Wise Blood

De: Flannery O’Connor

Narrado por: Bronson Pinchot

Flannery O’Connor’s astonishing and haunting first novel is a classic of 20th-century literature. It is the story of Hazel Motes, a 22-year-old caught in an unending struggle against his innate, desperate faith. He falls under the spell of a “blind” street preacher named Asa Hawks and his degenerate 15-year-old daughter.

In an ironic, malicious gesture of his own non-faith, and to prove himself a greater cynic than Hawks, Hazel founds The Church of God 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, and wisdom gives us one of the most riveting characters in American fiction.

©1990 The Estate of Mary Flannery O’Connor (P)2010 Blackstone Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“No other major American writer of our century has constructed a fictional world so energetically and forthrightly charged by religious investigation.” ( The New Yorker)

“There is in Flannery O’Connor a fierceness of literary gesture, an angriness of observation, a facility for catching, as an animal eye in the wilderness, cunningly and at one sharp glance, the shape and detail and animal intention of enemy and foe.” ( The New York Times Book Review)

Overall, Quite Good.

I agree that Mr. Pinchot's narration is a bit more spirited than some readers would likely prefer. But I think he actually does a decent job, and the story itself is excellent. Classic Southern Gothic, from a brilliant author.

First experience with Flannery

Enjoyed this book a great deal... one of the great Catholic writers in the South...

perfect

reader is awesome!!! excellent presentation! rich story of reality and personhood and God and resisting.

Southern Gothic rubbish

This novel like the authors' others is so negative. There's a point where the ugly characters in a story make it hard to finish a book. That's the case with this wise blood. The characters are so confrontational and stereotypical you can almost hear the banjo music in the background.

Great book. Dislike reader

Extremely good book but the reader is trying too hard. It’s like the high school drama team version of Wise Blood.

Southern Gothic Guiding Star

Wise Blood tells of Hazel Motes, a discharged veteran and former man of God who has become an ardent atheist. Upon returning home and finding it different than how he left it years prior, Hazel makes the decision to strike out on his own, heading to Taulkinham, TN, and inadvertently becoming the latest in a long line of Motes preachers, but with an anti-religious twist thus founding The Church without Christ. Along the way, Hazel encounters a cast of “grotesques” in varying states of self-contradiction, deceit, and neglect, as they navigate through O'Connor's sepia-toned portrayal of the American South.
Wise Blood’s pacing is brisk. Even through the more contemplative sections in which characters spend time in observation and meditation, the story continually feels propelled toward a purposeful end.
There are perspective shifts across a few chapters which muddle the timeline a bit for me in the early sections of those chapters, but this sense of time-confusion never lasts very long; once the perspective character catches up with another and dialogue begins, it becomes clear exactly what has transpired between them.
The world within Wise Blood is harsh, where time moves without consideration and leaves behind anyone or any place that struggles to keep up. Members of the society depicted within Taulkinham are largely callous and apathetic toward each other, or are uneducated and under-cared-for by the powers that be. Taulkinham and the surrounding areas are filled with dilapidated farmhouses, inhospitable city streets and vast swaths of remote countryside. The narrative’s placement within time is directly following World War 2, and there remains a large amount of mistrust of authority alongside rampant xenophobia.
The relations between the characters are never straightforward; for example, Hazel and Sabbath Lily start off hostile with one another before developing into something more complex, and even then their individual motivations for interacting with one another are never purely intentioned. Meanwhile, Enoch expresses enthusiasm for his efforts in assisting with the formation of the Church without Christ, but harbors resentment and aggression which oscillates between Hazel, society, and his responsibilities. Even Asa's attitude toward Sabbath Lily is not one of unconditional fatherly care.
Each character has severe flaws, which range in their source between governmental failures, internalized aggression and societal alienation. These flaws lead the characters to act in ways that are increasingly extreme in measures of violence and irrationality, to levels that transcend into absurdity, and in this way require me to suspend my longing for behavioral order.
As the characters continue their journeys, some evolve, some devolve, and some meet their fate before they have a chance to do either. Along the way, O'Connor's portrayal of humanity fluctuates between brutally realistic and comically exaggerated.
These contradictions are one of the main strengths here; by creating characters who feel so human in their flaws, and by driving them through unreasonable, criminal, and unrealistic actions, O'Connor allows herself plenty of room to explore some of the most important aspects of the human psyche such as mistrust of authority and of others, self-doubt, questioning of morality and the stressors of surviving day-to-day in a world that can feel very large and inhospitable.
Another main strength is O'Connor's mastery of prose. She utilizes sardonic humor to keep her disturbing imagery palatable, and very frequently utilizes intriguing connections to get her point across. There are moments that, through the voice of an author with a less acutely-tuned eye for detail and logical connections, would feel mundane, but O'Connor displays her mastery of impactfully poetic language in absolute droves, and the result for me is a nearly constant head-slapping reflection; “How could anyone possibly connect those two dots?” but she always makes her connections make sense.
The mastery continues in O'Connor's situational descriptors. She chooses words that fit the content the way onomatopoeic words fit their meaning. It leaves a powerful and long-lasting impression, one that makes me restless to explore more of her work.
Overall, I find Wise Blood to be completely deserving of its genre-masterpiece status. It is a Southern Gothic guiding star, and should serve as a how-to reference for any writer whose goal is to increase the poetry and visceral impact of their writing. It will most likely be effective for readers with some prior understanding of the historical societal dynamics of the American South, or of anyone in a state of moral or theological reflection. For me, it is an easy favorite and I give it a 5/5

Thanks Audible...

Bronson Pinchot does an excellent job of bringing this wonderful classic to life. I think Flannery O'conner would be proud of this reading. Thanks Audible. I hope you bring us more from this author.

We are all going to hell for laughing at this

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I would, if they like Flannery O'Connor or Southern Gothic literature. The performance is fantastic but the story is definitely strange.

What did you like best about this story?

I loved the ending because it's really dark. I enjoyed O'Connor's dark sense of humor and her ability to describe really grotesque scenes with aplomb.

What about Bronson Pinchot’s performance did you like?

He brought out every comedic line to its full potential.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

It made me laugh out loud more than once!

Strangely wonderful

This is my first experience of Flannery O’Connor. Although I’ve never found myself in a world of characters and situations as raw as this story, it was all so intimately real. I kept wanting to call out to Hazel or the others and tell them their choices don’t have to be filled with so much hurt and anger and loneliness. The characterization was intriguing and brought everything to life. I was impressed by how seamlessly the reading moved from character to character to narration, voices easily distinguished and activity or conflict conveyed with just the right pitch. I must admit I’m not sure how I enjoyed this story as much as I did. I’ll have to think on that a bit longer to form a true answer. The truth. Always looking for the truth. The fact that this story drew me in like it did is my testimony to my rating. This is a bittersweet tale of a man trying to discern what’s true. My answer to him is none of the versions presented to him are not true at all. He was right to discard them. But making up your own truth will simply create another lie. Did he finally let go of all the lies and find truth?

Great story.

Great story and very well read. voices are done well which makes the story even more interesting.