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Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Cormac McCarthy: “God Is A Little Boy, And Also Trout”
(x-posted to The Kugelmass Episodes)
I’ve just finished reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which set everyone’s hair on fire.
As an example of style, it works; the book is criss-crossed by references to ash and the aftermath of fire, and despite the single-mindedness of the landscape, and the microscopic focus on the father and the son, the minimalism is a triumph. Literally, there is less to do in the postapocalyptic world than there was in the world of cowboys, and this is a help to McCarthy, who otherwise tends to spend a long time on the insignificant everydayness of craft. For example, he will describe how a horse is saddled, or how a cowboy will secure a gate.
The Road is a Christian parable; that is its most important quality, and its downfall.
Another Christian parable is a waste of time; it would be more worthwhile just to re-read the Bible. If anything, the patent religiosity of the text made me realize for the first time that the “larder” scene in novels of scarcity (a more profane example being The Ginger Man) is actually a scene of communion, and sometimes also a scene of baptism, if there is an abundance of clean water.
Earlier this month, I watched Eastern Promises, which had a terrific baptism in it. I won’t be hungry for another baptism for at least six months.
Anyhow, the father and the son nearly starve to death. The moment they began to starve, I began to wait for the scene where they would find a tearjerking superabundance of food. It’s on page 123: the dinner of canned pears.
Over the course of the novel, the father struggles to keep himself and his son alive. Increasingly, the son becomes distant, because he rejects his father’s creed of kinship. The son tries to give food away, first to a little boy, then to an embittered old man, and finally to a thief who attempts murder. Angrily, the father says you’re not the one who has to worry about everything, and the son says, I am the one. I think he did not add “I am the alpha and the omega” because the apocalypse destroyed most of the good courses in ancient Greek.
The wasteland is actually described as “secular.” In the final scene, when the boy is adopted by good people, the woman begins to speak to him about God. The Son, however, is too busy conversing with the Spirit of his departed Father. The woman reasons with him that the breath of God passes between people who converse thus.
The final paragraph of the book is about trout, who mazily puzzle the hours in deep, remembering, mysterious waters. It is not clear who is speaking, since the father is dead. To McCarthy, the deep pools are rumors of God. His editor should be reprimanded, or at least subjected to small practical jokes. McCarthy’s editor, I mean. Not God’s.
I don’t think I could have Cormac McCarthy over for dinner. It would get awkward. Nervously, I would talk too much, and he would spoon the candied yams without even looking at them.
I recommend watching the trailer for The Golden Compass. In my dreams, that polar bear fights Aslan. I’m mixed in among the crowd, my fist around a wad of bills, yelling Faster, pussycat! Kill, kill!
Comments
God’s editors, of course, were subjected to many very large and painful practical jokes.
"I think he did not add “I am the alpha and the omega” because the apocalypse destroyed most of the good courses in ancient Greek.”
Should I feel bad because I’ve written a poem with that line? Admittedly the poem tries to achieve something like the inverse of a Christian parable by being about a dispute with God over a parking space.
“The final paragraph of the book is about trout, who mazily puzzle the hours in deep, remembering, mysterious waters.”
John Crowley’s Little, Big figures someone transformed into a trout, apparently for similar mythopoetic purposes. Maybe it seems more acceptible because it’s within a sort of pseudo-pagan work.
Christian parables are now off limits?
Trout are related to salmon, and we know just all about them and their poetic ways, don’t we?
Christian parables are now off limits?
Like Zombie Movies, there’s no shortage of them and they tend to be limited in scope of theme. At some point in the nineteenth century, Christian Parables just became redundant. Like Zombie Movies in the 21st century. Oh, but our zombies are fast! And Oh, but our Christians are tedious!
That’s nice. So what else is on?
Ok. What further limits shall we put on our artists?
Trent,
I’m not setting limits on McCarthy’s range, or on anyone’s. McCarthy is choosing his own materials, and he is limiting himself by borrowing from Christian mythos, postapocalyptic sci-fi, and Hemingway to the exclusion of other directions that might have proved fresher.
The problem with the way McCarthy went here is that his final version of generosity is far less nuanced than it (perhaps) could have been; in their way, >The Horseman on the Roof and The Grapes of Wrath are both similar books, but they are better because they articulate more.
There’s also a question of truth in advertising. I’d heard nothing whatsoever to suggest that The Road was so deeply religious, which means that right now readers are in the habit of mistaking Christian mythos for the human condition, full stop.
Rich,
For sure; also, it’s possible that Crowley wasn’t borrowing so heavily from “The Big Two-Hearted River” at a moment that doesn’t justify it.
"I recommend watching the trailer for The Golden Compass. In my dreams, that polar bear fights Aslan. I’m mixed in among the crowd, my fist around a wad of bills, yelling Faster, pussycat! Kill, kill!”
I’m not sure what you’re even talking about in this passage. Could you explain a bit?
Mike,
His Dark Materials (which begins with The Golden Compass) is partly designed as a critique of organized religion, and features a good polar bear who talks.
C. S. Lewis’s Narnia books, several of which feature a talking lion named Aslan, are explicit Christian parables. Aslan is a modified, feline version of Jesus.
Russ Meyer’s film Faster, Pussycat! Kill, Kill! was an incredibly campy sexploitation film that has had a second life as a cult favorite.
Part of the point was to mirror McCarthy’s wacky, digressive final paragraph. I also wanted to vent about the saturation of pop culture with religious fantasy. Beyond that, it was a sort of fever dream ending, and you are welcome to interpret it as you like.
"I’d heard nothing whatsoever to suggest that The Road was so deeply religious”
the first review I read of it, the one that made me go out and buy a copy the next morning, linked it to the Pilgrim’s Progress.
I also don’t really understand how anyone could think that an apocalypse novel could be anything but religious. But then, I really liked it so don’t let me interfere with the sneerfest.
What was Suttree? I’m terrible at recognizing subtext and literary games and stuff. I just tend to read them straight. I really liked Suttree and wonder if there is something behind the story other than the story. Maybe it’s a story of redemption. He goes through hell until he is redeemed for the death of his son. A journey through the underworld. That’s another favorite allegory. I always thought it was interesting that when people do allegories, the allegorize another text, so that it’s at least two steps removed from actual experience.
I read the Road when it was getting so much publicity earlier this year, and loved it, then went back and read Blood Meridian and All the Pretty Horses. The Road is weaker than either, but it’s still an excellent book, “Christian parable” or not. There is a tremendous range of religious fiction. Blood Meridian is arguably religious (and excellent). Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun is a deeply allusive religious far-future science fantasy (and also excellent). Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore is arguably religious, though in a non-western way (and also excellent).
Religion is one of the most complex and fundamental pieces of human experience, and it has always and will always influence art and literature.
Laura,
It’s true that some reviewers noticed the messianic elements. Kennedy in the Times, for example. He even noticed that the old man is a version of Elijah ("Ely"), which I had overlooked.
Neither Doctor Strangelove nor An Inconvenient Truth were religious in nature.
You aren’t going to succeed in shaming me by calling the post and thread a sneerfest. If, as I happen to believe, The Road is a nicely done piece of old news, of course it’s going to be likable.
CW,
Some of the alienation that happens through allegory distanced me from The Road. I’m curious about Suttree, though. For a quickie reading of Suttree, yours seems perfectly adequate; not having read the book, I can’t answer your question, but it seems that you’ve done so yourelf.
BH,
Religion is one of the most complex and fundamental pieces of human experience, and it has always and will always influence art and literature.
I agree with this. The question is whether The Road uses religion inventively; Blood Meridian apparently does. Love always has and always will influence literature; nonetheless there are pat love stories, and there are also beautiful, surprising ones.
Joseph, An Inconvenient Truth has those scenes of flowing rivers where Gore talks about humanity’s communion with nature. It’s vague something-for-everybody stuff, but it brings up a basic religious question—who are we, how do we fit in here, and what do we owe posterity? And there are trout, presumably, in the river.
For me, a good Christian parable is one that the right-wing pharisaic political christians won’t recognize as being Christian, but which really is. So The Road, while having its problems (unrelenting dreariness, ignoring its debt to SF) is good, when compared to the baseline badness of Left Behind.
Aslan vs. the bear—okay, as long as Aslan kicks butt. I hate the His Dark Materials series. There’s a badly done (inconsistent, propagandistic, disrespectful to readers) allegory for you.
"I’m not setting limits on McCarthy’s range, or on anyone’s. McCarthy is choosing his own materials, and he is limiting himself by borrowing from Christian mythos, postapocalyptic sci-fi, and Hemingway to the exclusion of other directions that might have proved fresher.”
While it’s true that overused forms (in this case, Christian parable) generate tediousness, I can’t help but acknowledge the use of the term “proved fresher” as indicative of art’s constant, and perhaps futile, need to constantly reinvent. The phrase “proved fresher” has an almost organic quality to it ("fresh bread,” “fresh fruit,” etc.), which also brings out the possibility of something “not fresh,” or rotting (again, another organic quality). Does the search for new directions/forms indicate a recognition of “rotting forms/directions” that are naturally discarded for newer “fresher” forms/directions, or is this need for reinvention follow more of a capitalistic, “bigger, badder, fresher, more” mentality of the new replacing the pretty much new in the first place mode?
Then I thought about communion, then the bread and fishes story, both connotating unending fulfillment, where the “natural” cycle is subverted. Then I got a headache.
Any thoughts or aspirin? I’m just a lowly undergrad…
(Quick weblog note: This is a large number of commenters with one or two letter names. It would be smashing if you picked a handle. I know CR doesn’t have one, but it kinda makes it difficult to separate one speaker from another.)
RM,
I sort of agree that Gore’s reference to the flowing rivers is religious, and in any case we know that Gore is a Christian. But questions about human nature, the place of human beings in the world, and what we leave posterity are not necessarily religious questions, even when they are based on sentiment. Our answers may draw upon religious traditions, to be sure. Nonetheless, linking McCarthy and Gore in this way makes “religion” much too broad, and loses sight of the literalisms in The Road. Such a definition of religion could easy encompass Percy Shelley, who was much more lyrical than Gore in his treatments of Nature, and who was expelled from Oxford for being an atheist.
The phrase “proved fresher” has an almost organic quality to it ("fresh bread,” “fresh fruit,” etc.), which also brings out the possibility of something “not fresh,” or rotting (again, another organic quality). Does the search for new directions/forms indicate a recognition of “rotting forms/directions” that are naturally discarded for newer “fresher” forms/directions, or is this need for reinvention follow more of a capitalistic, “bigger, badder, fresher, more” mentality of the new replacing the pretty much new in the first place mode?
Well, I love your Marxist rhetorical analysis, and in theory I agree that the novel should not be a prisoner of restlessness.
However, in this case, I think we should look at the specifics. Was The Road trampled underfoot by the capitalist imperative? Just the opposite: it was picked up by Oprah and it won the Pulitzer, a combination that led to a flood of demand. Readers of every sort sought out this book.
At the highest levels of abstract structuration, capitalism is actually homogeneous. Turn that proposition around: is it the case that we should seek out what is stale, or rotten, or entirely familiar? Certainly, it is possible to carry the demand for novelty to the point of hysteria—but does a reasonable person demand the numbing repetition of an idea which is “good for you”? It is a literary version of “The meetings will continue until morale improves.”
I really don’t get the point of this post. You are basically condemning McCarthy for writing a McCarthy book. If anything, The Road is McCarthy boiled down to the bare essentials. And, of course, you already pointed out why one should read the book; not (neccessarily) because of its Christian parable, but for the power of McCarthy’s prose and style. It’s astonishing.
You are also not half as clever as you think you are. Criticism is fine, but your cloying postmodern irony is really irritating. McCarthy deserves at least to be taken and/or criticized seriously! And don’t worry, McCarthy wouldn’t want to have dinner with you. Neither would I.
You know, I’ve been reading The Valve on-and-off since it started and this is the first post that actually pissed me off. Nicely done.
Total Valve posts: 1,336
Total posts written by Joseph Kugelmass: 39
Percentage of total posts that pissed off James F: .07%
Percentage of Kugelmass posts that did: 2.5%
The Valve. Where We Get It Right 99.93% of the time.
Heh.
I admit, too, to being a bit annoyed. It’s one thing to say you don’t like what an author has done with X and quite another to lay down a rule that an author should never deal with X. But that’s generally what criticism does: create objective judgments/rulings based on subjective experiences.
But certainly it would be tedious to qualify every subjective statement. So, go head, JK, write what you think and if we object, most of us’ll keep it in perspective ;)
Gerrold,
It’s not a rule for authors to follow, though I can see how the post might have read that way. I love parable, and the revisionism of fiction, as it happens; I’ll probably be writing a dissertation on (among other things) the Catholic elements of Finnegans Wake.
I wish McCarthy had done more with it; I’m interested to read Blood Meridian, where apparently he does do more.
Thank you for saying that you’ll keep things in perspective. I know that part of the issue with this post was the breeziness, brevity, and digressiveness of it. As a poster, there are times when you have to break away from the academic essay format, which (in the cramped confines of a blog entry) can turn formulaic and dull.
There is no question that The Road uses religious imagery and themes as organizational scaffolding, as do the majority of apocalyptic tales. And if one is so inclined, the book can be read as a reactionary right-wing kind of religious apocalypse: the intense focus on the father-son relationship parallels the fixation of the right on masculinity and authority; the pagan “bloodcults” approximate the caricature of neo-pagan relativists who display a shocking lack of self-evident moral values; the cannibalism pointing toward the detranscendentalization of spiritual practices like the Eucharist; and the ending a reaffirmation of the traditional family as the source of all comfort and security. This is a possible reading, and it is the one that I was tending towards as I finished the book (in one sitting!).
But I’m reluctant to leave it there, knowing something about McCarthy’s earlier work, which while it flirts with all sorts of conservative themes (survival of the fittest, the sacrifice of the queer, the redemptive value of violence) rarely takes the easy and obvious way out. Unless he’s gone soft, then, McCarthy’s ending in The Road might not be so positive and cathartic as it at first seems. There is, for the child, nothing to inherit in the wasteland, even if he is “adopted” (and getting “adopted” in McCarthy’s earlier work usually means getting unadopted in the most painful way later on) by a normative nuclear family (and where are these in early McCarthy books?). Where did the wasteland come from, precisely, if not from religious/conservative warmongering? Finally, isn’t the father’s story one of Sisyphean existentialism--going on from moment to moment far past the point of hoping for any decisive salvation? Beckett, but not as funny?
I don’t know, but this is a short little parable whose ease of reading makes it a good starting place for some intense religious/spiritual/philosophical discussions, whatever its ideological tendency might be (could that ever be determined). I recommend the book.
YoloMike,
I heartily agree with your characterizations o the book—in particular, that it is deeply influenced by Beckett, though it is not as comic or as pessimistic. I would merely add that this conversation inspired me to check out Blood Meridian from the library, but even if I find that novel compelling I wouldn’t be able to let it foot the bill for the sentimentalism of this one.
The books that have come up down through this thread are the ones that I have found to be the best starting places for conversations about religious, spiritual, and philosophical values. In particular, I recommend The Plague and The Fall, both by Albert Camus (who invented the modern notion of the Sisyphean quest), as alternatives.
I wondered if there was a dark element when the boy meets the family at the end. The mother says something like “you don’t have to worry about anything anymore” (in the movie, I haven’t read the book yet), but if he is THE ONE WHO HAS TO WORRY ABOUT EVERYTHING, then we are left worrying about that conflict even though the story ends.