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Loading... Wise Bloodby Flannery O'Connor
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Not nearly as amazing as her short story collections, but still a great book. (  ) rmariem | Oct 23, 2009 |  Scathing stuff from the Christ-haunted South. (  ) hilaritas | Oct 19, 2009 | Scathing stuff from the Christ-haunted South. ( ) hilaritas | Oct 19, 2009 | This is a novel that I think would require an English class to fully understand. I’m sure that I missed some important symbolism and themes in my reading of it. I didn’t care for many of the characters, but I sure could sympathize with them in their rather hopeless quests for some sort of spiritual meaning. And hey, you wouldn’t read O’Connor if you didn’t want to feel depressed afterward, right? (  ) sturlington | Aug 24, 2009 | This book is overwhelming. O’Connor has a knack for placing her vividly imagined characters in bizarre (yet somehow appropriate) situations. I’ve often thought that “classic” novels should be read for the beauty of their prose–the plot is often irrelevant. For example, you can read any random chapter of War and Peace and be impressed by the writing without understanding the plot at all. O’Connor’s writing certainly has that quality, but the plot is compelling as well. It’s a one-two punch that makes the book irresistible. Here are some of the things I loved about this book: 1. The worldview is thoroughly Christian without being trite. 2. The characters suffer from various mental problems, which make them real. 3. The elements of the plot are often bizarre, yet are perfectly suitable for the story. 4. The symbolism is deep and is woven throughout the entire story. It’s sad that O’Connor only wrote two novels. I would love to hear from anyone who has read her novels and could recommend another novelist I would enjoy reading. For now, I’m going to pick up her short stories. ( ) StephenBarkley | Jul 28, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0374505845, Paperback)Wise Blood is a comedy with a fierce, Old Testament soul. Flannery O'Connor has no truck with such newfangled notions as psychology. Driven by forces outside their control, her characters are as one-dimensional--and mysterious--as figures on a frieze. Hazel Motes, for instance, has the temperament of a martyr, even though he spends most of the book trying to get God to go away. As a child he's convinced that "the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin." When that doesn't work, and when he returns from Korea determined "to be converted to nothing instead of evil," he still can't go anywhere without being mistaken for a preacher. (Not that the hat and shiny glare-blue suit help.) No matter what Hazel does, Jesus moves "from tree to tree in the back of his mind, a wild ragged figure motioning him to turn around and come off into the dark..."Adrift after four years in the service, Hazel takes a train to the city of Taulkinham, buys himself a "rat-colored car," and sets about preaching on street corners for the Church Without Christ, "where the blind don't see and the lame don't walk and what's dead stays that way." Along the way he meets Enoch Emery, who's only 18 years old but already works for the city, as well the blind preacher Asa Hawks and his illegitimate daughter, Sabbath Lily. (Her letter to an advice column: "Dear Mary, I am a bastard and a bastard shall not enter the kingdom of heaven as we all know, but I have this personality that makes boys follow me. Do you think I should neck or not?") Subsequent events involve a desiccated, centuries-old dwarf--Gonga the Giant Jungle Monarch--and Hazel's nemesis, Hoover Shoats, who starts the rival Church of Christ Without Christ. If you think these events don't end happily, you might be right. Wise Blood is a savage satire of America's secular, commercial culture, as well as the humanism it holds so dear ("Dear Sabbath," Mary Brittle writes back, "Light necking is acceptable, but I think your real problem is one of adjustment to the modern world. Perhaps you ought to re-examine your religious values to see if they meet your needs in Life.") But the book's ultimate purpose is Religious, with a capital R--no metaphors, no allusions, just the thing itself in all its fierce glory. When Hazel whispers "I'm not clean," for instance, O'Connor thinks he is perfectly right. For readers unaccustomed to holding low comedy and high seriousness in their heads at the same time, all this can come as something of a shock. Who else could offer an allegory about free will, redemption, and original sin right alongside the more elemental pleasure of witnessing Enoch Emery dress up in a gorilla suit? Nobody else, that's who. And that's OK. More than one Flannery O'Connor in this world might show us more truth than we could bear. --Mary Park (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:02 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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