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Cormac McCarthy: the haunted and the hallowed
Several years ago, I was driving to the Denver area to visit with family. I like to play an audiobook when I drive - seems to quell my impatience with the miles. I chose "All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy thinking it would go with the landscape, and I believe it was read by Brad Pitt. Yeah, Brad Pitt.
I enjoyed it well enough, but somehow Brad seemed to get in between me and the writing, and left me with little more than a hunch that maybe there was more to Cormac than an audiobook could deliver.
The next time I met up with McCarthy was with "No Country for Old Men." And this time, no Brad.
I can't say enough about this writer. Many people comment on the violence and horror depicted in most of his stories, and while I can't deny it's there in abundance - it's never provided the primary experience for me in the reading. In their spareness and deliberate cadence, the tales are told with vast-seeming empathy and a tender yet effortful bewilderment at the conditions they survey. The writing seems to soothe and bear you up, even as the story guides you though extremes of cruelty, devastation and depravity.
I followed "No Country" with "The Road," another astonishingly bleak piece of work. I don't know, is it me? Am I morosely inclined? I loved it. McCarthy seems to be a raw soul. He doesn't seem capable of turning his eyes away from human horrors, real or imagined. The guy's absolutely haunted with what humans do in this world.
And then he gives you his words and sentences, finding some small thing of value to track through the gloom, carrying you there with deep compassion and considerable care. And in the end, instead of being overwhelmed by the darkness of it all, you feel hallowed by it. As if everything good and tender is precious, miraculous even.
Ok, I've gone on a bit, and this is my first post to the book club so I'll wrap it. Just thought I'd geek out a little on my favorite author of late. I'm currently interspersing my cormac-a-thon with other reading just to prolong it.
I enjoyed it well enough, but somehow Brad seemed to get in between me and the writing, and left me with little more than a hunch that maybe there was more to Cormac than an audiobook could deliver.
The next time I met up with McCarthy was with "No Country for Old Men." And this time, no Brad.
I can't say enough about this writer. Many people comment on the violence and horror depicted in most of his stories, and while I can't deny it's there in abundance - it's never provided the primary experience for me in the reading. In their spareness and deliberate cadence, the tales are told with vast-seeming empathy and a tender yet effortful bewilderment at the conditions they survey. The writing seems to soothe and bear you up, even as the story guides you though extremes of cruelty, devastation and depravity.
I followed "No Country" with "The Road," another astonishingly bleak piece of work. I don't know, is it me? Am I morosely inclined? I loved it. McCarthy seems to be a raw soul. He doesn't seem capable of turning his eyes away from human horrors, real or imagined. The guy's absolutely haunted with what humans do in this world.
And then he gives you his words and sentences, finding some small thing of value to track through the gloom, carrying you there with deep compassion and considerable care. And in the end, instead of being overwhelmed by the darkness of it all, you feel hallowed by it. As if everything good and tender is precious, miraculous even.
Ok, I've gone on a bit, and this is my first post to the book club so I'll wrap it. Just thought I'd geek out a little on my favorite author of late. I'm currently interspersing my cormac-a-thon with other reading just to prolong it.
Tags: audiobooks, author, cormac, mccarthy, recommended
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Laura on -
I love Cormac McCarthy. Love, love, love. "The Road" and "No Country for Old Men" are actually my least favorite books of his; the three border trilogy books are among my favorite books in the entire universe, in part because I love the long, crazy, beautiful sentences in those books. And, I can absolutely relate to what you wrote about feeling hallowed by the story/his work, even though it seems so depressing on the surface. Despite the violence of the border trilogy books, I've always finished them feeling uplifted or energized. Maybe it's because he's writing about a landscape that I love so much. Or maybe because he's writing so beautifully. I've never been able to figure out how I could feel "uplifted" by books other people find so depressing, but I do. Anyway, I'm just rambling on now, but boy, if you ever want to geek out again on McCarthy, just let me know.
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Permalink Reply by Arvan on -
I'll have to revisit the border trilogy, I think. It's interesting how people tend to favor those or his more recent works. Meantime, I'm heading for Sutree... Nice to meet a fellow [McCarthyite?].
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Permalink Reply by Lady Noodle on -
I just picked up my first McCarthy book, The Road... and finished it twenty hours later (with a full night's sleep in there too). Couldn't put it down. Will move on to the Border trilogy. But yeah, unsettling. He has such a great skill for pacing.
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Permalink Reply by Kelly Street on -
Like many of the other posters, I also love McCarthy. Both The Road and No Country... were pretty incredible. As far as the border trilogy goes... all I can say is that I read about 1/2 of Blood Meridian and couldn't finish it because of graphic violence. II'm not known to have a weak stomach, but dead babies in trees are just a little too much for me, even if used as a literary device to illustrate the horrors perpetuated on native americans. I suppose this was the desired effect (problem is... I stopped reading).
Anyways... I'm in the McCarthy possie, for good or ill. He spent a lot of his young life in Knoxville, Tennessee, and that's where I went to law school. Now he lives in New Mexico, and so do I. Cool.
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Permalink Reply by Coffee Freak on -
So far I have only read "The Road" by McCarthy and I plan to read more.
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