Cozy Book Club: Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor

If you’re not a member of our bookclub you are probably asking yourself what does Michael Cera have to do with anything?
I keep asking myself the same question, but anyhow here goes the tale of last night’s fabulous book club meeting!

Hostess Miriam somehow managed to work the entire day but still laid out quite an impressive spread! Yummy cheeses, figs, proscuitto and olives – couldn’t get any better! The usual cast of characters were in attendance: Sara, Meredith, Elizabeth, Leslie and of course Miriam. Brandy we missed you!!! Did I already mention wine? Do I have to?

In the spirit of democracy this year we decided that all bookclub members would choose a book and Wise Blood was Elizabeth’s choice.
She was inspired by an article she read in the New York Times about Flannery O’Connor however we were all definitely in for a bit of a surprise with this read. As we went around the room giving a one-word adjective to describe how we felt about the book we heard words such as “disturbing, existenstial, religious and even skivvy”!

All agreed a wonderfully written novel by an author who at the young age of 39 was dying of Lupus. We concluded that perhaps this was why her tale and cast of characters were soooo incredibly bleak.

I might add that this did not deter us from eating Miriam’s delicious Chicken stew with fresh dill and salad with cherry tomatoes!

Chicken stew – we all await the recipe!

Ok, so here’s where it gets silly. After we have a thorough and interesting discussion of this dark and daring novel, we get to the fun part. And maybe it is because we live in Los Angeles or who knows why but we always cast our book as a movie. And we take ridiculous liberties which goes without saying. And our casting is very interpretational, artistic and often wrong. And always drunk!

Here goes:
Enoch Emmery: Michael Cera (he must somehow be in every one of our castings…!)
Hazel Motes: William Dafoe
Asa Hawkes: Billy Bob Thornton
Sabbath Lily Hawks: The Olsen twins
Landlady who falls in love with Haze: Whitney Houston
Cops: Kid Rock and Brad Pitt
Lady on train: Kathy Bates
Man on train: Bobby Brown (not the make up artist!)
Museum Gaurd: Alfred Hitchock
Mummy baby: Michael Jackson
Wairess: Renee Zellweger/ Joan Cusack
Lady in Pool: Angelina Jolie
Twin Preacher: Justin Timberlake/Iggy Pop/Christopher Walkin/Steve Buscemi
Fat Hooker: Oprah

A little rude Googling helped us figure out some of the unique faces we needed…

And guess what ladies, as it turns out our book has already been made into a movie in 1979 by none other than John Huston!

Check out this great article which also gives a really good synopsis of the book. Don’t think anybody at GeorgiaEncyclopedia.org drinks. You think?

Must have been Miriam’s Wise Blood that told her to prepare a total fabulous comfort desert of out of the oven chocolate chip cookies and ice cold milk – we were in heaven!!!!

Still standing, we had a GREAT time, thanks again Miriam for an amazing dinner and we’ll meet again TBD at Elizabeth’s for our next novel “THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.