A Durable Manifesto
2007; University of Nebraska Press; Volume: 29; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/abr.2007.0163
ISSN2153-4578
Autores ResumoPage 8 American Book Review Johnson continued from previous page advice about how to live their lives—how could I be so presumptuous? I think it’s even illegal to do so today. It makes me feel absolutely Luciferian—a sinner like me, giving advice to nice impressionable young people.At that point, I’m no better than Onnie Jay Holy or Asa Hawks, and Hazel Motes is a sight better than I am. Much of this book is about “sight” and Vision (capital “V”): Hazel Motes (look up “mote” in the Bible) blinds himself, and his sightless face with hollowed-out eyes is depicted on the original book jacket by the great Milton Glaser. Wise Blood literally makes you see reality in a different way through its Christian vision of a fallen world—which is fine, except that seeing the world that way these days gets you nailed to the cross as an enemy of free-market, global capitalism, or, under the PatriotAct, as a “terrorist ” (Jesus certainly qualifies as a “terrorist”). One of the best (and shortest) lines in Wise Blood operates this way, in terms of its dangerous vision. When Hazel Motes first lands inTaulkinham, the narrator (who rarely intrudes) says of the town that there were stars shining above, but, “No one was paying any attention to the sky.” Instead, they are all looking at brightly-lit shop windows, an example of the anti-materialistic strain of the novel that made it totally out of step with 1950sAmerica. If you want to jolt yourself out of that America, which since the 1950s has become much of the rest of the world, too, get beyond the city lights and look up at the stars. Be warned, though: when you do this, you are looking not at time, but at eternity. No one does this anymore, of course. Primitive man did it every night—because, sensibly, he was afraid of dying without understanding why. There are lines in Wise Blood that are absolutely confounding, but one day become clear, as if read in a different angle of sunlight. Towards the end of the book, after he has blinded himself by pouring quicklime in his eyes, Hazel lives in a boarding house run by a woman who steals the pension checks of her boarders. In his own way, he has finally become the preacher he was born to be and has short but significant religious discussions with his landlady. “I’m as good, Mr. Motes, not believing in Jesus as many a one that does,” she tells him, a model of secular humanism. “You’re better,” Hazel says.And then, in a line I didn’t understand the first, second, or third time I read it, he says, “If you believed in Jesus, you wouldn’t be so good.” The landlady stupidly takes this as a compliment from him. I, stupidly, didn’t understand what Hazel meant at all, although I suspected the landlady should not be flattered. Finally, at some point in my career of reading this confounding book, and looking at it from the right angle, I realized what Hazel means: You are better than those who believe in Jesus—because they know they are no good, and you don’t. That’s why I fear this book: It’s smarter than I am. It knows me better than I know myself. This is how you get conned on the mean streets or end up becoming a cult member. Once someone shows you they know something about you that you don’t know about yourself, they have you in their power. Wise Blood does this to me, again and again. It turns me into Quentin Compson at the end of Absalom, Absalom! (1936), who is asked why he hates the South and protests, “I don’t hate it! I don’t hate it!” It puts me in that same position of denial, unable to face what it is I am denying (three times, a cock crows?). That’s why it scares the Hell out of me—or (perhaps) one day will. Rob Johnson preaches literature at The University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg, Texas. He is...
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