Cormac McCarthy: Disturbing

By DON ROLLINS

Cormac McCarthy is dead. Author of some of the most visceral, compact and oft-times violent fiction from this and the last century, he died June 13 at age 89.

For those unfamiliar with even McCarthy’s most recognizable titles, think a prolific Faulkner meets undiluted social darwinism: “All the Pretty Horses,” “The Road,” “No Country for Old Men” — each laced with evil, cruelty and mini-morality plays that rarely get resolved.

When asked about the bleakness running through these and his other works, McCarthy was characteristically terse: “If it doesn’t concern life and death, it isn’t interesting.” It’s a cliche that when applied to McCarthy’s world is far more applicable (and ominous) than the new reader might suppose.

He was born Charles Joseph McCarthy Jr. in 1933. Raised in an upper middle class family, McCarthy loathed parochial school and his parents’ status. After two stints at the University of Tennessee, he left without graduating, married, began work on his first novel (“The Orchard Keeper,” 1965) and endured dire poverty.

Although McCarthy’s first two books did little to advance his career, that changed over the next two decades as the story settings moved from the south to the southwest. The novels continued to come, publishers were eager, and sales were steadily increasing. Even with no book tours and few interviews, Cormac McCarthy’s books were in demand.

At death, he’d written 12 novels, five screenplays, three short stories and earned a Pulitzer Prize for “The Road” (2006). Yet McCarthy has not been for everyone, to say the least: His dearth of punctuation and irregular syntax vexes many critics and new readers alike; Obscure references and words distract even committed readers. Few characters have or deal in substance. The many subplots can become maddening. And McCarthy’s depictions of women are few and archaic.

McCarthy’s personal and work lives have also come in for examination: Perhaps his treatment of women is related to his three divorces. Maybe his exodus from Catholicism shapes his characters’ general ambivalence toward God and religion. His all consuming work ethic may add up to more quantity than quality when it comes to submitting manuscripts. And if McCarthy has anything resembling a fixed moral code, his characters and plots don’t often reflect it.

It’s not surprising that in death, as in life, McCarthy and his canon are cause for more discussion and dissection — common phenomena when a prominent literary figure passes. But is there more to McCarthy’s default desolation than a posthumous academic white paper, or online debate about all the above?

First and foremost, McCarthy confronts his readers with irredeemable evil — a refutation of what-doesn’t-kill-us-only-makes-us-stronger thinking. It’s a principle as palpable as the latest street shooting, the latest round of safety net cuts, the latest war on queer people. McCarthy shows us pain and injustice often have no silver lining, and looking for rainbows after the deluge is for the privileged.

Related, scores of McCarthy’s characters are economic, political or religious “losers.” They’re complete misfits in the mainstream, defined according to singular categories such as addict, thief or criminal. Per valid criticism, McCarthy rarely gives real depth to his characters; yet many possess a strength too often lost in the text. McCarthy shows us our humanity is bound to that of all who survive on the margins, especially that of the “losers”.

Lastly, McCarthy knows the power of an image, be it a broken man, or that of a father and son the other side of the apocalypse. McCarthy’s main (and some secondary) characters are often described in detail: We see that face, we remember the details of that barren land. We feel, not just remember. McCarthy shows us the value of being haunted by a word picture.

It’s been said of McCarthy that his writing is “mentally exhausting,” and that’s surely the case. Sometimes less is more, especially in literature. Still he leaves behind a body of work that is, in the best sense of the word, disturbing.

Don Rollins is a retired Unitarian Universalist minister in Jackson, Ohio. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, July 1-15, 2023

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