Imagine you knew nothing about Flannery O'Connor

If you didn't read the author's note and if you hadn't read any of the criticism including her own and if you didn't know anything about her - would you have known that Flannery O'Connor was a self-professed Christian writer? I doubt it. If you just came across A Good Man is Hard to Find or The Artificial Nigger or almost any of her great stories in an anthology or magazine you wouldn't say: oh, a Christian allegory, a story about a man (or woman) wrestling with issues of faith - except that she tells you in her prefaces and letters and lectures that this is what she's writing about, this is what she is about, this struggle to find god in a fallen world is what makes her a writer. Who'd have guessed? Yet "Wise Blood" may be the exception - one of her earlier works, one of (I think) only two novels, and her reputation really does rest on the short stories. Yet these novels, this novel, has many of the strengths of the stories - the humor, the totally quirky phrasing and observations, the exploration of life in a small southern town ca 1940, like turning over a rock and watching the bugs squiggle and squirm. And this one is, from the early chapters at least, more obviously imbued with religious symbolism and with issues of faith and doubt than her stories are - they're maybe better because they keep the allegorical theme more deeply disguised. Here Hazel Mate (?), the 22ish protagonist, back from the Army (1949), heading to a city (fictional name, probably Atlanta), professes doubt and disbelief, but Christian themes pursue him, from childhood (his grandfather an intinerant preacher) to many memories of witnessing burial and his fear of burial - his railroad journey that begins the novel almost like a death and resurrection. Not sure what the "story" of the novel is yet, but hoping the symbolism will thin out as the plot engages in gear.