I’ve been reading this book called Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor. I started liking Flanner O’ Connor in early college, because I liked a story I read in class called “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” All of her writing is about redemption and sin. She is the epitome of the Southern Gothic. In that story I read in college, and many times thereafter, there is a family who has had car trouble and broke down on a deserted country rode. Previously, we are told that there is a murderer on the lose. And then of course the murderer and his friends show up on the old country rode and slowly kill the whole family. Each character reacts differently as he/she watches their family members die, but one character pleads with the murderer, asking him to consider that if he tried he could still be a good man. The title of the story ultimately becomes clear when he does not repent and does not become a good man–and thus a good man is indeed hard to find.
So anyway, this book I am reading by the same author shares a lot of the same themes, of course, as her other work. In this book, a really creepy “southern gothic” guy starts a religion called the church without christ. He meets this vagabond kid who eventually steals this dead body of a child or maybe just a small person from a museum. Perhaps the dead shriveled body of the child is their embodiment or manifestation of Christ. I’m still reading, but should be done by the end of the week. I’ll let you know then how this creepy southern gothic novel ends.
