4 - “Jesus, Stab Me in the Heart!”: Wise Blood, Wounding, and Sacramental Aesthetics

Summary

Even before its publication, Wise Blood was generating the type of heated controversy that continues to highlight commentary on the novel. When the editors at Rinehart, the publishing house that owned the option to the novel, decided not to publish it because of its unconventional and extreme nature (at least this is O'Connor's reading of the event), their decision looked forward both to the mixed reviews Wise Blood received upon publication and to the later critical wranglings over which critics still are fussing. Not surprisingly, early reviewers, most of whom knew nothing of O'Connor's religious background, focused almost exclusively on the bizarre qualities of the novel – the grotesque world, the repulsive characters, the wild goings on, the apparent meaninglessness of it all. The anonymous Kirkus review ended with a statement that spoke for a number of early readers: “A grotesque – for the more zealous avantgardists; for others, a deep anesthesia” (252). Later readers, aided by O'Connor's discussions in her essays and letters of the religious under-pinnings and intent of her fiction, together with her author's note to Wise Blood's second edition wherein she identifies Haze as a “Christian malgré lui” whose integrity lies in his not being able to escape from his haunting vision of Christ, have generally focused on O'Connor's daring attempt to communicate a Christian vision with repulsive characters acting wildly in a grotesque world. Whether Haze's actions are judged to be either completely meaningless or terrifically important pretty much depends on the critic's judgment of how successful O'Connor is in getting her Christian vision across. There is much disagreement on this score.