Referencing the book of Matthew in which Jesus refers to "outer dark" as the shadowy land of the faithless, McCarthy's second work chronicles the separate journeys of brother and sister in search of the child they bore together. Culla, desperate to discard the evidence of he and his sister's affair, leaves the child in the woods and reports it dead. Rinthy, unconvinced by Culla's scheme, sets out to find her missing son.Culla pursues her, simultaneously joined and hunted by a ghastly gang, as brother and sister hurtle towards their road's portentious end. A shadowy fable where the heart's hidden intentions seem to hold sway over the sometimes minacious but always elegantly painted Appalachian countryside, McCarthy captures the innate savagery of an early, isolated America.McCarthy, whose main subjects most authors wouldn't dare to flirt with, has a knack for taking the basest and most abominable elements of humanity and making them beautiful, and often oddly graceful. He ventures into cannibalism, murder, incest, and necrophilia, to name a few, without seeming unneccesarily macabre. The natural poetry of his language, at once alarmingly intricate and readily accessible, renders every subject fair game and leaves the McCarthy experience open and just as satisfying to both scholars and fireside story collectors. He has an undeniably hypnotizing way of exposing the grace and humanity of even completely corrupt characters, as well as illuminating the inevitable effects of human interaction and the idea of a shared burden of sins, an idea he also explores in a later work, Child of God.
The great American dialect artist, he combines a believable country vernacular with the most beautiful and elegantly chosen vocabulary to create a reality that is not completely real or natural, but unquestionably (and disconcertingly) yours as long as the volume is open. His gift for creating dialogue that rings true keeps Outer Dark half in the realm of the fairy tale it often seems to be, and half rooted in the dark appalachian reality not too distantly past.
McCarthy's work, easily in the realm of Faulkner, ensures his place as one of the foremost authors in America. Don't let his dark subject choices fool you - his world is beautiful and perverse, and wholly ours.
Jenny Watkins, Books Correspondent:
Jenny’s column is published the 2nd and 17th of every month. A hodgepodge of miscellany musings from children's book reviews to an evaluation of southern literature's place in the modern world of words, Good on Paper covers (almost) everything in print.
After honing an impressively rabid obsession with the printed word at the same insitution that churned out such greats as Annie Dillard and Lee Smith, Jenny Watkins packed up her worn paperbacks and headed West for the sparkling crime den of Los Angeles. When she's not pushing her favorite volumes off onto friends or indulging her embarassing love affair with trash T.V., she's searching for the perfect job and the perfect dive bar. You can find all of Jenny's Good on Paper articles at www.gather.com/goodonpaper.
Keep up with Jenny’s other postings and Gather activity by joining her Gather network -- just go to sogoesholly.gather.com and select the orange “Connect” button on the left-hand side of the page.
You’ll find Jenny and other Book Correspondents, plus celebrity author content and plenty of other bibliophiles at books.gather.com.
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Comments: 5
I'm actually from the South with family from the mountains and a handful of teachers from Tennessee.
Jenny, You've put McCarthy on my list.