CormacMcCarthy

Blood Meridian is considered McCarthy’s masterpiece. It bathes in violence. An occasional refrain on the Reading McCarthy podcast is, “no author has killed as many babies as McCarthy.” This is so. One coming to McCarthy with only this perception, and perhaps the images of a burntout country and ash from The Road, they probably think the books are reveling in that violence. That is not so. The Kid comes out of Tennessee into the West and tumbles and starts problems until he falls in with Captain Glanton’s gang of scalphunters. Among that gang eventually are The Kid, Toadvine, Expriest Tobin, and several others. The Judge is the neonlit attraction. He arrives over and again from nowhere and leaves to nowhere and while he’s there he wanders around nude and glowing and pontificating. The Judge attracts a lot of attention from readers; maybe the expriest attracts just a little less. On this my second read, the expriest stood out the most and it is easy for the reader to imagine the Kid with the Judge on one shoulder and the Expriest on another whispering in his ears. ...

This is an unpublished screenplay from Cormac McCarthy that follows a few characters as they contemplate whales, existence, language, and destiny. There are early elements here that echo throughout much of his future work: a character called Western, themes around language and consciousness, and racing cars, among many others. I highlight these because these are the clearest found later, in The Passenger, though the commentary on language is deeply explored in The Kekulé Problem, which this reads almost as a mental discussion of. ...

It’s finally done, I’ve read everything that Cormac ever published. What a year. I plan to write something about that elsewhere, but for now, Suttree. I think this is Cormac’s longest novel at nearly 500 pages. It is episodic in nature and the episodes are presented without a lot of scaffolding to let you know. Cormac provides you with the changing of the seasons and that is the major progressive force of the novel. There is little plot other than Suttree’s sort of underboiling search for self. I think you’d have to read it a few times to really mine it, and I think there is something there to mine. ...

Quotes Page 25 >White > There’s nothing to follow. It’s all right. The things that I loved were very frail. Very fragile. I didnt know that. I thought they were indestructible. They werent. Page 53 >Black >No. I didnt. I didnt know what I was. But I thought I was in charge. I never knowed what that burden weighed till I put it down. That might of been the sweetest thing of all. To just hand over the keys. ...

McCarthy’s third novel. The one I’ve enjoyed the least. It is very dark, about someone with a sad life who descends into depravity. I read in two sittings, last Sunday and today. It feels like McCarthy still finding his form. The story is more or less a character study, following Ballard throughout his life. It’s difficult to say why I leave so uninterested in Ballard. It it not an interesting thing to be sad and lonely. Maybe the things that happen to a person to render them this way can be interesting, but watching a person descend was not for me. Ballard is dealt a bad hand and makes no decision to help himself, or even to not hurt others. He demonstrates little care for anyone, and is cold and isolated to the point of being a figment of nature. ...