Wise Blood

By: Flannery O’Connor

Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot

Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins

Publisher's summary

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

Critic reviews

“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)

Bronson Pinchot

Great reading and story!!!!!! I look forward to more of her and him. Southern gothic is hard core.

Not a fan

This was my first Flannery O'connor book, and I didn't care for it. Every character was immoral and miserable and their vulgarity was offensive. I admit that my opinion is just that: an opinion. I had hoped for some kind of redemption ending, but it was as sad and miserable as the rest of the story.

Fantastic Narration

I’ve read this book before, but the evocative narration in this version really makes the story come alive in a new way.

Jarring and intense

This book didn’t let up. Flannery O’ Connor has a point to get across and she is willing to beat you with it like a 2x4, but I must be blind because I think I missed it.

The narration was really high quality as well.

Meh

Was good at first but then became quite monotonous. It ended and I was still waiting for something good to happen.

The Corn Brothers need make this movie

I couldn't get beyond the character's voices sounding like character's from King of the Hill. Great and unusual tale with bold themes buried in jaded humor. Can't wait to read it.

Excellent novel, some problems with the narration

First off, let me say that I was really very impressed with the book. On the surface, it's basically a freak show of religious nuts, con artists and madmen, with none of the plot lines making too much sense; but when you go beyond the surface you see the different themes -- religious, philosophical, social -- that make this such a deeply brilliant and open-ended work.


However, a couple of things about the narration bothered me. Bronson Pinchot has a very clear and pleasant voice, but I felt almost like he was performing the characters, rather than narrating a book. The biggest problem was that whenever characters speak in a low voice he actually whispers. For anyone who listens to audiobooks while commuting, this makes some phrases almost impossible to hear. Indeed, I had to listen to some passages over and over again before I could make them out.


The other issue I had with his narration is more a matter of taste: he took great care to give the characters different voices, but to me it resulted in over-interpretation. For example, he performs one character in the book (Enoch) as having a permanently stuffy nose, so that he would pronounce "I mean it" as "I bead it". Now, there is no trace of this in the printed book (I checked), and so I feel like the narration added more than I wanted. Like I said, I'm sure many people wouldn't mind this at all, but I like narrators to add the minimum required for me to be able to differentiate speakers, no more.


So, in the bottom line, I would recommend this book, but if, like me, you listen to audiobooks in an environment where there is some outside noise, or you prefer a more subdued narration style, be prepared.

Eh, Not a Favorite, but Great Reader

Well, I guess I'm just not much of a Flannery O'Connor afficiando, because as some of my fellow readers. As a commentary on the fact that it is virtually impossible for human beings not to believe in something (even if it is disbelief), it has its moments, and it certainly depicts the bleakness of the American South in the 1950s. But I just didn't find myself caught up in the characters or their stories, and I found myself wishing that I was reading Elmore Gantry instead. In all of her work, I get the sense that O'Connor is trying just a little too hard to shock.

Like many veterans of World War II, Hazel Motes has lost his faith in God (despite the fact that his grandfather was a traveling preacher), and he is even further shaken when he returns to his home town, only to find that his family has moved on and the belongings they left have been ransacked. He falls in with an assorted lot of shady characters: a prostitute named Leona Watts whose address he found scrawled on the wall of a men's room; Enoch Emery, a bad boy zookeeper who is more than a little crazy but shares Hazel's atheism; a blind preacher, Asa Hawks, and his teenage daughter, Sabbath Lily; and a man in a gorilla costume. Motes decides to launch an anti-religion ministry. His admirer, Enoch, attempts to establish himself as a kind of anti-John the Baptist to Motes's anti-Christ, and another admirer, Hoover Shoats, rechristens himself as Onnie Jay Holy and sets up his own Holy Church of the Church Without Christ. It's a downward spiral for them all from here on out.

Reading over that description, I need to warn you that this is NOT a funny novel; indeed, it's very, very dark, although it has it's moments that are so absurdly drawn to shock that they may cause you to laugh. Since the book is as old as I am, I will forgive it's somewhat dated style and themes, but I found myself rather bored by it.

Should be read in the company of others.

I read this book for a class, and thus found it helpful to discuss with other people. Flannery O'Connor is masterful at describing The human condition, but I would not have understood it on my own.

AbFab reading by Bronson Pinchot!

Wise Blood is now tied with The Sound and the Fury as my favorite novels! Pinchot’s dramatic narration brought the characters to life on the pages. I laughed aloud many times as i sat with earphones to Audible novel in my beach-chair as sunbathers around me wondered what the joke was. The theme of religious faith is told by a genius as Flannery O’Connor could create.