Welcome to Litsy!

Quick & purposeful, though the story gives the impression of a meandering journey. The last few chapters startled & kept me up last night to finish the book.

The descriptions are jarring, often comic, but also unsettling: A woman getting out of a pool is something monstrous. A preacher carries Jesus in his head “like a stinger.” Cat-faced babies. The sky is a “surly gray like the back of an old goat.”

First read of 2022.

When a book references a book you‘ve read it lends color, context, & references that deepen the experience. When a book references a book you HAVEN‘T read & you then read it, the inverse happens & a funny reverse palimpsest occurs. So this 1952 novel is overlaid with the gritty 90‘s influence of The Cipher & I‘m thinking of a blacked-out Nicholas reading O‘Connor in the squalor of his apartment & writing poetry he‘ll destroy before he sobers up.

Her name was Maude and she drank whisky all day from a fruit jar under the counter.

I prefer her short stories, but am glad to have read this one.

How can I explain my affection for this book and still be seen as reasonable and sane? This is a trainwreck. Hazle is a mess, Enoch is a mess, Asa and Sabbath are a mess. Everyone is an absolute, diabolical mess. This is considered a "low comedy" but your humor really has to be something special if you see it as such. I don't know why I fell for this book. It's unexpected and inexplicable and disturbed and just amazing.

What the F did I just read.
Don‘t know how I feel about this. I know I didn‘t enjoy it. It‘s not enjoyable book and I think that was the point. If you feel like you‘ve been too happy and need to bring yourself down a few notches here‘s the book for you.
Southern gothic, absurdist fever dream, with Jesus sprinkled throughout. There‘s def a lot to unpack here but real hard for me to get past the utter wackiness and utter despair the story exudes.

So I‘m about 100 pages in now... I think I‘m picking up on the themes and deeper meaning but I still am just confused by the unreality and weirdness of the story. It‘s reading like a strange Southern fever dream.

Just started this and finished the first chapter... honestly though I‘m a bit confused...I feel like I missed some deeper meaning that went over my head..

"Who better to lead the blind than the blind, who knew what it was like?"

"He looked like an ex-preacher turned cowboy, or an ex-cowboy turned mortician." ?⚰

"He had the feeling that everything he saw was a broken-off piece of some giant blank thing that he had forgotten had happened to him."

#quotsyfeb19 #lame @TK-421

Striking cover!

A look at the ideas of faith and the Calvanistic determinism found in parts of it.

Wish I hadn‘t read the back blurb on this because it spoils the atmosphere a bit. Anyway, my first time reading Flannery O‘Connor and I had high expectations that she managed to meet. This is the kind of « religious » fiction I love, ie all about the struggle to have faith, and in this case the struggle to abandon it. It‘s pretty dark and devastating, but with an undercurrent of black humour.

Young Hazel preaches a church without Christ to a small town filled with surly characters. A charlatan preacher, his daughter & a strange boy with ‘wise blood‘ cross paths. Taut writing & a sense of menace in this town with cynical preachers selling lies. I liked Hazel‘s philosophy of truth: ‘in yourself right now is all the place you‘ve got.‘ But the southern Gothic darkness was oppressive. Pic: church near us (Adelaide, City of Churches). 😉⛪️

Enoch was usually thinking of something else at the moment that Fate began drawing back her leg to kick him.

#twentyfour books from my #tbr shelf (there‘s a third shelf below these two!). #novemberbythenumbers

Thrift store find!

An interesting novel. I love O'Connor's writing and her look at religion was riveting.

Well, I finished it, but I honestly have no clue was this book was supposed to be about.

I finished up the book while flying out of Puebla with perfect view of the volcano.

Tfw you realize your Warby Parker try ons are the same frames on the cover of the book you're reading... #bookface

I have a feeling, that all of these will come in on the same day.

Wonderful, darkly humorous meditation on religion as a matter of life and death in pursuit of truth.

Hazel Motes, 24 years old, comes back from the war in Europe to the American South. His home is gone and so are his illusions. Having little left to believe in, he becomes a priest for the 'Church without Christ'. This is a rather unconventional message in the South and one hard to sell. What's more, all the people he meets seem to come out of a freak show. No love for Haze, no light, no luck. Just bitter humor. #1001books

The angry WWII vet turned street preacher Hazel Motes pops off the page in his efforts to recruit the unfaithful for his new 'Church of Christ without Christ'. O'Connor's novel is as memorable as they come and a shout-out to @ReadingEnvy for putting FOC in my head- your description of her short stories in the last podcast made me laugh- spot-on😀 #Hallejulah #Junetunz @Cinfhen

You can't get any better than O'Connor when it comes to southern gothic. Longing for my university days and stuffy lit profs to debate with after finishing this one.

Received this copy of Wise Blood in the mail last week and forgot to post about it until now. Not only do I now own one of my favorite high school reads, I also own another book that I can successfully do #bookface with 😄👏🏼

I didn't read much Southern Gothic literature growing up because I avoided anything to do with my southern roots. Now, I'm becoming more interested in it because I understand the culture and appreciate the darkness. I guess it took leaving the country to connect with my home. I loved this book. Her sentences are intelligent and lovely, even when the subject matter is not so pretty.

This was better, for me, than The Violent Bear it Away. O'Connor's a tough read. I don't remember much about the plot, but I do remember it was an interesting read. (I read this about a year and a half ago.) 75/1,001 #1001Books

WHAT THE HELL WAS THIS BOOK??? I had to read it for my english class and didn't make it to the end because literally nothing happens in it. Honestly - if Motes handed me quicklime, I'd take it just so Id never have to look at this book again. Like The Violent Bear It Away, it was a classic for Southern Gothic, but don't try and read this for leisure. Just don't.

Very interesting read but I would expect no less from O'Connor.

Currently in the middle of this novel and in typical O'Connor fashion I'm not sure what is happening. I'm sure that by the end of this novel I'll be raving about how amazing it truly is...

Hazel Motes: #bestcharactername #octphotochallenge #day19

One of my favorite classics! I loved this book so much in high school and I've read it two more times since then on PDF because I unfortunately still don't own this book! #wiseblood #flanneryoconnor #somethingforsept #day13 #septphotochallenge #favclassic

My first Flannery! Love the writing and characters.

My first Flannery. Love her descriptions.

I was really well-behaved this month. Wise Blood was an #impulsebuy because you should all heap Litten scorn upon me for not having read any Flannery. #idiot 😳 Everything else was from the library. #augustofpages #augusthaul

Descriptions like this make me stop and think, "How perfect! How did she ever think of this?"

#2 for me is Flannery O'Connor's Wise Blood. So far it is very Faulknerian but wonderful imagery.

#24in48 #readathon #shelfie #ikeabilly

I tried to enjoy this, but I had the same problem I have with Faulkner - the characters and setting are just so alien to me that it left me cold.

Holy crap is this a good looking cover.

“Later he saw Jesus move 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 where he might be walking on the water and not know it and then suddenly know it and drown.”

This is a difficult book. Most of the characters are unlikable. The plot is depressing. That said, it's a novel about what happens when a person tries to believe in nothing. But more than that, it is a strong critique on the wrongs played out every day, in ordinary ways, in the South.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I visited Flannery O'Connor's childhood home in Savannah, GA in late 2014 and bought basically her entire body of work. She made the news as a child for teaching a chicken to walk backwards.

I was assigned this book to read In high school and I remember thinking although this is an excellent quality book, who in there right mind thinks emotionally unstable teenagers need to read Flannery O'conner. I'm not down with censorship but O'conner is grade A depressing.