Flannery O'Connor (1925–1964)

I read the first short story in this collection by Flannery O'Connor and sat back, astonished. If you haven't read A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories, grab a copy right now and read the title story. You'll know then exactly where you stand with O'Connor's stories after that first one has slammed into you like a hammer to the back of the head.

In A Good Man is Hard to Find, a family prepares for and sets off for a vacation in Florida. Even Grandma, who has much to say about how much show more better it would be to visit family in east Tennessee and how the trip might be dangerous, what with escaped felons and other perils, comes along to narrate the ride. And off they go, stopping at bbq joints for lunch and staring at the sights outside the car windows. It begins as one sort of story and ends as quite another and it's one of the most brilliant things I've ever read.

Each story is finely honed and reads as surprisingly contemporary, for all it's written about a rural South that is long gone. O'Connor is insightful and cutting and unafraid to allow the worst to happen. There is a dark comedy underlying her work and a deep understanding of people, albeit a somewhat grim one. People in this collection die. They're drowned, or shot, or simple run over. They look into someone else's eyes and see how badly they've misjudged things. They are callous and cruel and lonely and disillusioned. Their hopes are inevitably dashed, usually because of their own flaws. There's so much packed into each of these tightly written stories that each feels like an entire world. show less

Flannery O'Connor's short stories are like the crack of the whip dangerously close to your head. Sometimes humorous, sometimes peculiar, often times violent, but always breathtakingly true. Imagine the nervous laughter that bubbles up when you realize that whip has missed your face. You laugh because you want it to be a skillful miss as opposed to a clumsy mistake. Imagine the quirkiness of characters who are dangerously misunderstood. There is always something a little sinister about show more O'Connor. She enjoys the abrupt turn of events that take her readers by surprise. She holds us witness to the good, the bad, and the ugly of humanity.
Everything That Rises Must Converge is a compilation of nine short stories. show less

The title that I would suggest for this book is "The Denial". Not that Wise Blood is not appropriate, as it refers to the "wise blood" of Enoch Emery, one of the group of prominent characters in the book. It is rather because I believe that "The Denial" better represents the character of Hazel Motes who is the protagonist of the novel. The moment that Enoch Emery is overcome by his "wise blood" is surely powerful: "He had come to the city and--with a knowing in his blood--he had established show more himself at the heart of it."(p 76) On the other hand Hazel, by the end of the novel, is engulfed by his denial of his own body in his attempt to achieve a spiritual epiphany.

To reach that point of denial you have to go back to the beginning of the story where we meet Hazel Motes:
"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 other end of the car."(p 3)
Thus we meet a young man on the beginning of a journey. It is a journey fleeing from his past as much as it is one going forward toward a future filled with new people and changes in his own character.
Hazel, it turns out, is a man on a mission to preach of new and perverse sort of gospel to anyone who will listen whether they respond or not. This hearkens back to his grandfather who was a preacher "with Jesus hidden in his head like a stinger."(p 14) Hazel had lost his brothers and father to death, and had seen more death and indifference toward life while in the Army, but he was determined to follow in his grandfather's footsteps.

The story is a picaresque tale filled with unusual characters including a whore; a blind preacher named Asa with his daughter, Sabbath Lily; and Enoch Emery, a slow boy who is also on a mission moved by his inner blood that is wiser than any one else's as he proclaims to Hazel:
"'You act like you got wiser blood than anybody else,' he said, 'but you ain't! I'm the one has it. Not you, Me!'"(p 55) What they both share is a mission although they are on different paths with different missions and seemingly do not even speak the same language, or at least cannot understand each other.

As with all of Flannery O'Connor's fiction, there is an underlying message of the importance of faith and belief. The need for redemption from the sin of this world is demonstrated with a prose style that is fixated on the realities of life. However, in demonstrating this reality the author distorts it with the result often being grotesque characters and situations. She does not shy away from portraying the violence that people do to each other both physical and psychological. Ultimately, it is up to the reader to decide what the outcome of the story is -- whether any particular character is doomed to hell or redeemed by grace. All told, she presents a riveting story with unpredictable events and decisions that retain an aura of the believable while engendering puzzlement and a sort of quandary as to the meaning of it all. This reader found it both engaging and challenging in a good way, that is the questions that remain are valuable because they pertain to the most fundamental aspects of your life. show less

WISE BLOOD: The two words most commonly used to describe this novel are "grotesque" and "gothic". It is certainly both of those things. It is also a bit bewildering, even on a second reading, even with some critical assistance. It is primarily the story of an angry young man proselytizing against Christianity by preaching from the hood of his car (which is also his home, and symbolic of his doomed journey). Hazel Motes thinks he is rejecting the teachings of his upbringing by touting the show more "Church Without Christ"...he is in earnest, unlike the charlatan evangelists with whom he crosses paths and figurative swords, but really, he protests too much. Hazel's need to convince others that "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", and that blasphemy is the only way to truth, only convinces the reader of his need to believe in something with the same passion as any other religious fanatic. How can there be blasphemy without something to blaspheme against? "Your conscience is a trick", Hazel preaches. "It don't exist...and if you think it does, you had best get it out in the open and hunt it down and kill it, because it's no more than your face in the mirror is or your shadow behind you...If you don't hunt it down and kill it, it'll hunt you down and kill you". If the man truly believed that, then why bother to preach at all? O'Connor's writing is wonderful; there is human understanding in her depiction of a slew of unlikeable, even despicable, characters. Her dialog is pitch-perfect. And she certainly made me uncomfortable, which was her oft-stated intent. I "get" it...but that doesn't mean I buy all of it.
September 2015 show less