Wise Blood
Flannery O'Connor · 1952
Hazel Motes founds the Church Without Christ in the American South. O'Connor's 1952 debut is grotesque, hilarious, and haunted by a God who will not leave people alone. Her Catholicism is violent and strange, nothing like comfort. The prose has teeth.
The case against
O'Connor assembled this from previously published stories, and the seams show: Enoch Emery's gorilla-suit subplot wanders off and never rejoins the main road. The characters are theological exhibits more than people, and the ending (Hazel blinding himself with quicklime) demands a theology of violent grace that the novel assumes rather than earns.
Literary Fiction · the Pro canon
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