I must confess, I have only read two novels by Cormac McCarthy.
Having seen No Country for Old Men at the cinema, and enjoyed it as most others did, I quickly purchased the novel and read it. While at the bookstore, I noticed an “Oprah Bookclub Selection” by McCarthy (which necessarily caused a good deal of hesitation on my part) titled “The Road”. After reading both novels, I was initially struck by the sterile mediocrity and minimalism (which sadly is all the rage now–Tom Robbins notwithstanding) of McCarthy’s style (to say nothing of his shamefully complete and total inability to write female characters). However, that said, I did generally enjoy the novels (especially The Road).
It wasn’t too long before I realized why I had a superficial appreciation for the novels all the while wholeheartedly despising them upon deeper reflection. The persistent tone and theme of McCarthy’s writing is a pathetically contemptuous wistfulness and impotently despairing anguish over the loss of the pre-Enlightenment metaphysical ordering of the world. Thus, on the surface I enjoyed the novels for their entertaining portrayal of a world devoid of the horror of traditional moral/metaphysical frameworks (a horror, I might add, that is infinitely worse than the catastrophically violent and environmentally toxic world of The Road). However, insofar as McCarthy’s thematization of this portrait is lamentatious in the extreme, I find his work repugnant. McCarthy’s pathos is the fictional equivalent of Alasdair MacIntyre’s philosophical condemnation of the “Enlightenment project” (found principally in his seminal work “After Virtue”). The nostalgic sentiment that fuels both is an unseemly longing for “order” and “security”, a kind of cloying comfort that one appropriately achieves–and permanently at that–only in death.
“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars…”
–Jack Kerouac “On the Road”
are you seriously critiquing mccarthy’s style in a post that uses a kerouac quote as a signature?
i don’t understand why there is so much objection to short sentences out there…anybody ever read hemingway? it’s a central thread of the american literary tradition, and the goal is to streamline style and achieve clarity of expression while allowing for terse comic irony (which mccarthy manages brilliantly).
Fair enough. My objection (which wasn’t “clear” enough, I suppose–is that ironic enough?), such as it is, was more concerned with the tempo and character of the sentiments as expressed within the style (as opposed to the merely straightforward length)–a tempo/character I find to be either resigned and shot through with a kind of muted, disaffected weariness, or a misplaced celebration of a kind of stoicism.
The brevity and clarity (and terse comic irony), which you attribute to Hemingway (and the american literary tradition in general) does not seem to reflect the (also american) profligate tradition of emerson and whitman (and kerouac) that I delight in.
“fictional equivalent of Alasdair MacIntyre’s philosophical condemnation of the “Enlightenment project” (found principally in his seminal work “After Virtue”). The nostalgic sentiment that fuels both is an unseemly longing for “order” and “security”, a kind of cloying comfort that one appropriately achieves–and permanently at that–only in death.”
Yeah, buddy — if you can’t refute ‘em, mock ‘em — that’s about all that’s left of the “Enlightenment project”, isn’t it?
[...] Florida Student Philosophy blog had an interesting post a while back drawing a parallel between McCarthy’s work and Alistair Macintyre’s view [...]
I recommend “Blood Meridian”, where McCarthy is at his best.
Minotauromachia
http://minotauromachia.wordpress.com
‘The nostalgic sentiment that fuels both is an unseemly longing for “order” and “security”’
I think this is too positive a reading of Macintyre, who spends a great deal of effort refuting “the Enlightenment project”. Macintyre, or others of the postmodern ilk, would better be likened to mystics, who dwell in realms far outside of “order” and “security”.