foreshadows Hazel's quest for fulfilling the role administered to him. When he becomes the preacher of his self proclaimed church, Hazel attempts to refute any significance his dead ancestors had placed on Redemption. Another foreshadowing, this one of death can be presented through Hazel's early experiences with coffins. The first being when he had seen his dead grandfather in a casket, his "two younger brother; one died in infancy and was put in a small box. The other fell in front of a mowing machine when he was seven." These horrific occurrences provide a more insightful view on Hazel's character and explain both his unappreciation for life and hostility towards afterlife. "For a second he thought it was a skinned animal and then he saw it was a woman. She was fat and she had a face like an ordinary woman except there was a mole on the corner of her lip, that moved when she grinned , and one on her side."(32) is an example how foreshadowing and ghastly imagery are used to illustrate the perverse affliction of lust Hazel's father experiences and the instances where pure tragedy can leave the impressionable abandoned in an immature world. Wise Blood is an extrordinary example of great American literature, not only for its dynamics devices and messages, but for its entertainment value as well.

three and a half stars...o'connor is probably the only religious writer i have ever liked as opposed to walker percy ( his stories come off too dry for my taste ) you can count on her for to find the macabre in the unlikeliest places...
the characters make this story. she seems to be sending up hucksters and organnized religion. plus it's short, you can finish it in an evening...and it's wholly quotable...make me wonder if tarantino might've read this before filming pulp fiction. it's got that same weird quirky energy

Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood contains many reoccuring and undermining religious themes. Her main theme includes the redemption of man by Christ. She also depicts the grotesques in society through her use of her subject matter. O'Connor bluntly uses this religious theme to prove that redemption is difficult for her characters because of the distorted sense of moral purpose in her characters. Throughout her novel, a major emphasis is placed on materialsim and money. Through her use of imagery, symbols, and details, O'Connor produces the unbalanced prosperity of the society, which leaves little assurance to blissfulness in life.
Her protagonist, Hazel Motes, becomes a fated preacher or even prophet; however, Hazel rejects any form of Christ in his life including the image of himself. Even though it is rejected, his fate dominates him throughout the novel, and via his rejection of Christ, Hazel preaches the Church without Christ. Hazel finds that his reason for existence is to form the Church without Christ. Eventually, Hazel sacrifices everything in his life so as to not accept Christ which eventually destroys him. It would have been much better to sacrifice everything he had to begin with in order to accept Christ and let Christ take over from there. This would have prevented Hazel's destruction rooted from his rejection of Christ. This proves O'Connor's purpose of showing a society full of people who cannot accept Christ and who are, at most times, destroyed in some way in their attempt to reject their religious side.
O'Connor mocks evangelism and the all too popular "preachers for profits," who have no training in religion what so ever, in order to display her scorn for popularized anti-cerebral religion. Hazel, whose name is actually Hebrew for "he who sees God," ironically but purposefully covers himself with a figurative veil. This veil covers his soul and his senses from seeing Christ as He should be seen. His nickname, Haze, also proves his inability to see clearly.
Throughout this novel, Hazel runs into several people who perform mysterious acts of goodness for him trying to help Hazel find Grace. This is also ironic condiering that most of Hazel's acquaintances are profiteer preachers. Some of these acquaintances include: Asa Hawks, an ex-evangelist, who pretends to blind himself for sympathy and profit as he "hawks" for money around the city; Enoch Emery, the boy with "wise blood," who cannot find his inner self and becomes Hazel's follower in the Church without Christ; and Hoover Shoats, another profiteer preacher, who pretends to agree with Hazel's beliefs just to gain profit from it.
Haze's car is a major sumbol of the novel. This car becomes Hazel's "church." Hazel lives in his car and preaches from his car. His car becomes the "rock" which Hazel builds his church upon. He and his car become "one." After his car is destroyed, Hazel sees himself as destroyed. Hazel is weaned out of his fantasy/rejection world and into reality. He eventually forces himself to Christ as he sees he is "not clean." He begins his stage of repentance by blinding himself, stuffing his shoes with glass and rocks, and wrapping barbed wire around his chest. Inevitably, his destruction came.
This book was very revealing and well-written. O'Connor selects certain audences with the books she wrote. This book contains a majority of religion. A person who perfers not to read about religion probably ought to but will not want to. The way O'Connor incorporated her hidden themes into her novel provided the reader several ways to interpret her implied religious beliefs.

I've never read a piece of American literature as profound as WISE BLOOD. Even though it was first published in early '50s, the book will certainly shock you all the way through with its violent images and brutal characters. BUT this American masterpiece is still helplessly beautiful. And also amazingly funny. After reading WISE BLOOD, you will never be able to shake it out of your mind as long as you live - GUARANTEED!! Flannery O'Connor is god!

If you're looking for religious literature in the hope and comfort vein, skip Wise Blood. I do, however, think that feel-good Christians on chummy terms with God might do well to remember that, according to a verse from Hebrews, "it's a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God." This is what happens to Hazel Motes, about as unsympathetic a protagonist as you're ever likely to clap eyes onto (the rest of the characters, no-hopers all, won't warm your heart much, either). In a book that's both wildly funny and profoundly thought-provoking, O'Connor pries up the rock of conventional religious belief and examines what lies underneath it. Read it.

Wise Blood is a work for everyone. However, it is by no means meant to please everyone. It is hilarious and dreadful, hopeless and redemptive. It is essentially about a young man's inability to lose Christ. He is saved as a child and "soul hungry" Jesus will never let him go.
It is a simple read but also rewards a willingness to look into it's deeper themes and symbolism. Ms. O'Connor said that it was written and should be read with zest, but those looking for a light beach-read should maybe look elsewhere. She did not write to give her audience a warm, fuzzy feeling of satisfaction. In fact, she expected them to be turned off.
It is a short book and one that will stay with you long after you've finished. The night I finished reading it, the wind was cold and strong and caused tree branches to tap against my window. My initial reaction to the sound was not to worry. It's just the shrunken new Jesus, I thought. Then I realized that exactly why we should all be worried.

Street Preaching: Wise Blood, Flannery O'Connor's first novel, was published in 1952. It introduced Flannery to the literary world, and quickly made her style one of the most recognized of all time. She writes of deep Southern towns, where one gets lost in musty streets and dark sinister alleys, encountering equally musty and sinister characters. This book set the path, on which her subsequent novels follow.
Wise Blood begins by introducing the main character, a discharged service man named Hazel Motes, who finds a new home in a large city. Hazel discovers the wonderful world of street preaching and creates a church titled, the `Church Without Christ.' His attitude toward life and those in it is cynical and almost absurdly opinionated. This demeanor shapes the story to the point where the reader believes his immoral actions and opinions are reasonable.
During the first day of his new life in the city, Hazel meets new characters in similarly desolate states of being. Enoch Emery portrays a ravaged young man whose blood tells him what to do and often dominates him to a point where Enoch can no longer control his actions. Asa Hawks, a street preacher, accompanied by his daughter, Lily Sabbath Hawks, tries to change Haze's life for the better, but ends up only confusing him. Hoover Shoat becomes Haze's one and only prophet, but later turns against him and changes to his street-preaching competition. The characters weave a bizarre story, to which Flannery provides the necessary details to create dreadfully vivid scenes.
Often, the theme in Flannery's books is not clear and one must dig deeper into the book to find its true meaning. In her short story books, like Everything that Rises Must Converge, I find it easier to discern a prominent theme, because I can compare the stories to find a common thread. However, the theme of Wise Blood hides within the more complex story line. Through looking into the characters' actions, I found this dominant theme: `Do not plan too far into the future, until you know what lies ahead.' Too many of the characters in the book make plans for the morrow but cannot fulfill them and ultimately end up disappointed. Enoch Emery feels in his blood that he has a mission, but he is unsure of how he should react to the strange messages. Instead of being productive and continuing with job and other engagements, he spends all of his time worrying about what he must do. If he had been flexible from the beginning and pondered less about his "mission," he could have avoided being caught up in theft of a museum artifact.
Flannery's writing, especially in this short novel, is compelling, and makes it hard to put the book down. Her attention to detail makes one feel that the characters have been neighbors all one's life, even though they lived in such a different time and place. She has a way of writing that enfolds the reader into the story. I often was frustrated with the story line, because she made me realize that the characters' conflicts with their surroundings and each other result in doings that are morally wrong. This style characterizes Flannery's writing, in that her stories often end up with an unexpectedly tragic ending. Her tragic endings are just one more way that she portrays the grim life style of those less fortunate.
The ending left me thirsty for more of the story. I did not feel Flannery completely told parts of the novel; she did not finish many of the sub-stories that she started. Despite this drawback, I found the book to be well thought out and written in the amazing way that only Flannery can write. I would recommend this book to readers who enjoy in-depth but short novels that transport them into the hard life of those who struggled to get along in the city slums of the Fifties.

Like Hazel Motes, the main character of this book, who in thoroughly seeking to deny Christ in every which way, only ends up affirming Christ in a resonant, disturbingly real and existential way, this book works the same for those who both like and dislike it. This book, as a whole work, speaks a WORD. Those who toss it aside as "boring" or "ingratiating" only affirm this.

When I first read it, I had the same "ingratiating" feeling for a while. One thought that definitely occured to me was that I had never read anything like it before. It doesn't seek to thrill, empower the emotions, or to bring any "explorations" of "social issues". It is so grounded in the very unpleasant falleness of a southern town, that the movements that occur therein take on a kind of universal importance and impact; right down the most immature of dirty deeds there is an ATTENTION in the writing, for want of a better word; the "town" seems to fade away and a larger stage takes its place. Or it becomes like a small stage in the hands of larger one. No matter how much it turns to hell, no matter how much the characters go after their petty, selfish appetites, there is something there, hovering over and with, something that is not hell, but is felt as an absence, waiting. One thing that helps this notion in the book is the fact that the sins that take place do not have any staggering, overpowering decadence to them. They have a pathetic, last-minute meanness and rotten pettiness to them.

This is not a nihilistic yarn. Neither is it merely obsessed with absurdity, though absurdity does abound. This is not Kafka.

This book, as a creation, has such a homespun feeling, but completely devoid of flippancy. It is so thoroughly a piece of genuine craftmanship that it makes Evelyn Waugh look a little pale. It's hard to describe. Almost as though it were too simple for our conditioning and our complexities. It is really a novel apart from other novels. Reading this book is sort of like watching a long train sliding across a horizon. You look at the cargo, and there are brief flashes between the cars. And then something occurs that is like an understatement, but bigger than what you expected. The last car, the caboose, goes across your vision, and it underlines the horizon you now see in the absence of the train. In a word, the book, at least I think in part is about HOPE. Not superfical hope that gaurantees something with a complete picture. That would not be hope. But RADICAL hope. The hope that St. Paul speaks of. But the way this book gets this across is not in any way pushy. There are not very many books that are as undeniable as this one, yet without any definite words to explain why it is undeniable. Wiseblood is a novel alive unlike any other.

This novel is a meandering series of vignettes which was born from several short stories. The satire certainly likes to make fun of organized religion, but aside from pointing out how stupid it can be, does little in the way of offering any real insight or observations about what any of that means. Confusing things too is the author's general support for the concept of religion, but just not how others choose to wield it.

The characters are all a bit grotesque, never really worthy of the reader’s admiration or sympathies. At this point, the entire book is extremely anachronistic, with its entire story relying upon local specificity of ‘50s Southern street preachers, a long-gone phenomenon in this day and age.

Considering this writer is renowned for her short stories and only ever wrote one other novel, it’s easy to see the trouble she had in stringing together something bigger to say for a whole book. There are only a few interesting moments amongst a general sea of lost storytelling.

In the Author's Note to the Second Edition, written in 1962, Ms. O'Connor quite candidly writes "WISE BLOOD was written by an author congenitally innocent of theory...". Kudos to her, at least, for that confession.

I've always considered Flannery O'Connor to be one of the pillars of Southern (American) literature. And that she was able to produce as much -- and as much great--literature before succumbing to the ravages of systemic lupus erythematosus at the age of only 39 remains a wonder to me.

That said, I don't believe that Wise Blood shows her skills in their best light. I'll grant that as a first novel, WISE BLOOD shows promise -- or at least elicits interest. But the work is disjointed -- and at times, downright sloppy. As an example of the latter, take the following paragraph from Chapter 8, an otherwise quite humorous tract on the character of Enoch Emery, one of the principal characters in WISE BLOOD:

"This was a disappointment to him because he had hoped that the money would be for some new clothes FOR HIM, and here he saw it going into a set of drapes. He didn't know what the gilt was for until he got home with it; WHEN HE GOT HOME WITH IT, he sat down in front of the slop-jar in the washstand, unlocked it, and painted the inside of it with the gilt (EMPHASIS mine)."

Am I being overly fastidious -- even captious -- with the above criticism? Not, I believe, for someone of Flannery O'Connor's reputation.

Erskine Caldwell -- another Southern great -- does wonders with repetition (or rather, with slight syntactical variations on the same thought or expression). Ms. O'Connor's repetition, however, strikes me as slovenly -- as if she simply couldn't be bothered to re-read (and obviously edit out mistakes in) her work.

But the larger error in WISE BLOOD -- or so, at least, it seems to me -- is that the story meanders, and that certain plot-points would seem to have no (or very little) real raison-d'être. At the same time, characters appear out of the blue -- and then disappear just as readily (and inexplicably).

I realize that my criticism of the work of this literary icon borders on blasphemy. But if memory serves, I once felt that Carson McCullers's THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER -- also her first novel, by the way -- was not without flaws.

I'm very happy to be able to say that, of the three "Graces" of Southern (American) literature -- Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers and Eudora Welty -- the first two went on to produce incredible work (although I must confess, I just never quite got the allure of Eudora Welty). WISE BLOOD just isn't among those works.

RRB
07/07/13
Brooklyn, NY

I borrowed these words from Robert Brinkmeyer, Jr who wrote the book, 'The Art & Vision of Flannery O'Connor' which I read side by side with 'Wise Blood' and the Short stories that he refers to. I am a painter and a southerner, influenced by all the forces Flannery so brilliantly writes about.I am awestruck by her brilliance, her faith, her genius at challenging her reader as she challenged her own faith, her own prejudices. I am humbled to have even read her work. We suffered quite theloss when she died at 39. Ah, Flannery... 'Cheers' to you. You have given me the gift of new visual imagery and challenged me tonew realms of the spirit.

This is a unique story that is particularly hard to describe. It revolves around the story of a man who is revolting against Christ, perceiving that to be a revolt against everyone else, only to realize they are just as lost as him. It's the story of several madmen in a society that is Christian in name only. It's a unique story.

In the 18th and 19th centuries C.E., landscape artists often used a convex mirror made of darkened glass to aid in their work. It was called a black mirror. Turning their back to the landscape, they would paint using the reflection in the dark mirror as a reference. The image they saw had a compression of details, and a muting or loss of tonality.

Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood seems to have been crafted using a sort of literary black mirror to survey the human landscape. The characters, without exception, are darkly rendered, and many are physically deformed. Flannery reportedly gave little truck to psychology, saying that art wants to begin where psychology leaves off. Yet her main characters are tugged, yanked, and tumbled by deep and mysterious longings and compulsions that originate far beneath the crust of conscious thought.

Wise Blood is filled with completely undisguised hatred for the hyper-religiosity of Southern Bible-based fundamentalism, and O'Connor's ferocious characterization (maybe caricaturization is a better word for what she does) is both brilliant and repellant. O'Connor described this work as a dark comedy, and it is interesting to note how many reviewers comment on how comical they felt this book was. If indeed it IS comedy, it is a mocking, sneering sort of comedy, with as much warmth in it as a sleet storm. One can only laugh AT the characters, never WITH them.

When the landscape artist of the 18th and 19th centuries stared into their black mirrors, they saw a world deprived of color and somewhat distorted shape compared to the landscape that they had quite literally turned their backs on. In some sense, in Wise Blood, O'Conner turned her back on the fullness of human existence, and in this book painted a darkened and distorted human landscape. The full color of human behavior, including easy laughter, generosity, simple kindness, and love based on integrity and trust has been filtered out. There is, to be fair, a single act of kindness in the book: when a gentleman on a train is asked by a half-sane teenager to share his newspaper, he hands the youth the funny pages.

O'Connor was a Catholic, as was I when I grew up. She, like I in my youth, liked to draw a sharp line between what she felt was nonsensical Protestant/fundamentalist excess, and the (perceived) rationality and depth of Catholicism. One evening in a college dorm party that was well-infused with different varieties of alcoholic spirits, an atheist classmate of mine asked, "So, how exactly is Catholicism different than a cult?". It took me a few decades to work out a consistent answer to that question, and the answer led to a change in convictions. Flannery O'Connor's loyalty to Catholicism would have lead her to a different answer than the one I eventually arrived on. Which leads me to a line of questioning about her attacks on the hyper-religious that will surely earn me a fusillade from O'Connor-philes. It's a question about vision.

Self-blinding, both feigned for profit and real, is a theme in this dark novella. O'Connor relentlessly harpoons the hypocrisies and foolishness of overwrought Christianity (which many readers and critics have found of great comic value). Is her own Catholic Church any less subject to savage review (e.g. Christopher Hitchen's characterization of Catholicism as the church with the "No Child's Behind Left" policy)? Was the exceedingly well detailed history of the shallow spirituality and deep cruelty of the Inquisition known to her? Is O'Connor's distinction between her brand of faith and that of others no more than a highly literary and brilliantly conceived case of the blind leading the blind? Might those who laugh at the false prophets and shiny blue-suited preachers of O'Connor's novel, while taking comfort in their own safely distanced and advanced spirituality, be merely a case of the blind reading the blind? What might O'Connor have seen if she had eschewed the black mirror of her own religious convictions, and turned around to face humanity in all its richness rather than only the charcoal hues she so ably focuses on?

Lastly, this novel was cobbled together from stories that O'Connor had previously written. No mistaking it, there is brilliant writing here. But the roughness of the needle work used to sew these disparate pieces together, in my mind, denies Wise Blood a legitimate claim to the title of "classic",or the more mundane five star rating.

I thoroughly enjoyed Wise Blood and recommend it on account of its imaginative storyline and talented author. This book is worth reading and will not be forgotten.
Flannery O'Connor's ingenious use of dark humor and twisted religion sets the tone in her novel, Wise Blood. With characters such as Hoover Shoats, Enoch Emery, and Sabbath Hawks, O'Connor paints a vivid picture of the South in the bleak post-World War II and pre-Civil Rights time period. Wise Blood examines the religious spectrum that was present in southern cities and the interaction of these ideals. While there are some disturbing events, and characters, this novel has a fascinating view of life in all of its absurdities.

This first novel by Flannery O'Connor gives a dramatic, vivid etc picture of a young man entering strange territory. The author's vision of our society is violent, but not bleak. The novel is a Greek tragedy with a hilarious streak. All about entrapment, compulsion and religious obsession. It is impossible to remain exactly the same reader afterwards. It is not a really great novel, "perhaps", but one that you will savour with a particular fondness.

I read this novel due to the author's reputation. I didn't get the story or care for the characters. Sometimes it was absurd, but any meaning I missed. I didn't think the writing was anything special. The great reviews here seem to extol the aithor more than this book. Very disappointing, as I wanted to read a very good Catholic author with something to say. To me, this was a muddled mess that was not a good read. Some good scenes and humor, but not for me.

This was one of the most soul pummeling books I've ever read. It's funny, dark, and infused with the heart of a writer grappling with notions of grace and humanity's place in the universe. Avoid Houston's film version -- he really didn't understand the gut of this book at all.

This was the first novel of Ms. O'Connor's I read. I had read her short stories and loved them. Let me say this; I finished reading this book and IMMEDIATELY flipped to the beginning and read it again. It is AMAZING. So dark and true and humorous and everything good literature should be.

Wise Blood is at once engaging, provocative, and wildly funny. The author's gift for describing people and events of dark comic outrageousness will cause the story to stick in your head for a long time. It packs Hunter Thmopson's comtempt for authority into the perspective of a fly on the wall, watching an absurd circus of misguided faith. READ IT!

Boy great book shape! But some of the humor and religious connected had to be reread for a convoluted story lin., Not sure if I was from the South if I would appreciate the skewering of Christian and characters as typical in the South. Very deep and symbols once found can be cutting deep.

WISE BLOOD is one of the best books ever written in the English language. Flannery O'Connor pioneered the dark heart of the existential hero. The John Huston movie was excellent but dimmed in capturing the full impact of the novel (so what else is new?). This is a work of genius in American literature. The tragicomedy will burn itself into your mind and you will never forget the misadventures of O'Connor's hero, Hazel Motes, and his fruitless try at offering the world another kind of Jesus.

Described as 'southern gothic' it is the tale of Hazel Motes, recently discharged from the army as he sets outs to set up a 'anti' religious church- the "Church Without Christ" and from this we follow his descent into madness.

This novel is on several "best of lists" about the place but I struggle to see this. This is a re-write of several interwoven stories that were originally short stories. After the re-write it was published as this novel and unsurprisingly was a commercial flop. Over the years it has gathered some traction but in my opinion this has had more to do with her later work and premature death. This was her first novel , the first chapter being the "basis of her masters thesis". (Wiki)

Reading this it stills feels like several separate short stories. Its funny in places with some disturbing imagery but several character's just drift away with no explanation.

My highlight was the police's solution in solving Hazel driving without a driving licence, much laughing over this.

No doubt Ms O'Connor could write but this left me wondering about too much of the story to really enjoy it.

I read a lot of books and am fond of many Southern authors, including the late Ms. O'Connor. I really enjoyed her wonderfully titled "A Hard Man is a Good Find" (Note: A fine birthday gift for my grumbling gorilla of a wife; inscription: "I told you so!") and I like the author's ability to make the grotesque humorous.
Unfortunately, this novel is a complete failure with very little to laugh about. It's a pretty meaningless story with virtually no plot: nutty war veteran returns to empty home town, goes to another town, preaches nonsense, acts like the nutjob he is, meets some other worthless characters, does nutty things in an effort to find redemption (an idiot's path, mind you), etc. This supposedly funny novel with a point (often my very favorite genre) fails to elicit more than a single laugh (the scene with the Gonga the Gorilla was pretty darn funny--pointless, but funny) and the point about redemptive suffering (if that was even the point) struck this reader as ridiculously rendered.
All the characters are lunatics and there's absolutely nothing driving this book to conclusion, other than the turn of the page. This novel has been highly recommended by people who tend to be trustworthy. Unfortunately, I put it on the short list of books I've actually finished that I wish I'd never started. Not her best effort and one of the worst novels I've ever read. HHD>.

I guess you jes have to be a southerner to enjoy Flannery. What ranks her high on my list is the space she inhabits, her descriptions of death, and her humor and boredom. I get a high, godlike, reading her. And the boredom comes from an empty stomach, and trying to feed the soul on Christianity.

Flannery O'Connnor is a great writer and her talent is obvious. But I just do not agree with the choice she presents, vacuous pleasure seeking or suffering for your soul. I think there are other ways of being, quite honestly. So I cannot rate this as a great book when it seems to offer such an empty world with two pretty depressing choices.

Let me start by saying that I read this book because O'Connor was on a list of authors that a friend of mine felt I had to read. Not that my feelings would have been any different if I had simply picked this up in a library and decided to give it a try.
I'll start by being painfully blunt. I really, truly hated this book. And I'm not a person to say that I hate a book lightly. As a matter of fact, I think this is the only book I've ever felt that I really hated. When I finished the last page, I didn't just want to never see it again, I wanted to burn it.
That said, I'll explain.
I didn't understand the characters at all. Not even once, not even a little. Nothing that any of them ever did made sense to me. I couldn't fathom their motivations, or understand why they would choose the way they did.
Not only that, but I really didn't like them either. Now, that's not enough to make me dislike a book. I can live with the fact that a book can be good with characters that I truly don't like. But in this case I think it was a failing of the author to make the character believable. They barely even seemed human.
The plot was as much a mystery. All I'll say about it is, I didn't understand, and I'm fairly certain that I never will.
And the ending! I can't stand a book that drops a character without so much as a 'see you soon'. Suddenly, it seemed that all the other people disappeared. And I suppose from Haze's perspective, they had, but that doesn't mean that we should suffer for it!
I found the ending profoundly disturbing. The last few pages were horrid. I can't understand an author who could treat her characters with such callous disregard! Stories do not always have a happy ending, or an end that makes sense, but this book had neither for no apparent reason!
And to put the end of a characters life that we've been (unwillingly, on my part) following for the whole book as almost an afterthought in the middle of a paragraph! I thought it was apalling. This person may not have been important in the big picture, but for some reason he was supposed to be important to us. To put an end to him like that was just disgusting.
So, to sum up, I would not read this book again without a gun to my head, and I regret ever having picked it up. Has it changed me at all? Yes, I suppose it has. I will never blindly assume that all books have at least one good thing about them again. I will never assume that just because I love to read I will be able to understand at least one facet of a character.
And if this sounds melodramatic, or shallow, that's fine. This book did affect me profoundly, but for what it lacked rather than what it had. And if that is what the author was going for . . . well, I think I'm much happier thinking that it was all some sort of terrible mistake.

I had to force myself to finish this book. After reading two-thirds I felt compelled to finish it simply in hopes of finding some redeeming value to the time I'd already invested. Upon finishing the book (unlike the insightful and eloquent analysis by the Reader in New England) I shut the book and said, "This is the stupidest book I have ever read!" After calming down a little I began to wonder if perhaps Wise Blood represented Flannery's life and emotions? One has to imagine being stricken with a debilitating disease that eventually robbed her of life at a young age must have tortured her to some degree. She must have wondered where is God in all this without being able to deny Him. Could Hazel represent Flannery? A life of seeming despair, allowed to waist away slowly in a drainage ditch only to be finally found yet treated with complete disregard and with utter contempt by the police sent to rescue and redeem Haze (Flannery) by thumping him (her) on the head with a death blow without any apparent feelings. Was Flannery making a statement about being treated thus by God? Is it possible Flannery used Wise Blood as a cathartic for her own emotions towards God for the cards she'd been dealt? I don't say that judgmentally in the least. It just makes sense now that I am calm enough to think about it. I'm hardly qualified to dish out such psycho-babble. Basically, I still agree with the New England reader in terms of regretting the read. Perhaps this story will have more meaning should I face personal suffering and loss like Flannery. Faith does not make one immune to the multi-levels of agony. This story was agonizing.

"Stupid Minds" would be an equally tendentious but more accurate title. Ms. O'Connor depicts a pair of Southern troglodytes in the grip of religious mania. We are meant to regard their fanaticism as a form of primal wisdom; in fact, it is merely ludicrous or pathetic. Those who deem this judgment parochial should ask themselves whether Ms. O'Connor, an Orthodox Roman Catholic, was any less so.

Faulkner plumbed the humanity beneath the grotesque. Ms. O'Connor is more interested in the God-driven grotesqueness that warps humanity; she sees it as higher knowledge. Her prose in this early effort is merely workmanlike, and time has made what was strange or shocking in her vision seem familiar. If blood wisdom were truly wisdom, a suicide bomber would be wise.

When I happened upon this work, I decided to give Flannery O'Connor another try. In reviewing A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories," I noted that "Flannery O'Connor has been hailed as a great short story writer and a great Catholic writer. While it's challenging to discern her Catholicism - at least from this collection - it's exceedingly easy to spot her use of racist language. Was she putting this language in the mouths of obviously small, ignorant people, a la Norman Lear and Archie Bunker, to teach lessons against racism? I certainly do not know enough to say. As reported by J. Bottum in the October 2000 Crisis Magazine, 'the bishop of Lafayette, Louisiana, banned the racist texts of Flannery O'Connor from the schools in his diocese....A woman known in her own day for her anti-racism now placed on the forbidden list on the grounds of racism.' While O'Connor was hopefully not a racist, the bishop's removal of these works strikes me as having been wise, indeed." Wise Blood: A Novel did NOT change my mind.

When I happened upon this work, I decided to give Flannery O'Connor another try. In reviewing A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories," I noted that "Flannery O'Connor has been hailed as a great short story writer and a great Catholic writer. While it's challenging to discern her Catholicism - at least from this collection - it's exceedingly easy to spot her use of racist language. Was she putting this language in the mouths of obviously small, ignorant people, a la Norman Lear and Archie Bunker, to teach lessons against racism? I certainly do not know enough to say. As reported by J. Bottum in the October 2000 Crisis Magazine, 'the bishop of Lafayette, Louisiana, banned the racist texts of Flannery O'Connor from the schools in his diocese....A woman known in her own day for her anti-racism now placed on the forbidden list on the grounds of racism.' While O'Connor was hopefully not a racist, the bishop's removal of these works strikes me as having been wise, indeed." Wise Blood: A Novel did NOT change my mind.

This book was chosen for my monthly book club and out of 10 women, not a single one of us enjoyed reading it. Most of us were confused by the story because a lot of it didn't even make sense. There was no real flow to the story and it was a struggle just to make it to the end. The characters were all pretty nasty people and the book definitely is not one to read if you want to be put in a good mood. I would not recommend this to anyone.

I took this book with me on vacation to TOPSAIL ISLAND and after reading it I left it there. I've got a degree in English Literature and truly enjoy Flannery O'Connors stories BUT this was a mess! I kept hoping it would get better but it never did and maybe it is too deep for me to understand but being from the South I would think that some of it would have made sense. I wish O'Connor were still alive so she could explain this novel.

Wise Blood has got to be the most ridiculous "novel" I have ever attempted to read. It's like some idiot sat down and thought Hmmm How can I write a book? I know, I'll think of the stupidest thing that comes to mind and write that.I have witnessed first hand that many literary critics,"experts" bla bla bla, in reality have sticky wet brown stuff for brains.One of those kind that taste 20 year old cheese and just because it cost $300 "Oh that is delicious". It seems like just because writers use symbolism,metaphors and hidden meanings that makes it a work of art or something. Well, a horses rear can be symbolic also.