Wise Blood (Paperback)

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 alluded to in an elliptical manner which is confusing - deliberately so on the part of O'Connor. He has been the son of a preacher and he sets out to preach the Church of the Unrisen Christ. There follow a series of misadventures - none of which are especially 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 and blinds himself after which he becomes dependant on the landlady where he lodges. He eventually dies and 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 and 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, and 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 and there is no police investigation. (Likewise, Hazel kills towards the end of the book and this to passes unnoticed.) These narrative dislocations are very unsettling, and I suspect they are there to throw these bizarre acts into relief, as if they are utterly removed from what we normally 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 and 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 and downright annoying (too many narrative dislocations and 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 and Raffles or James Bond - does not just glamourize violence, it trivializes it. Extreme violence is not aesthetically pleasing, and it does not issue from highly cultured 'supermen'. (Which is not to say that wealthy and sophisticated people have not been known to kill.)

'Wise Blood' portrays violence and psychic disorder with power and rawness.

P. S. - The chapter about Enoch killing the man was originally a short story 'Enoch And The Gorilla' and can be found in the short stories. It is worth reading on its won.