Comment by JKCalhoun
1 year ago
"McCarthy’s detractors, meanwhile, found his writing overly mannered, his characters overly masculine, and accused him of relishing the violence he wrote about so vividly."
Yeah, maybe his detractors were on to something.
I haven't even started "The Road" because of its reputation. I have only read "Child of God" and wondered why someone might write about the worst among us. But then I'm not a fan of Quentin Tarantino as a filmmaker for the same reason.
I've always gotten the sense from McCarthy that he was keenly aware that civilization is not just something to take for granted and that there is always something dangerous at the edges that needs to be carefully guarded against.
100%
His worldview seemed to be that humans as a species are extremely violent and capable of the most inhumane acts and we’re hanging on by a thread. Some of his writing often covered what just a slight altering of our societal moral compass might look like.
Probably my favorite author of all time, him or maybe Delilo.
Instead, in my world-view most humans want to be kind. (And I don’t carry a gun everywhere like McCarthy either, ha ha.)
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> He said that things would get better.
> The old man shook his head doubtfully, paying the band of his cap through his fingers. I'm satisfied they caint get no worse, he said.
> But there are no absolutes in human misery and things can always get worse, only Suttree didn't say so.
You don't have to love them, but dismissing two of the 20th century's great artists in their respective mediums while having a blog named "engineersneedart" is certainly ironic.
I don’t see the irony or any conflict. I just don’t celebrate the worst in humanity and have no desire to see it in art either. Perhaps I think the world is dark enough and that the better art inspires and can lift us.
I don’t “love” either artist to be sure. Is that also dismissive? I’m not sure.
I hope, at least, you managed to watch the films before you had an opinion on them. Tarantino's, I mean.
The Road is not a violent or pessimistic book, tho there is violence and pessimism in it. Don't confuse the set and the setting.
Why write about, 'the worst among us'? Some art (and Cormac tottered over the line between wrought and overwrought plenty) is about finding meaning in the margins, in the edge cases. The statistical noise at the outerbands of anything might make it an impossible endeavor for meaning-making, but that's why art. You try anyway. Some writers are skilled enough to make the mundane sing and that's great, but McCarthy obviously didn't seem to care for that approach.
I think I can see why Child of God put you off enough for the thoughts of others to prevent any further effort, but I'd suggest you give him another go.
I'd save blood meridian for later tho; If you don't get too distracted by the setting of the road, it's a perfectly optimistic book.
As the poet said, something in us does not erode (free pun!)
I think it's a stretch to call The Road optimistic.
I would argue that the ending of the book is optimistic despite the event that precedes it. An imperfect father wants the best for his child, and does the best he can with the hand he's dealt. In a dying world of cannibals and worse, there are people who are good, and whose surroundings don't poison their view on what it means to be good. "Do you carry the fire?" is, to my mind, an incredibly optimistic sentiment.
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It’s quite a stretch.
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FWIW, I've seen every one of Tarantino's films since "Reservoir Dogs".
I may give "The Road" a chance though.
I’ve only read The Road and found it extremely difficult because of the nihilism. I put it down in the middle of it and stewed for 6 months before I picked it up again. I am so glad I did. I think his detractors are right, it is violent, nihilistic, masculine and whatever else. Through that the other side of the contrast becomes so vivid. Maybe there are better ways to get there. For me it hit.
My daughter and I talk about the message in the book regularly. Though she has yet to read it. I see more clearly my purpose as a dad and as a member in my community. Totally worth the read.
> I think his detractors are right, it is violent, nihilistic, masculine and whatever else.
Thinking masculine is a criticism is quite a tell.
I think the toxic kind probably does deserve criticism.
It sounds like the book itself isn't nihilistic but there may be nihilistic characters in it, which doesn't seem like something worth criticizing it over.
How do you tell that a book with nihilistic characters isn't a nihilistic book? The difference is obvious in principle, but I'm not sure it is in practice.
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I have a theory that everyone has a different level of detachment vs self-insertion when consuming a fictional narrative. Those more self-insertive probably shouldn't read his books.
I think its just a simple matter of aesthetics. Some people find violence ugly, and don't like looking at it. Some people think that by looking at it you're somehow coming to a greater understanding of the world or something. Maybe that is the case for some super sheltered individuals, but I doubt it's the case on the whole.
If anyone has any ideas on what the point of violence in art is, I'm open to hearing it. Obviously horror is a genre and so is gore, and people seem to enjoy being shocked. I don't think that is what McCarthy was going for though. And he wasn't going for the vengeance-catharsis angle like Tarantino either.
It's a media literacy issue. It's good to read challenging works to grow your understanding. I think the self-insertive tendency comes from consuming works oriented toward it with typical hero/villain structures
Don't really think so. I love Pynchon and there's not really a character I'm latching onto when I read that. McCarthy and Pynchon both fetishize a sort of violence. I find McCarthy's writing going there many times for shock value or aesthetic reasons and it makes me take him less seriously. Other people have mentioned Tarantino and I think that is apt.
My impression is that Tarantino and McCarthy author with different motives in mind.
Depiction isn’t endorsement
How is overly masculine a bad thing? Makes me want to read it even more.
It could be clownish and a caricature. I enjoyed The Road but it makes me think of a critique of sci fi I read once, wherein masculine sci fi novels focus deeply on engineering problems and all but ignore human or environmental ones. Some books tackled this by demonstrating the presumptive and flawed approach sci fi writers take to biospheres / space stations / generation ships for example (Voyage from Yesteryear, A Half Built Garden) where despite all the engineering, the biosphere suffers. I suppose a part of why Dune made such waves was that it took a very human and ecological perspective front and center.
The Road could be seen as overly masculine in its portrayal of a man and his son against nearly the entire world, which is often the fantasy of male prepper types. Some oppositional takes to this would be e.g. Cory Doctorow's Masque of the Red Death, where he presents the dichotomy directly in a post-apocalypse world and argues for the more optimistic outcome, wherein people work together in a non-exclusionary way to overcome whatever the apocalyptic scenario is, which might be considered a more feminine perspective. Others taking that perspective would include Rebecca Solnit in "A Paradise Built in Hell."
In the Too Like Lightning series, Ada Palmer takes on the male/feminine sci fi angle directly by creating a near-utopian society of mostly gender neutral people. At one point in the novel a character argues that in fact they've created a feminine society of women, and therefore aren't prepared to handle the outlier class of people that want to create war, who have for the most part began to present explicitly as men.
> masculine sci fi novels focus deeply on engineering problems and all but ignore human or environmental ones
I'd say the Road is a full inversion of this in that it doesn't bother explaining why the world collapsed and purely focuses on how people are left to cope with it
It's a world where femininity and fertility have been completely eradicated and turned into a living hell by said survivalist men who vie to dominate what little is remaining
The only "good" to be found in it is the memory of the Man's wife and the family the child meets at its conclusion
No kidding. Try to find an "overly masculine" book among Pulizer or Hugo nominees today. And people feign to wonder where the male readers have gone.
Don't really understand this comment, I'm looking at the latest Pulitzer and Hugo winners and seeing what sound like pretty classic masculine tropes. James is about a man who escapes from slavery, fends for himself in the wilderness, violently avenges his wife and daughter, etc. Alien Clay is about a man who rebels against an evil government, is sent to a prison camp in space, bangs his boss (a woman), starts another rebellion, etc. I haven't read these books so maybe the descriptions are misleading, but I don't feel like I'm having any trouble finding masculinity here.
On the other hand I (a man) have read Blood Meridian, and while I loved it, anyone who reads it and thinks "fuck yeah these are real men" is a psycopath. Nobody should want to be associated with those characters (or the real people that inspired them) in any way.
> people feign to wonder where the male readers have gone
I haven't heard this concern, but if this is an issue I can't really believe awards have anything to do with it. Nobody is saying "yeah I used to like books but Hugo nominees these last few years weren't to my taste, so I just stopped reading". At least in my experience the average person doesn't really care about media awards, they are mostly for industry insiders and a small subset of major enthusiasts.
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Just read it and you will find out. Is a really short book.
Oh I have read almost all of McCarthy’s novels including this one. That’s beside the point though, what’s wrong about something being overtly masculine?
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Haven’t read “The Road” yet, but I was able to take the time to read “Blood Meridian” this year— I don’t think I would describe the violence depicted as “relished.” It came across as vivid in an arduous, can’t-look-away-from-the-wreckage-so-bear-witness way, and I was really intrigued by how the Kid’s POV dissolves during the worst of it. And about “why someone might write about the worst among us”—the glory-seeking and hypocrisy of the Glanton gang also felt timely, to be frank. So, to me, it felt more like a clinical exposure of ugly rot rather than a luridly violent power fantasy like Inglorious Basterds.
Though I do kinda feel the “masculine” note in that quote haha, if only because the women that appeared in the story were steadfastly hospitable (or victims.) Disregarding any incident where the Judge was involved, it actually felt quaint, especially in contrast to everything else going on.
I’ll be interested as I check out the rest of his catalogue as to if the stomach-churning detail involved still feels necessary, or if my tolerance starts to change.
Yeah it's hard to say he's "relishing" violence when he a very well-researched depiction of complete horrific and genocidal chapter of the Manifest Destiny period that was essentially forgotten.
I see the violence as a refutation of the idealized, sanitized version of the West popularized in mainstream Westerns. Where law and authority = good, even though the Glanton gang was funded and armed by US authorities
I think McCarthy is one of the greatest American writers, but I will say my two main gripes with him are his tendency to drift over the line into overwrought (sometimes the biblical language is incredibly powerful, sometimes not), and his utter inability to write women.
He did ok with Alicia in his last couple books, but even there he flounders some. "If I had a baby I wouldn't care about reality"? Hmm, ok?
"His face was all covered in girljuice"? C'mon bud.
But no writer is flawless.
Watched a video essay yesterday by a female reader who found the Aunt’s four page monologue in ‘All the Pretty Horses’ one of the most insightful and moving explanations of women she’d ever read.
She was particularly surprised to find such a passage in a book by McCarthy who she expected to be some gruff man’s man.
I haven’t read that passage myself, but seemingly Cormac was capable of writing women when he chose to. Perhaps not enough, though.
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"Child of God?" You started at just about the darkest, least approachable place. Try "No Country for Old Men" or "All the Pretty Horses," both of which are far easier to read and contemplate.
Or The Crossing, which, at least for the first third is his sparest and best writing. At least, I prefer the marriage of the gothic sensibility and poetry with the classic western.
The first third ripped my heart out
All the Pretty Horses has much of the bleakness that characterizes his stories but also genuinely beauty and romanticism that he pulls off equally well
Love it