title: Wise Blood: A Novel
author:  Flannery O'Connor 
description: <i>Wise Blood</i> is a comedy with a fierce, Old Testament soul. Flannery O'Connor has no truck with such newfangled notions as psychology. Driven by forces outside their control, her characters are as one-dimensional--and mysterious--as figures on a frieze. Hazel Motes, for instance, has the temperament of a martyr, even though he spends most of the book trying to get God to go away. As a child he's convinced that "the way to avoid Jesus was to avoid sin." When that doesn't work, and when he returns from Korea determined "to be converted to nothing instead of evil," he still can't go anywhere without being mistaken for a preacher. (Not that the hat and shiny glare-blue suit help.) No matter what Hazel does, Jesus moves "from tree to tree in the back of his mind, a wild ragged figure motioning him to turn around and come off into the dark..."
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  Wise Blood
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Flannery O'Connor
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  First published in 1949
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  For Regina
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Author's Note to the Second Edition
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Wise Blood has reached the age of ten and is still alive. My critical powers
  are just sufficient to determine this, and I am gratified to be able to say
  it. The book was written with zest and, if possible, it should be read that
  way. It is a comic novel about a Christian malgré lui, and as such, very
  serious, for all comic novels that are any good must be about matters of life
  and death. Wise Blood was written by an author congenially innocent of theory,
  but one with certain preoccupations. That belief in Christ is to some a matter
  of life and death has been a stumbling block for readers who would prefer to
  think it a matter of no great consequence. For them Hazel Motes' integrity
  lies in his trying with such vigor to get rid of the ragged figure who moves
  from tree to 