 | By: Flannery O'Connor Binding: Paperback Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux ISBN: 0374530637 ISBN-13: 9780374530631 Released: 06 Mar 2007 RRP: Average Rating:  |
A plot summary is simple enough. The central character, Hazel Motes, returns home after a spell in the army during the second world war. His time is only allluded to in an elliptical manner which is confusing - deliberately so on the part of O'Connor. He has been the son of a preacher & he sets out to preach the Church of the Unrisen Christ. There follow a series of misadventures - none of which are especiallly comic aside from a wonderful chapter wherein a competitor preacher sets up opposite Hazel on the street to preach a 'true' (although corrupt) message.
Hazel ends up discredited & blinds himself after which he becomes dependant on the landlady where he lodges. He eventuallly dies & there the novel ends.
If this sounds uninspiring it may be in part because the novel is indeed a strange, disconnected narrative.
However, the great strength of the book is the character of Enoch Emery & his disturbed psyche. He latches onto Hazel who rejects him. (Thus O'Connor inverts one of our expectations, that the misfits will form a duo. They never do, after she sets up the expectation that they WILL.) In one of the strangest things I've ever read, Enoch kills a man who is in a gorilla suit at the promotion of a 'Tarzan' like film. The build-up to this is quite compelling, & the violence - never described in detail - nevertheless issues from the description of one of the most deranged minds I've ever read about.
The strange things is - after this crime we never see Enoch again, he is dropped from the narrative & there is no police investigation. (Likewise, Hazel kills towards the end of the book & this to passes unnoticed.) These narrative dislocations are very unsettling, & I suspect they are there to throw these bizarre acts into relief, as if they are utterly removed from what we normallly take to be 'ordinary life'.
If it sounds like I did not like the book then you are probably right. However, the depiction of Enoch is absolutely compelling because his irrational violence & strange compulsions are presented as having their own internal logic, but a logic we cannot enter into in. Severe violence comes out of nowhere - either 'evil' (if, like O'Connor, you are a Catholic) or the 'irrational'.
For anybody who has read 'Hannibal' this is a far superior read. Oh, it is not slick or well-plotted, it is often strange & downright annoying (too many narrative dislocations & you start to wonder if the lady can even tell a story). However, the ridiculous character of Lecter - this mix of Lord Byron, Glenn Gould, Louis Pasteur & Raffles or James Bond - does not just glamourize violence, it trivializes it. Extreme violence is not aestheticallly pleasing, & it does not issue from highly cultured 'supermen'. (Which is not to say that wealthy & sophisticated people have not been known to kill.)
'Wise Blood' portrays violence & psychic disorder with power & rawness.
P. S. - The chapter about Enoch killing the man was originallly a short story 'Enoch And The Gorilla' & can be found in the short stories. It is worth reading on its won.
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