Wow. Just wow. I stumbled across a copy of Cormac McCarthy's latest book in a used bookstore the other day. $1. I didn't even hesitate; how can you go wrong for a buck? Did I ever get my dollar's worth! I went in to take a bath, took the bath, and came out 3 hours later, prune-fingered and goosebumped and wrapped in my flannel robe, and sat down to start The Road over again.
Let me just say, first off, that I'm an aficionado of apocolypse stories. It all began with The Stand the summer before I started high school. Stephen King created a world that was so horrible, so alien, and an antigen-shifting virus that killed 99.4% everyone in the world. It was also a really bad time to come down with a summer cold, because I was sure that I too had Captain Tripps, but, luckily I lived. However, King let us see five chapters of life as we knew it: rock stars indulging in excess, college kids on summer break, military snafus. It isn't until we realize the nature of those snafus that we realize the horror that's about to be visited upon the United States.
McCarthy's book is different. The world to which McCarthy delivers us can only be described as scorched earth. Plants and trees are dead and black; water is thick with ash; the sky is gray and the sun ineffective; snow falls to the earth gray. From the first page, a reader wonders "What happened?!?" and that reader is still wondering on the last page. We never even know if this was a man-made calamity or an environmental problem gone spectacularly wrong, and perhaps it's best that we not know. This book is, above all else, about going on; does it matter if this was a war or a forest fire?
While King's book featured two groups of survivors, one basically good and one basically bad, McCarthy's survivors are harder to classify. His two main protagonists, a father and son, are basically good, even referring to themselves as "The Good Guys." However, McCarthy also portrays characters that are basically good but steal, characters whom we just never know well enough to classify, and characters who are so hideous in behavior that it's difficult to even consider them human. One particular scene, which I will let you discover for yourself, is revolting, and I say that as a person who is not easily sickened. What sets this book apart is the beauty of the writing and the tale-telling, and as sickening as some scenes are, the writing brings them back, over and over, even after I've put the book down.
King's book, written in the late 70s, ends on a positive note. The guys in the white hats win out in the end, and it seems as though the world will find a way to right itself. McCarthy doesn't let us off that easy. The ending of The Road is not completely without hope, but it never gives us that sense of euphoria, that "Yes! They're gonna be okay!" moment that some readers may want. Far from it. In fact, throughout the book, the situation is so bleak that the mere finding of a windfall apple seems like a triumph.
However, in spite of what may seem a real downer subject, this book is inspiring in its simplicity and its goodness. The writing is absolutely delicious. One particular phrase that I have to share describes the relationship between the boy and his father; they are "each the other's world entire." Now that is beautiful.
Assignment: Write a quick sketch of a character using only the voice of your main character to relate a situation. This should, of course be in the first person point of view, and it should lend deeper insight into the character, perhaps deeper than even the character realizes.
You show me yours, and I'll show you mine! :D
Here's mine, and I hope you'll forgive me for reading Dashiell Hammett, because my character seems like he wants to be one of his characters:
About seven o’clock, I told Harry to pour me one more for the ditch. He snickered at that – Harry always says I’m one hell of a wit – and poured me another Scotch. “Gonna be late for dinner again,” he says to me. What a cut-up, that Harry.
“If you think my wife tells me where to shoulder the wheel and when to push, Harry, you better think again,” I says. “You just better think again.” It was an inside joke, see? All us regulars down at the Harbor Lights – Howard, Stewie, Frank, Ray, and me, Jack – worked hard, and by God, if a man wants a belt at the end of another day, then he'll have one, and who in hell is his wife to tell him any different? “My wife,” I snorted.
Now I didn’t say this to Harry, because this was before his time at the Harbor Lights, but my wife used to think just that way, just the way he said. Of course I never stood for it, never changed my ways, but she kicked up a fuss for a while, always with her nagging, always on about my drinking. “I earn that drink, Irene,” I says to her then. “You want to run this household? Want to take a turn working every day? Let's just see how you like waiting tables at the Rise ‘n Shine, wetting your panties if someone leaves you a quarter tip. Maybe you can even sell Avon if people ain’t too scared of your ugly phizz. Or,” I says, “maybe you can learn to shut your effing pie hole for one lousy second, put the goddamned dinner on the goddamned table, and act the way a wife is supposed to act.”
Of course, she saw it my way. Deep down, see, she knew I was right. I may not be a saint, but I gave her a good house, a good life, and she never had to dirty her hands with no job neither. “Hell,” I told her, “I should be so lucky!” Plenty of times I wished I could tell that idiot boss of mine, Louie Carmichael, that I was quitting his lousy job. There’s plenty of work for a guy like me, twenty years in city maintenance. But did I do that? No. And why? Because I had an obligation to her and the kid. Everything I did was for her and the kid, and all I asked was dinner on the table and a quiet evening in a clean house. Is that too much to ask? Is that too fucking much to ask? I didn’t think so.
When my drink was gone, I got my coat and left. The damn car would be cold now that it was dark, but the house wasn’t far, and Thursday night meant chili – proper chili with no beans in. Backing out, I saw a note she’d left on the seat of the car that morning. It said to pick up hamburger. “Ha!” I says to myself, “What?! I’m your fucking errand boy, now? I’ve gotta take time outta my busy day for this?” Well, Irene, my sweet, I wasn’t stopping anywhere, and woe is you if my supper wasn’t ready because of no hamburger. Woe is you.
But usually we got on fine, just fine. There was that time with the busy body neighbor of ours though, the one who couldn’t help sticking her nose in our business. She was one of those women’s libbers, see? She took a mind to get my Irene to join up, always inviting Irene to women’s libber meetings or trying to drag her to classes at the junior college or asking her out to lunch. Well, of course, I had to put my foot down, didn’t I? My dad's day, women knew their place. Nothing but trouble, all these stirred-up women nowadays. “Absolutely not,” I tells her. “No wife of mine is going to a women’s lib meeting. You don't know how good you got it, Irene. I give you everything you need, and you still want to run around all day playing liberated woman. Well, Irene, play just a little bit more and you’re gonna be so goddamned liberated that you won’t know which end is up! Now, get my dinner.” And who could argue with that? Really, who could argue with that, now?
I parked in the driveway and saw that Irene had forgotten the damn porch light again. “Monkeys is easier to train,” I says to her, time and time again. “Can’t you just remember the light? How’s it look when a wife can’t even be bothered to leave a light on for her loving husband when he works late?” She always swore she'd do better. “Irene!” I hollered. “What? I can see in the dark? Turn on the light now, Irene!” Nothing. Christ. I'd never raised a hand to her, but God knows she tests me. I dug around in my pocket until I had my keys, but as I grabbed the door handle to unlock it, the door pushed right in. “What the fuck?” I whispered. This wasn’t right, not right at all. “Irene? Answer me, Irene!” My God, what if we’d been robbed? Irene wasn’t bright enough to call Emergency, not strong enough to fight anybody off.
And, ah God, I was right! Robbed! Everything was gone, everything. I stood in the middle of the family room, turning around and around, speechless for once. The place looked like the day Irene and I moved in, all white walls and green shag, before we had a life here. Or anywhere. I yelled again, but she wasn’t answering. Maybe she was hurt! Maybe tied up! But I walked from room to room, and all the rooms were the same – empty. There was one thing left though. In the kitchen, I saw a bottle standing up on the counter, and I knew right away what it was – Dewar’s Scotch – and that it shouldn’t be there. No thief would leave Scotch behind, but there it was. Underneath the Scotch was a note, in Irene’s handwriting. After all I’d done for her, it had come to this. “I don’t believe it,” I said. “I just don’t fucking believe it.”
Up in the cupboard, I saw she was kind enough to leave one highball glass, thank you so much! So I pour myself a double. Why not? No need to stand on formality now, was there? Who was going to complain about my drinking now? Just who was going to complain? I sat at the kitchen table, surrounded by that God-forsaken Cathy® wallpaper that Irene loved so much, scotch in one hand and crumpled note in the other. And this is where I’m going to stay, too. When Irene comes back, and she will be back, I’ll be sitting here at the table, waiting for my dinner. And woe is her when she gets home. Woe is her.
Diary - Chuck Palahniuk
The Collected Short Stories of Weldon Kees
Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammett
One Thousand Acres - Jane Smiley
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