January 2014: Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy, first author of 2014! Have you read him before? What are your thoughts? Any suggestions?

I read his Outer Dark a couple months back, and was intrigued. Not so very thrilled with the storyline (I will be childish and go with "icky!" lol), but the writing was great, if a bit dark. I'm thinking of All the Pretty Horses for this month, since it's one of just a couple my library has, and people seem to view it pretty highly.

Anyone else have ideas yet?

I've read quite a lot of his books and I think All the Pretty Horses is a great choice to start with. If you want something quite a bit darker, you could choose No Country for Old Men.

I don't know if I will join you yet, but I do have Child of God sitting on my to read shelf.

I read The Road when it first came out, it made me feel physically ill / anxious - talk about provoking a reaction! However it was a short, quick, read if that appeals to anyone. If I get time I may try and read Blood Meridian.

Sadly, Pretty Horses is really my sole option. The library isn't even listing Outer Dark as being there anymore in their catalog 0.o and the only other one they have is another of the Border Trilogy. If I really didn't want that one, I could get my hubs to check one of the couple more the uni library has (Blood Meridian, The Stonemason, and Suttree), but I think I'll go with this one and see what it's like. :))

>3 kiwiflowa: Hah! I don't know much of what that one is about, but after reading Outer Dark I could understand him provoking such a reaction! And don't worry much about "in time," technically we read one author a month, but anyone who gets there early/late is welcome to chime in whenever and restart/keep the discussion going longer. The more chatting about books the better! :D

My absolute favorite is The Crossing. It is the middle book in a loose trilogy known as The Border Trilogy consisting of All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing and Cities of the Plain.

It is an interesting work because the "border" theme carries through in the location, the era, and the coming of age of the protagonists in the first two books. Suffice to say that everything and everyone lose their innocence.

I have also read No Country for Old Men and The Road but I hope to read either Sutree or Blood Meridian in January. I've been told that those two books are actually his goriest.

I think Blood Meridian has to be his most violent and most challenging book. The Road is set after an apocalyptic disaster. It is very bleak, but in terms of the writing, it's probably my favorite of his novels that I've read.

I will have to get The Crossing soon. I am slowly working my way through all his books, but I have to space them out because his worldview depresses me too much. But his writing can be so beautiful, it just bowls me over.

It's almost January! Has everyone figured out what they'll be reading? I picked up All the Pretty Horses, as anticipated, from the library on Friday. It probably won't be my first book of the year, but I will be starting it sometime pretty soon! :)

i'll be reading the entire border trilogy soon, but won't make it for january. too many library books are due first!!

Haha, I feel you, I have 3 others out from the uni library that will need their last renewal in a few days, so then I'll have 3 weeks for those, and I also took out a Peter Ustinov and a Steinbeck on Friday but I have 6wks before those have to go back. I think the uni library might have the whole trilogy, but I know mine ("mine" being the regular library; my husband has access to the uni library so I can make him get me stuff sometimes :P) is missing the 2nd book. Because they really love to have series of novels and just get entirely random ones. >__<

i've got maddaddam waiting for me at the library to pick up - today is my last day before they put it back in circulation, so i have to read the first 2 first, then that one, and i've got another book that i'm reading from the library now, plus 2 book group books to read by mid jan. i'm just hoping when i get maddaddam later today that it's not a 2 week loan; they do that sometimes with the newer books. otherwise it's a 3 weeker, but i can't renew it since there are so many holds... once all of that is done, i'll be a handful of books away from the border trilogy. i don't usually need longer loans, but right now i envy you your 6 week loan period!

Only 3wks, but another 3 with renewal, which can only be done once! Only the university library allows more than that. It's rather frustrating. But here's wishing you speedy reading! Haha

thanks. i didn't mention that i'm a slow reader. but i'm going to push through. i'm up in the night a lot with our toddler, so maybe i'll get some reading done then. =)

I've read No Country For Old Men and The Road, both of which affected me for days and still linger with me. Many critics "in the know" believe that Blood Meridian is one of the 5 best American novels of the past 100 years...it will be my next Cormac McCarthy read.

Hello. I'm new to the group. Cormac McCarthy is one of my favourite writers, and Blood Meridian is one of my favourite books, although it is some time since I read it. The language is wonderful, steeped in old cadences, like reading the Old Testament - try reading it aloud. The Judge is an intriguing character worthy of some discussion. While I always encourage everyone to read Blood Meridian I notice from the comments already in this thread that the Peckinpah-in-print aspect of McCormac's writing is a bit off-putting to some. I encouraged two book clubs to read Blood Meridian with mixed results. Those who didn't react as though I'd tricked them into eating their own children loved it. Child of God is very good, as is Suttree. I didn't really get on with the Border Trilogy, so perhaps I should read one of them this month.

P.S. Although No Country For Old Man was filmed well, I thought it a pity that one could see from the outset how the killer got access and how he killed people, as that is one of the mysteries unravelled in the book itself.

Sadly, as mentioned, I have quite limited options; I may see about having my husband pick up Blood Meridian for me, though, from the uni library, since folks seem to have such strong opinions for it. But I'll read the one from the regular library first. :)

Welcome to the group! :D

I am so impressed by McCarthy's intensity. I have read and enjoyed The Road, Blood Meridian, and just recently, Child of God. The author is able to evoke powerful gut level reactions in me as the reader, and it is a rare ability to evoke such discomfort with such beautiful and powerful prose. I will try for another of his novels this month.

Yes, quite so. I've only read the one so far but I definitely agree, discomfort combined with wonderful writing. I need to finish On the Road, and then one of the uni books I have out, and then I'll get in to McCarthy :))

Only just found and starred this thread - hadn't realised that McCarthy was this month's author. I have never read anything by him before but have had plenty of his books on my wishlist for ages. I picked up No Country For Old Men recently in a charity shop. I've had a slow start to my reading year, but if I can finish one of the ones I've got on the go, then I'll dive into it.

I'm reading Native Son now, but my McCarthy will be next up! I'm hoping I finish this one by Sat, but it might be Sun, we shall see! In any case, it won't be long now.

I have never read anything by McCarthy before. As I dug through my bookcase(s) the day before yesterday, I found four books. Three have been on my TBR for about 6 - 8 years, and the fourth turned out to be an illegal copy of No country for old men that another foreign teacher left behind (yes, I now flunked it. Unread!).

(Together with illegal copies of Life of Pi, First They Killed My Father and Foreign Babes in Beijing.)

Haha, nice. Which do you plan on reading? :)

(what makes a book illegal?)

>23 overlycriticalelisa:. Isn't there frequently a warning notice about that--something about books sold without covers? lol. Just a guess. Carry on.

Bookstores take the covers off stuff they don't sell and only return the cover for reimbursement. They are supposed to destroy the book but many end up 'escaping'. The store I worked at did periodic bag checks at one point to try and stop that from happening.

>23 overlycriticalelisa:

what makes a book illegal?

When it is printed without a license. As you may know the cost of printing a (paperback) book is low, just about a dollar. So, if you can sell them for 3 to 6 dollars, that's quite profitable.

Like illegal CDs and DVDs, there is a considerable market in China for illegal books.

i had forgotten about the "without a cover" thing, thanks!

I just started The Road today. I haven't read much yet but so far it's not particularly gripping. However, several people on this thread have mentioned that it's affecting so I'm hoping it'll start to come along soon.

About to start listening to Outer Dark. Looking forward to it!

I started All the Pretty Horses yesterday. Initially I wasn't so sure, the writing style was slightly off-putting (it's a lot of "he" without indication of which he, and some rambling stream-of-consciousness things) but I'm on p57 now and have come around to enjoying it. There's still some "he" confusion here & there but now that I'm more filled in on what's going on (I did flip back to look a couple things over again after getting new information), and more is happening, I am definitely keener on it and curious how things are going to go.

>30 .Monkey.:. His style is disconcerting. But I think once you give yourself up to it, his style is one of the things that focuses the reader and transports you into his world. After I read All the Pretty Horses, I listened to the audiobook (read by Brad Pitt) sometime later. Maybe I was used to it, but I didn't find the style to be as obtuse in the spoken word.

It wasn't the same in Outer Dark, the "issues" present were not things I encountered in that one. But almost everyone in the story is a male (a trend that I imagine will likely continue, and so whenever there is more than one person (the main character isn't alone), it's "he did" "he said" "he looked" etc, and in various instances, where there's a back & forth between two or three of them, it can be quite unclear whether it's the one who was just talking (or whatever) or whether it's switched to the next-identified one who has done this thing. It's not always clear from context, because they're together, doing much of the same things, so it could be either one. But like I said, now that things have started to pick up more, I'm more interested.

Outer Dark, which I have not read, it a pretty old book, and I suspect that McCarthy's style has crystallized since then. The books that I have read by McCarthy (the Border Trilogy, The Road and No Country for Old Men) all contain almost exclusively masculine themes. As a woman, these themes do not particularly resonate with me, but I think that the writing and the other literary aspects of his work make his books appealing to me notwithstanding.

I don't mind the "masculine" thing, personally I've always been "one of the guys" and didn't own any skirts until around a decade ago, I don't have much to do with "femininity" or whathaveyou (though I am a feminist, heh). I enjoyed his writing a lot in Outer Dark, which is what made me want to read more. I'll hold further commentary until I'm at least halfway, unless something particular comes up. :)

>28 sweetiegherkin:

i know i didn't like the road as much as i expected to or as much as most people seem to. i probably rated it higher (unusual for me!) than i should have (i gave it 3 stars but don't remember liking it nearly that much). i wasn't nearly as taken with him as many people seem to be. still looking forward to reading the border trilogy and blood meridian, though.

Finished! Wow. That was excellent. My feelings that the more it went on and got involved, the better it was getting, were spot on. I still have to gather my thoughts for writing my proper review, but damn, I definitely need to read the others in the trilogy now!

Whew, glad to hear that you enjoyed it after all, PM. I liked The Crossing even more, so I am glad that you are moving in that direction.

> 36 Hoping to have your experience. I started The Road and am feeling like it's a bit dull so far. Not very far along yet though so fingers crossed that it picks up the pace!

Yeah, I think maybe I was slightly spoiled because Outer Dark just jumped right into the thick of things, and this one definitely took longer to really take shape, and I had no idea what was going on or why or anything, plus the issues I mentioned, so it was a little iffy. But once things formed up more, it turned excellent and stayed that way! I read 229 of the 300pgs yesterday, lol.

Haha, okay, well that definitely picked up for you then! :) I'm still in the stage you mentioned - no clue what's going on or why I should care about these characters or yeah, really anything at all.

Now that it's finished, I figured I should post my full review over here!

"The lights fell away behind them. They rode out on the high prairie where they slowed the horses to a walk and the stars swarmed around them out of the blackness. They heard somewhere in that tenantless night a bell that tolled and ceased where no bell was and they rode out on the round dais of the earth which alone was dark and no light to it and which carried their figures and bore them up into the swarming stars so that they rode not under but among them and they rode at once jaunty and circumspect, like thieves newly loosed in that dark electric, like young thieves in a glowing orchard, loosely jacketed against the cold and ten thousand worlds for the choosing."

Initially I wasn't very sure about this book. I think maybe I was at a slight disservice because the other work of his I'd previously read just jumped right into the thick of things, and this one definitely took longer to really form up and take shape; meanwhile I had no idea what was really going on or why or anything, so it was a little iffy, and not how I was expecting things to go. Plus, he doesn't use any distinguishing marks for speech, he makes use of rambling stream-of-consciousness sentences like that shown above, and there's the issue of everyone being referred to simply as "he" all the time, and when there's some kind of back & forth between two or more people, it can wind up a bit confused which one has done something. However. The quotation marks aren't that big a deal, it's clear enough what's speech and what's not; the long rambling sentences may be long and rambling but they're also, for the most part, rather evocative and convey a kind of mood; and the issue of who does what, well, you can usually work it out from the surrounding lines, and if not it's not important anyhow.

There is, additionally, a bit of Spanish sprinkled throughout, sometimes just a couple words, other times several short sentences back & forth. Having lived the bulk of my life in the US, I have some familiarity with some basic Spanish, but enough was over my head that I used Bing translate to put in some words/sentences and make sure I understood what was being said. Mostly you got the idea from what else was going on, but I preferred to know exactly. Again, this was not a big deal in practice, as it's not that frequent, and it's only a line or few. But for someone with zero knowledge of Spanish who isn't around a computer, it could potentially be a little annoying not to know precisely what's being said.

"He lay on his back in his blankets and looked out where the quartermoon lay cocked over the heel of the mountains. In that false blue dawn the Pleiades seemed to be rising up into the darkness above the world and dragging all the stars away, the great diamond of Orion and Cepella and the signature of Cassiopeia all rising up through the phosphorous dark like a sea-net. He lay a long time listening to the others breathing in their sleep while he contemplated the wildness about him, the wildness within."

Once the story formed up more, it turned excellent and stayed that way; I read 229 of the 300pgs in one day, only breaking for dinner. My attention was hooked and remained hooked.

In a way, it's a kind of a coming of age story. It's a journey of two boys who are unhappy with their lot and set out to find something else, to seek out & live the kind of life they want to lead. Of course, this isn't easy for the most prepared of people, and two young boys are not oft prepared for the surprises of life. In any case, it winds up being as much a spiritual journey as literal one. The story actually almost reminds me of On the Road — that nearly desperate aimless wandering, seeking to find something, not even knowing what it is that's being searched for, not really even being aware that something deeper is being searched for. Only in this case there is a lot more at stake.

"He stood holding his horse while the rider turned and rode out and dropped slowly down the skyline. He squatted on his heels so as to watch him a little while longer but after a while he was gone."

>41 .Monkey.:. Nice review! Glad that you got used to McCarthy's peculiar writing style, and, yes, it IS evocative, almost poetic, and I find that it really adds something to the story.

All of the books in the Border Trilogy are "coming of age" stories. The border to which he refers is not just the border between Mexico and the United States, it is the border between boyhood and adulthood, and between the old west and modernity (probably as well as many other borders that I am not clever enough to discern.)

Interesting point. I'll be having my husband pick up The Crossing sometime in the near future from the uni library. :)

>43 .Monkey.:. One of my all time favorite books. Be cautioned, however, that the first time I read the last page, I threw the book across the room in an emotional outburst. It is a very powerful reading experience!

LOL! Good to know beforehand.

So it's been decided Cait86 and I will be doing a mini-group read for The Crossing in late Feb/early Mar, if anyone else feels like joining in with us, you're welcome to tag along.
I told her about this group/thread, but I'm not sure if we'll chat about it over on Club Read or over here (I didn't really think about that until I came to post about it here, heh) but either way, feel free to join us. :)

006 The road
Finished reading: 11 Jaruary 2014



The road is a gruesome story about a father and son walking south through an apocalyptic landscape. The cause of the apocalyps is not described other than that as it occurred there were a series of bright flashes and rumble, while its effects are described as having molten or softened tarmac and killed many people. It isn't clear from the story whether the destruction of the biosphere is a direct or indirect effect, however, the novel does not mention radioactivity or fall-out. The landscape is described as being seared, while ash covers everything and keeps twirling down.

Both unnamed, father and son's trek south is apparently motivated by the vague hope that things will be better in the south, their particular goal being to reach the ocean. While in the beginning they have food, taken along in a trolley, pushed by the father, the food runs out and they scavenge for food along the road, sometimes finding some in empty houses or deserted urban centres, and once, they are particularly lucky to find a stash in an unused bunker. No food is grown, produced or harvested. Father and son are not the only survivors, and as all survivors can only subsist on canned and packaged foodstuffs predating the apocalyps, food sources are scarce and running out.

Reaching their destination is a kind of anticlimax, as they do not find what they hope to find; then, the father descides to travel further south.

The most gruesome part of the story is that with the food shortage, mankind has fallen back on cannibalism. The remains of a baby roasted over a fire and other evidence of cannibalism are much more horrible than the mummified corpses they find on their way.

The novel is set in the near future, as can be deducted by the fact that the language used is largely contemporary except that the boy every now and then uses a novel word and the spelling has but altered slightly.

As a novel, The road shares some interesting features with the genre of nineteenth century novels describing the Americans' cross-continental trek, following the trail. However, instead of 'going west' the direction is going south. There are similarities in narrative structure, such as hunting for food, and avoiding danger, the danger mostly posed by other humans. In The road the father tries to convince the son that they carry the true spirit, which, while not explained as religion, does stand for a set of moral values, and equated with 'the Good'. The purpose of their trek is never made explicit, but does seem to be the unspeakable hope to find 'new land' or at least a better place.

While the story is frightfully simple and straightforward, and relatively short, many issues remain untouched and puzzling. While the nature of the cataclysmic event is not described, it is likely to have a natural rather than man-made cause as in the aftermath post-apocalyptic America has regular tremors. Snow in the south suggests climate change. It is suggested that the cataclysmic event destoyed all outdoor life, live-stock and wild-life may have disappeared in the aftermath or been eaten. The breathable oxygen suggests that the apocalyps is localized rather than worldwide, but approximately ten years, i.e. the age of the son, onward their are no apparent signs of a return of wild-life or the suggestion that the earth could support plant life.

Finished Outer Dark. Powerfully evocative!

That's an interesting insight, comparing The Road to the 19th century movement west. I enjoyed your review.

Man I am just going to have to read his entire body of work. This is not going to be easy! Haha.

Thanks, Shannon.

I felt that The road was very thought-provoking. To me, most of its significance lies in the horror of images remembered from imprinted fear of a nuclear war in a Cold War conflict, a danger that seems averted, at least for the moment.

Following comments the author made about the book, the title "The Road" signifies a very pessimistic interpretation of "where things will go" with humanity in such an event.

The book presents but the merest glimmer of hope, but that glimmer of hope paired with perseverance seems to be an essential cultural trait of the American experience.

The Road is deceptively manipulative. McCarthy has created this world of just unrelenting bleakness, has us travel through it with his characters, so at the end we are grasping desperately at that one little glimmer of hope. We forget that the same mind that created the world also created the hope. Perhaps one could see some religious commentary in that.

He does something similar in No Country for Old Men, showing us this world that has become so degraded, where life and death are a matter of chance, and then in that amazing final section, there's the one tiny light glimmering in the darkness.

I agree that The Road seems fundamentally American. I think that's one reason it won the Pulitzer. I hadn't thought much about why until now.

This is why I can't read too much McCarthy at one time, even though I love his writing. His worldview is so bleak. I need a breather between his books.

Outer Dark was definitely like that, but I didn't think AtPH was. I mean it wasn't a Woo, happy!! book but, it wasn't depression-inducing (lol).

Oh yeah, I always cite ATPH as McCarthy's "uplifting" book. Everything is relative!

>54 sturlington:. lol AtPH is, after all, on the "boyhood innocence" side of the Border.

Haha, well, not so innocent by the end, and it could certainly have taken darker turns than it did. I'm not complaining though!

But the structure of the trilogy is masterful. Not only does each character cross the border to adulthood in the first two books, but the trilogy is structured so that there is a similar arc from the first book to the last.

> 47, 49 However, instead of 'going west' the direction is going south. There are similarities in narrative structure, such as hunting for food, and avoiding danger, the danger mostly posed by other humans.

The version of The Road that I'm reading (the audio version) mentioned in the beginning that McCarthy's works often follow the same path that he did - born in the northeast (RI) and moved south (TN) as a child. I do think it's a good point though that the dangerous trip in The Road mimics the 19th century trailblazers going west.

>58 sweetiegherkin: born in the northeast (RI) and moved south (TN) as a child

I am not sure that is the parth followed in The road. In the novel there is no clear sense of (relative) distance, so we only know they are coming from the north going to the south. Autobiographical stuff is always very tricky in literature. Fortunately (!) I don't know much about Cormac McCarthy. In The road they travel from the north to the south, and at some stage they travel through an area or even a town which is described as the place the father grew up. I cannot now recall whether, according to the novel, the father was born there, but it is definitely described as his hometown. (Of course, one might surmise that there is more of the author in the little boy.)

>52 sturlington: I can't read too much McCarthy at one time

I had quite hopefully dug the three novels by McCarthy out of my TBR, but won't be reading more this month after The road, because of its depressing nature.

Possibly there is a religious element in the novel, but not clear for me to see. The road seems quite void of references to official religion, and religion itself does not seem a source of inspiration for the characters. The father is shown again and again as a very self-made, self-reliant man. However, his notions of 'the good' versus 'the bad', his aversion of killing and cannibalism, and the sense of carrying the spirit all derive from Western, Christian religious values. On the other hand, survival dictates that they cannot help others, and the compassion of the son is clearly portrayed as a weakness that gets them into trouble and threatens their survival.

It is likely that there are no rational explanations, as the cataclysmic event wiped out the ration-based world as it existed before. The novel shows quite clearly that rational thinking is not much of a protection, illustrated by the unused well-stocked shelter, suggesting people may take precautions, but not be able to benefit from them when the moment comes. Opposed to the rational mind, in the novel, is not so much the idealistic mind (of religion), but rather the animalistic mind, of survival based on instinct.

At a deeper level, what some might call religios, the novel seems to say that "the road" representing life, is more important than the destination, and that there are clear differences between "a good life" and "a bad life" based on choices and moral guidance. The book aslo shows that material wealth is irrelevant, and that for survival only a minimal number of possessions, mostly food, is essential.

I've finished reading Child Of God, and was surprised by how much I disliked it. I've always been a great fan of McCarthy, and initially I was enjoying it - the trademark McCarthy language, the jokes, but then at some point the seemingly pointless squalor and visciousness of it all got to me. I could cope with the violence, the necrophilia (though I hoped my fellow commuters were not reading over my shoulder), the slimy rotting corpses, but it was the cruelty to animals which did for me - primed fire crackers shoved into living pigeons, and finally an incident with a giant idiot baby and a robin. With this last incident I just thought 'What is he thinking of? What goes on in this man's mind?' With a sort of horrified fascination I reread the passage a number of times, wishing I had never read it in the first place.

'Child Of God' was first published in 1973, and I should check where it falls in the ordering of his work.

The novel opens with the auctioning of a farm, watched by the mentally unstable son of its former owner. He orders the auctioneer off the land, threatening to shoot him, but the auctioneer deals him a blow so savage that "Lester Ballard never could hold his head right after that. It must have throwed his neck out someway or another. I didn't see Buster hit him, but I seen him laying on the ground. ... ... He was laying flat on the ground looking up at everybody with his eyes crossed and this awful pumpknot on his head. He just laid there and he was bleeding at the ears. Buster was still standin there holdin the axe. They took him on in the county car and C B went on with the auction like nothin never had happent but he did say it caused some folks not to bid that otherwise would of, which may of been what Lester set out at, I don't know. John Greer was from up in Grainger County. Not sayin nothing against him but he was." Greer buys the farm and Ballard takes up an increasingly feral life in the local woods and hills.

Child Of God is a short book which would be best read at one sitting. Not only would that provide the opportunity to sink into the beauty of McCarthy's language, but it would probably give greater impact to Ballard's descent into total madness. I read it in bits over a number of days. There is a slightly odd structure in that the third party narrative is occasionally interrupted by short chapters in which unidentified locals talk to one another, sometimes about Ballard, sometimes about the Sheriff, sometimes just yarning. The narrative intermittently shifts to follow Sheriff Fate and his deputy. I feel that at some level there is a foreshadowing here of the structure of No Country For Old Men a much later and more satisfying work, albeit far more mainstream.

As the book progresses it seemed more akin to a shlock horror movie, glorying in grotesque goriness, seemingly with no other point. I don't know why I've had this reaction to this book, whether one can only read so much of McCarthy before his subject matter begins to wear, whether it is an earlier and perhaps inferior work, or whether I have changed and my appetite for his material diminished.

I'd be interested in other readers' reactions.

Hm. I definitely have issues with animal cruelty also. But did these things not fit with the characters? I would never consider judging the author for what their characters do, if what the characters do is in line with their nature. Sociopaths, serial killers, people with whatever other mental issues, they torture animals. While I don't like to imagine that sort of thing, I don't think authors should refrain from making realistically depraved characters...

Please rest assured that I do distinguish between the author and his characters. I think the distinction for me was what McCarthy was imagining.

It is plausible that there are people out there who do stuff fireworks into birds, and there was a reason for them to do so in the anecdote in the book. I accept that for a lot of perfectly sane people animals are simply utilitarian objects, and for the vast bulk of the world's population animal welfare is not a concern. So fine, blow up the pigeons.

It was the particular scene where having first imagined the hideous inbred monstrosity McCarthy then set it loose on the robin. His very understated writing at this point made it much worse than if he had dwelt on it in the way that he later dwells on the human corpses. Yes, one might question whether Ballard anticipated such an outcome, whether he was being provocative in giving the bird to the child despite its mother warning that he shouldn't. The child is so lacking in mental capacity that it could not be described as cruel, but clearly from the mother's warning it is dangerous and liable to harm. The question then becomes, why was this particular action on the part of the idiot necessary to the book? If the encounter between the idiot and the bird were necessary, and if it were necessary that the bird came off badly as a result, the idiot could have killed the bird, or very conventionally torn off its wings, or even its head, and I would probably have passed it over as grist for the mill, but McCarthy has come up with what is - for me at any rate - a totally new way of being unpleasant to a bird. It was that which I questioned. I then began to wonder what it is like for the author to repeatedly plough the furrow of depravity, insanity, and despair, while at the same time while at the same time labouring to produce such exquisite prose. I know it's sort of nonsense to worry about dissonance between a work and its subject, and that very dissonance is one of the things that makes McCarthy a great writer, but I guess at this point words fail me in attempting to convey my reaction.

Now that you have obliged me to go over the incident again, and think about it from several angles, I can see that Ballard's comment on the idiot's hypothetical rationale could perhaps apply to his own later actions, and that that comment is made as a direct response to the specific harm the idiot did.

As always, LibraryThing tempts me to go back and reread, but I mustn't. I must plow on to next month's author.

P.S. I did like Outer Dark, which I read a couple of years ago (but had misremembered its title as Child Of God)

McCarthy writes about the nature of evil. It is not evil "lite." He is trying to shock-he is not allowing you to "pass over it as grist for the mill." Abuse of innocent animals is one of the things that almost everyone will agree is totally evil. What I think that he contemplates is whether and why in contrast to animals, we are so inured to man's inhumanity to man?

Think about it. An abused or neglected animal shown on a nightly news program will spark a vocal outcry and thousands in donations. Abused children and women, not so much.

I don't think that it is dissonance between McCarthy's writing and its subject--- I think that it is the WHOLE POINT.
The final scene of The Crossing illustrates this precisely.

I'm still SLOWLY reading No Country For Old Men. (It's my night time reading, so forgive me, but I'm pretty well worn out working out in the winter weather...so it's slow going, but only because I'm knackered - the book is first class.

The lack of speech marks kind of adds to the dreamyness (or nightmarishness) of the scene...I'm used to it now, but was mildly wound up by it at first! (Why not just use speech marks already?)

I'll probably be posting a review beyond the end of the month now. In any case, I just picked up library audiobooks The Sunset Limited and The Road to listen to in the coming weeks as well.

It's no trouble if you wind up finishing (or just plain reading) things later, our threads have no time limits. :)

As for marks, some authors dislike them, for various reasons. Off the top of my head, James Joyce and Michael Ondaatje come to mind. In both McCarthy & Joyce it didn't bother me, it was quite clear right off what was speech. In Ondaatje's I was going mad, I would read a sentence and a half only to then realize it was speech and have to go back and reread it for clarity, and it was all terribly confusing.

It has become somewhat trendy to leave off quotes, I think, but in most cases I can't stand it and it will often cause me to abandon the book. McCarthy is the only author I've read who manages to pull it off.

>64 Polaris-:, 65 & 66. McCarthy leaves out punctuation as a device to add intensity to the reader's experience. I believe that it requires the reader to focus more and to use different neural pathways in the brain, thereby immersing himself in McCarthy's world and mood more thoroughly. It is so completely part of his unique literary style that it may be imitated but the effect cannot be duplicated.

Yes, absolutely, McCarthy is using the technique consciously to achieve an effect, whereas I think many other authors adopt it as an affectation. That's why his books make sense without punctuation and theirs don't. This is a case where you have to master the rules before you can break them.

>67 vwinsloe: & 68 - That's really interesting, and I hadn't considered it that way. I HAVE been feeling fully immersed in the 'thing', and there is an intensity that I'm loving.

I finished The Road a couple of days ago, not quite under the wire for January. I guess I'm in the minority here to say I wasn't thrilled with it. I'm glad that I read others' comments on here to know that I was never going to find out the names of the characters or the reasons why society had spiraled down into this cannibalistic, survival-of-the-fittest world. Otherwise, I would have been continually waiting for clues to arise about these two things and would have been very disappointed when they never happened. Instead I just accepted it and moved on, but I couldn't help comparing this book unfavorably with Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, which I read somewhat recently and I felt was far more interesting for slowly but surely revealing in a number of flashbacks how the world had come in to this post-apocalyptic state.

In terms of style, I actually had the audio version so I didn't notice things like the lack of quotation marks or other punctuation. With all the characters having no names, occasionally it might get a bit hard to follow what "he" was being referred to but for the most part it was apparent (and usually the father). The audio reader did a good job of distinguishing different voices and keeping the pace from being plodding. McCarthy's simple, declarative sentences (that still had a way of being poetic at times) and the stoicism of the man reminded me of Hemingway's writing style and his code heroes. However, the book reminded me the most of Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, which is my least favorite Hemingway.

Overall, I just felt like this book was missing something for me. Like I said earlier, I didn't really appreciate being kept in the dark in terms of what had caused the world to turn out like this. I've read a lot of dystopias and perhaps it's overly moralistic, but I feel like part of that genre is to serve as some kind of warning sign: Hey, stop doing XY and Z or else the world is going to end up looking like this. Here everything just seemed meaningless. Having the main characters remain nameless and mostly history-less might have been designed to make them seem more universal, but I actually found it more alienating. Also, I don't mind a book in which not much happens if the trade-off is you see a lot of character development. Here I felt like the father and the son were the same from beginning to end, personality wise. The father was always just in survival mode/lion protecting his cub mode while the son was constantly the moral center of the duo, trying his best to help others along the way.

As for glimmer of light that others spoke about, yes, I think the book did try to end on an optimistic note. But thinking through it logically, there really isn't anything hopeful about the world that McCarthy created. In the end, I think it was McCarthy's poetic writing style that kept me interested in seeing this book out to the end because I didn't feel invested in the characters or the thin plot.

Well, better late than never - I hope! Here is a McCarthy newbie's impressions after finishing No Country For Old Men (cross-posted from my Club Read thread):



No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

I'm wary of 'reviewing' a book that already has clocked some hundreds of such entries. The excellent and gripping film adaptation directed by the Coen brothers received a rightly deserved amount of attention as well. So a lot of people know this one already. Nevertheless, this was my first read of McCarthy's work, (picked up for a quid in a bank of all places!) so I'll attempt to convey my impressions having just finished the book.

This is set in the year 1980. Before the triumphalist era of Reagan sets in and at a time when the USA was perhaps beginning to sense itself a nation that had passed something. An America when the Vietnam war was a very fresh wound on the national psyche.

Texan Llewelyn Moss is a veteran of that war. He is hunting alone in the Rio Grande hinterland, and happens upon a very bloody drug smuggling denouement - which includes a shot-up vehicle, a dying occupant, and a file case full of cash. Millions. He makes a decision that will change his own life and the lives of several others.

It had already occurred to him that he would probably never be safe again in his life and he wondered if that was something that you got used to. And if you did?

A second man has made it his business to find the case of money and return it to whom it belongs. Anyone interfering with this endeavour will be mercilessly eliminated. There follows a fast-paced and intensely described series of episodes as we see how life indeed changes very immediately for Moss and his family, and how the second man, Chigurh, sets about retrieving the case.

McCarthy's story is told narrated in the third person, except that a third principle character - that of the investigating local Sheriff Ed Tom Bell - reflects back on this time with a first person narrative which intersperses each chapter. The effect is one that is somehow cinematic, as we the reader experience the story in rotation from one perspective to the next. The good, the bad, and the fearful. The language used by the author is as spartan as the surrounding terrain.

...Where he crested out the country lay dead flat, stretching away to the south and the east. Red dirt and creosote. Mountains in the far and middle distance. Nothing out there. Heatshimmer. He stuck the pistol in his belt and looked down at the river one more time and then set out east.

The characters are drawn with a similar economy but are all too believable. The character of Chigurh alone is one of the most terrifying and coldly calculating psychopaths I've ever read. Sheriff Bell is an aging and somewhat disillusioned cop, on the eve of his retirement. Bell's 'tale' as told to us is one as much about a sense of a declining morality, a changing American civilisation, and even life itself, as it is one about a drugs deal gone bad, a case of money, and a trail of dead bodies.

This is no ordinary crime tale, but rather a comment on something much larger than that, something that I couldn't quite grasp exactly. Possibly that there is a creeping decay of sorts at work, which colonises and changes society as we know it. The criminals and the cops alike, and maybe an honest welder like Moss as well. Not the most uplifting read, but a very affecting one that is well written and should have you turning the pages. Definitely going back for more McCarthy.

4 stars.

Glad you enjoyed it, and will read more! :))

well i wasn't even close. i guess when i said "soon" i forgot how slowly i read. anyway, i'm *finally* getting to the border trilogy. just starting today!

Hah. Well I hope you enjoy it!

so far i'm liking it much more than i liked the road, the only other of his i've read. it's definitely not a writing style that i prefer, though, but i'm trying to read it knowing it's all intentional. and will also try to keep in mind everything vwinsloe says above!

I hope that I didn't raise your expectations too high. But I think that it is truly worth the effort.

>76 vwinsloe:

no, you didn't raise my expectations at all, actually. just raised my intention and focus while reading him, which is good. and while i can't relate at all to the ranching thing (can many?) i'm definitely enjoying it. (about a third of the way in. to all the pretty horses, not the trilogy.)

just wanted to say - i think it was in the monthly reads dostoyevski thread that i can't find but since it's about language in all the pretty horses i might as well put it here -

my goodness he uses a lot of spanish in this book. not a word of which is translated. bugs the shit out of me. i know enough spanish to only have to look up a couple of words but why why why can't they just footnote a translation?????

still, i really liked this one. started the crossing today but am only like 8 pages in so far.

The Road – Cormac McCarthy
Audiobook performed by Tom Stechschulte.
3***

A man and his son wander a desolate and destroyed American landscape after some unnamed world-wide disaster has pretty much killed off most of the earth’s population and destroyed the environment. Neither character is ever named, though the boy does call the man “Papa.”

I did rather like the relationship between these two central figures. How the father tried to explain and instruct his son, to impart some life skills that might help the boy in the future, and the efforts he made to provide some measure of safety and well-being for the boy. But this is a pretty bleak landscape and it’s hard to imagine any sort of “happy” (or even hopeful) ending.

I don’t need such an ending in order to appreciate and like a book. But I do need to feel some sense of purpose to the story, and I couldn’t figure out what McCarthy was trying to impart. Is this a cautionary tale about man’s inhumanity to man? Or a warning of environmental disaster? Is it simply a story of parental love?

And there were things that I found inconsistent. Maybe it’s because McCarthy never explains what happened, but how can the world be nothing but ash and burned cities, and there still be apples in an orchard? How come some houses are still standing, virtually pristine (except for the layers of dust)?

And then there’s the ending itself. I don’t want to give anything away, but it just left me shaking my head and wondering “what the hell?”

Still, there is something about McCarthy’s writing that captivates me. I like his spare style. I like the way he paints the landscape so that I feel I am living in the novel (even if it’s a horrible place to be). I think he’s one of those author’s whose works I appreciate, even when I don’t particularly like them.

I listened to the audiobook, performed by Tom Stechschulte. Stechschulte is a talented voice artist and actor and he really brings these characters to life. 5***** for his performance.

>79 BookConcierge: Yup, a lot of what you said is how I recall feeling about this book. Essentially, what was the purpose of it? What was McCarthy trying to say?

>80 sweetiegherkin: I think McCarthy is an amazing writer, and I have read four of his books, but I cannot read him anymore. His worldview is so bleak and dark, it seems entirely without hope for humanity. I appreciate his writing, but I can't find anything in it to feed my soul. Quite the opposite--he just depresses me.

>81 sturlington: That's fair. Every book its reader. Every reader her/his book.