Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor

This one definitely needs a re-read.

I was looking for something to do, and came across an online course on YouTube: The American Novel Since 1945, taught in 2008 by Professor Amy Hungerford of Yale University. I looked at the books included in the syllabus, recognizing some that I had already read and others that I wanted to read, and I thought: “Hey, wouldn’t it be fun if I took this course (i.e., watched these videos and read the books discussed at the same time)?”

Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor was one of those books.

The only thing I knew about Flannery O’Connor was that he (turns about he’s a she) is mentioned in that Grayson Capps song I like: A Long Song for Bobby Long.

And I didn’t get much out of the book. It struck me as one of those allegorical tales in which the allegory is so abstract, or at least so specific to the author’s time and place, that it comes off the page as a story that actually doesn’t make any sense. I mean, I know the broken down car represents something. But what does it represent? And why?

Well, the online lecture helped me break the code, and now I want to read it again to see all the things I missed. 

Let’s just leave the summary on the back cover here as a placeholder. 

Wise Blood, Flannery O’Connor’s astonishing and haunting first novel, is a classic of twentieth-century literature. It is the story of Hazel Motes, a twenty-two-year-old caught in an unending struggle against his inborn, desperate fate. He falls under the spell of a “blind” street preacher named Asa Hawks and his degenerate fifteen-year-old daughter, Sabbath Lily. In an ironic, malicious gesture of his own non-faith, and to prove himself a greater cynic than Hawks, Hazel Motes founds the Church Without Christ, but is still thwarted in his efforts to lose God. He meets Enoch Emery, a young man with “wise blood,” who leads him to a mummified holy child and whose crazy maneuvers are a manifestation of Hazel’s existential struggles. This tale of redemption, retribution, false prophets, blindness, blindings, and wisdom gives us one of the most riveting characters in American fiction.

When I do get around to reading it again, I’ll be sure to watch these videos first:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjplQUPhES4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COzAb8FyIis

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.