There's a stretch of I5, southern Oregon, where you go up and down, a series of crests, then down into the wooded valley. Each and ever time I crest, and start down into the next valley, I'm scanning for the smoke from small fires, and I get a chill. My wife get's tired of me re-telling the story every time. She doesn't know it, but I'm thinking about it every single ridge cresting. Powerful. Another great post Ted, Thanks.
I had read everything by McCarthy and just finished the last two a couple of months ago. A serious writer for serious readers. I am in awe of the magnificent, massive intelligence behind the writing. He may have been a recluse but he shared so much more humanity through his writing than through the "culture machine." He gave humanity to repugnant characters and asked us to look at them unflinchingly. As we should to ourselves.
I saw someone in a recent book review seem aghast at the idea that a book ( not by Cormac McCarthy) would ask a reader to have empathy for Nazis… my take is that empathy is not equal to approval or emulation. Empathy can, I think, be about understanding the human capacity for darkness, and in understanding, potentially even making more compassionate choices because we know the dangers that live inside of us all… on the other hand, I think I get that we may fear in looking deeply at our own darkness, we may be too weak not to give ourselves over to it. Love what you said about giving humanity to repugnant characters….
Getting real “honest broker” vibes from this post. I haven’t read Cormac McCarthy yet (though I’ve seen the movie of No Country for Old Men) and it seems that has been a serious omission.
My first Cormac was All the Pretty Horses, which was a good intro. Brutal and dazzling but not as rough as some of the others (Child of God and Blood Meridian esp).
NCFOM and All the Pretty Horses were commercial endevours. I don't resent that. But as an everyday, non-academic and only moderately intellectual person, I could sense that immediately as soon as I started Pretty Horses. "This is designed to be more approachable and could be a movie."
I'm glad he found commercial and financial success but his earlier works, up to and including Blood Meridian constituted his greatest work. I'm still trying to decide about The Passenger.
Haven't read Stella Maris yet but am starting soon, just for the enjoyment digesting his prose.
"If you immerse yourself in the darker things they stain you. You cannot go to the underworld and come back untainted. If you descend into violence, if you descend into all these forbidden things, I think a metaphor for the ID, the darker elements of human nature, you cannot control them in the world of daylight. The darkness knows truths that the daylight cannot afford to acknowledge. . . . There are a certain set of taboos you cannot break." 1:22:24
A lot of my writer friends love McCarthy's work. So I tried reading No Country for Old Men and watched some of the movie. But, at the risk of seeming unsophisticated, I see no "urgent need" to read books or watch movies about horrible people doing horrible things. I can't voluntarily submit myself to being brutalized by a novel or a movie.
As one commenter wrote about what it is like to read, Blood Meridian, it was like "being punched in the gut or slack-jawed with horror every other page." All I have to do to experience those feelings is look at what society is doing.
Someone I read recently who reviewed McCarthy's last two books did another thing that other literary theorizers about why good people who deplore degradation do when they promote the reading of dark, horrifying fiction, and that reviewer went looking in the two books about siblings tormented by an unconsummated passion for each other, seeking glimpses of a sense of the transcendent. I don't think the effort is worth the time and it risks permanent harm.
I agree with you. I can get depressed all by myself without any outside help. There are some people, myself included, who shouldn't read McCarthy. I need to be uplifted, not brought down. I can find no reason to submit myself to horror. If I want to see man's inhumanity to man, I can go shopping.
When I was 17, I couldn't understand why anyone read Flannery O'Connor. They were well written stories of horrible people doing horrible things. I recoiled at them. I was the same age when I saw Blue Velvet at the Brattle. I ought not to have done that--it did not help me become a healthy woman. But the reaction of the crowd was even worse.
I had yet to become a horrible person at that time. Later, I became terrible, slipping the wrong ways (maybe led on by those rather too-formative experiences.). Once you're surrounded by darkness, the blood is more real than the stifling fakeness of people. Esolen, I think, speaks about the need for college students to remain virtuous and how differently they can experience literature than those who didn't. He claimed to know that those that experience real darkness never truly feel joy.
Then I found God. For a while I thought Esolen was still right, but while it took a while, he was wrong. I've had kids, and I've had true adulterated joy along side them.
After that, I tried again to read O'Connor, because I've been told every story is about grace--"we are all 'the poor'" she said, supposedly, and on every page I felt anxiety and despair. Nope. None of those characters experience grace. I cannot understand what my friends see in the brutality of those stories.
I have Orchard Keeper and Blood Meridian sitting beside me. Checked them out because of someone else's comment on this blog after his death. Didn't make it 20 pages into either. (Didn't make it through the Coen Bros. adaptation, either.)
Nope. I'm done. I don't know who needs to read about terrible people. I didn't when I was innocent of the world's darkness, and I don't now that I'm not. I wouldn't wish those books on anyone I cared about.
I don't know how far you have to go find the redemption in them, but I think there's something broken about people who don't have enough suffering all around them, and need more so they can seek redemption. Pro tip: there is no bottom--but that means, hopefully, you can pull up at any time.
I first read Flannery O'Connor when I was a teen. O'Connor's fiction always left me apathetic, feeling that I had just finished reading a kind of humorous story with a violent ending, a story about a group of freaky Southern grotesques (and writing about Southern grotesques was a trend in those days) who were doing absurd incomprehensible things. Eudora Welty was another writer of Southern grotesque fiction, and to me O'Connor's stories seemed as nonsensical as Eudora Welty's "Why I Live at the P.O."
Reading her essays Mysteries and Manners and her letters The Habit of Being on the other hand, left me in awe of her deep faith when all I had ever known were Sunday-only Catholics, and I became full of admiration for what she said she was trying to do. At the same time, I doubted that her "shouting" by portraying exaggeratedly bizarre humanity ever actually achieved her goal of shocking any of her readers into an awareness of grace.
I don’t believe that she succeeded in her goal of creating in her readers’ minds the grasp of spiritual realities that she sought to induce by portraying the grotesque people and violent happenings that filled her stories.
I reread "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" a few years ago. It's a story of a wacky Georgia family's road trip that starts out funny and suddenly goes off the road—into horror. (I bet you never saw a summary of that story like mine before.)
It was maybe the tenth time I've read it. I still didn't get out of it what others see. The story is supposed to end with some sort of redemption of the annoying grandmother, who to my mind isn't any worse than anyone else in her family. And what is so redemptive about her seeing the Misfit as one of her own children? What Grandmother would have that reaction just a few minutes after the Misfit just ordered the murder for no reason of her son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren?
Still on the question of who got the much-ballyhooed grace in that O'Connor story, I read a review that concluded the Misfit is the one that got the epiphany.
To my mind, who experienced the epiphany in that story and all her others is much too hard to find. But many young Catholic writers I know seem to hope to ride her coattails to lasting literary fame by writing brutal stories about horrible people doing horrible things to each other and sprinkling little crumbs of grace-filled insights for people to puzzle out if they can.
I risk the scorn of many more-subtle sophisticates than I could claim to be, but my reaction to Dostoevsky is similar. Why should I read about self-destructive unappealing people doing horrible things? Drunkards, gamblers, prostitutes, and rich hypocritical wastrels, oh my.
Your comment says pretty much exactly how I think of this. So far, I've always ever only heard endless praise for Cormac McCarthy's novels. I've seen NCFOM, a couple times, maybe. I've yet to hear anyone give me a truly decent reason to read him. Even the 'warning passage' Ted provided near the end of his post here still tells me nothing about why McCarthy is any better at communicating the evil of humanity. As a committed Calvinist, I'm happy that he sees that "the heart of man is desperately wicked," but I hardly need a novelist to tell me that. I just have to turn on the news, or pick up a history book (Zinn's excepted).
I recognize the power of fiction to communicate truths that are otherwise difficult to articulate. But in that case, Flannery O'Connor beat him to the punch, it seems to me.
To get me to read McCarthy, I'm going to need more than what appears to be the literary equivalent of doom metal fans extolling the latest bat-head biting act. Did McCarthy propose anything, via any of his characters, that there is a reason all this dread is...dreadful? I'm share your concern, Roseanne (and by extension, Dana Gioia's).
Back a few years, now, my pastor was discussing his plans to delve into the imagery depicted in Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ" to help illustrate one of his upcoming Easter sermons. I simply pointed out how none of the Gospels, in the wisdom of their Divine Author, ever dwell long at all on the details of Christ's passion. Yes, the details are there; you read of the lashes, and the beard-plucking, the crown of thorns, the thirst and the spear in the side, but it's not the emphasis of any of the accounts. And yet, somehow...somehow, these accounts have inspired the greatest artistic works, in music, painting, sculpture, architecture, and literature, of all time. I'm glad I didn't see any clips or hear the lurid details drawn out in that sermon. It accomplished its effect perfectly without them.
I've always said that his work is not for women. He is a man's writer. Most particularly Blood Meridian. I do, however, believe that one must start with his earlier work to appreciate the journey he took us on. I think it would be tough for a women to start point blank with Blood Meridian.
Roseanne I don't think men read Meridian for enjoyment of the violence. It can be appreciated as a superb work of art, with astonishing prose not to mention the blunt historical comeuppance, all in spite of the violence. The violence is part of the story, which would be meaningless without it.
The price of admission is the ability to absorb the brutality and keep on with it. As an old dude with a long life, 5 sisters, a spouse and female offspring, I am under no illusion that any woman I've personally ever known - that I can think of - would start and finish this novel. And there is nothing "wrong" with that. It is human nature.
Usual banal exception statement: this doesn't mean that no woman will ever or has ever read it. Especially historians or women deeply interested in history.
I think not delving into literature from biblical stories, Shakespeare, at al , risks permanent and warped “harm”. Life itself is tragedy. How to manage good vs evil without having meta references of knowing?
There's a fascination with evil that frustrates the pastors. A 17th-century minister complained that Milton's Satan was by the most interesting character in the two Paradises and got a lot more attention than he deserved. The Romantics often felt of Satan that he was the true hero. A gentleman of wealth and fame ....
Yes. Most who’ve written are humbled by CM. Each paragraph should be slowly sipped, like the best poetry. Staggering talent. We’re not connected to the word as we once were. Expediency is the enemy of brilliant prose. He’ll be missed but will live forever in the words.
I think of him as the American Herman Hesse. He has a way of drilling to the essential core and dwelling in that dark place far longer than is comfortable.
I love that you brought Herman Hesse into this discussion. I'll never forget the horrible images in Hesse impressed on my mind when I read one of his books 60 years ago. I didn't pass any judgment then, but from this distance, and trusting my own reactions more at this advanced age, I now think, why write or read about such horrible things?
Reading about the darker side of life makes you reflect on your own dark side. You find yourself wondering how you would behave in the same circumstances. It is through reflecting on horrible things that we form and reinforce our own ethics.
I guess that answers the question. I have no illusions of who I have been or who i am or who I wish to be. I know what I've done in various circumstances, actions both terrible and heroic. I know every day what I have done and what I have failed to do; mea culpa mea culpa mea maxima culpa. Don't need to guess. That idea suggests to me these books speak to a voyeurism that means people haven't ever done a serious examination of conscience, nor have they ever put themselves anywhere that would test it.
I highly recommend checking out the review of McCarthy’s The Orchard Keeper that John Pistelli posted on his substack, Grand Hotel Abyss, the day that McCarthy died. He really nails how a publisher holding onto a loss leader like McCarthy for so long until he was finally noticed represents a different era in publishing. Now that publishing houses have been absorbed into ever larger media conglomerates, there is very little pretense of upholding artistry left, only profit motive.
It feels like Ted is driving at the same thing here when he’s examining the reception to McCarthy’s final books. It’s not just the media but a deficient literate culture (and its subsequent effect on the media) that ignores his genius.
The question is why is the culture so illiterate? I think there's plenty of young people who are craving deep, thoughtful writing but where are they to find it? Go to any bookstore and see how many of Cormac McCarthy's novels are available for purchase. None, usually. Libraries similarly chuck out half their collections on a regular basis. I'd bet good money that there is a significant chunk of people under 40 who consider themselves serious readers who have never heard of Cormac McCarthy, but who just might seek him out after reading of his death.
Highly improbable. Only 13 years ago No Country for Old Men won the best film Oscar, and The Road was released two years later. Even non-reading under 40s have at least heard of Cormac.
They might know the films but not know that they are based on novels or who the author is. I know it's likely in the film credits, but very few people seem to pay attention to those.
Yup - I flunked out on my 1st try reading Blood Meridian. Got maybe a quarter of the way in ? It was a very tough read. Guess I will have to dig it out of my pile & try for a 2cnd time... Who knows how many times it will take. Pretty unpleasant but - still. As Lars below says " "Inconceivable as a movie." I gotta agree.
I think some books need to be read at the right time in a person's life. Maybe that time hasn't come for you with Blood Meridian and maybe it never will, who knows? I haven't read Blood Meridian. My husband has and he loved it, but he's a total CM fanboy.
"Dark and cold and no wind and a thin gray reef beginning along the Eastern rim of the world. He walked out on the prairie and stood holding his hat like some supplicant to the darkness over them all and he stood there for a long time.
As he turned to go heard the train. He stopped and waited for it. He could feel it under his feet. It came boring out of the East like some ribald satellite of the coming sun howling and bellowing in the distance and the long light of the headlamp running through the tangled mesquite breaks and creating out of the night the endless fence line down the dead straight right away and sucking it back again wire and post mile on mile into the darkness after where the boilersmoke disbanded slowly along the faint new horizon and the sound came legging and he stood still holding his hat in his hands in the passing ground shutter watching it till it was gone."
McCarthy is one of my favorite authors, I read "Blood Meridian " twice through on a 2-day Greyhound bus ride home to Cleveland from Albuquerque, NM 20 years ago; it was a perfect companion to the sleepless, hallucinogenic feel of the trip.
I think the NPR/NYRB culture doesn't like covering his books for another reason: they have a bias against authors whose work they find too "masculine" in style and content; unless the authors are folks of "other" cultures that can be easily exoticized. They disdain the readership they imagine for books like McCarthy's, you could say.
Anyhow, if folks are nervous about reading CM due to gruesomeness, violence, etc.; give them "Suttree". It's my favorite and the least thorny book of his that I know of.
I love Suttree; it was my first McCarthy read and it drew me in. There is a lot of me in that book. I also sensed almost immediately that, whoever this McCarthy guy is, Suttree must be autobiographical. It screamed personal experience.
I was in Mineapolis on business when All the Pretty Horses came out, at a B&N where a university professor moonlighted at the information desk. I asked if they carried the book and he scoffed that it must be a Texas regional novel, of no interest outside of the region. "We wouldn't carry that book here." I think that explains a lot of the ignoring of McCarthy. My guess is that he wouldn't have cared one whit what this guy or anyone else thought. He as much as said so. Maybe explicitly said so.
UPDATE: my hard copy of Suttree purchased decades ago is apparently worth about 600.00! Think I'll hang on to it for a while. Maybe forever.
I am an old and timid reader but have found that reading The Honest Broker is one of the few best things I have ever done in broadening my exploration of literature. Cormac is now on my list of book authors yet to come into my home library. Reading this current review has been exciting and emotional to a significant degree. I appreciate everyone here who is offering meaningful comment.
Love "The Honest Broker," I have many newsletters to read and yet Ted Gioia is the only one I always read because it is one of the best things I read period.
Don't start with 'The Road'. It may have been awarded a Pulitzer but I would not call it a "great" or enjoyable read. Perhaps I am biased in my dislike of dystopian literature (I have read so many dystopian tales over the years that they strike me as tired and flat).
So don't agree with that, The Road being a favourite of mine. It is a deeply felt exploration of a father trying to protect his son in the most horrible circumstances. It packs a massive punch.
Oops! I just ordered it. But thank you for your input and suggestion! I saw No Country for Old Men as a starter. I'm pretty tough but we will have to see what happens.
“ Just a few days ago, a novelist withdrew her book from publication—because it was set in Russia in the 1930s. This might hurt feelings (of Ukrainians, etc.). So the book got axed. For better or worse, that’s the literary culture in the year 2023. At this rate, we’ll soon have a new ending for War and Peace, with Napoleon returning from Moscow in triumph. Anything else would be indelicate.”
This was one of the dumbest developments in recent weeks, although there’s a lot of competition. In a world of physical books, what’s on paper is on paper forever, unless burned, but digital media brings with it the opportunity for the absurd, including even modifications to Tolstoy, at some future date.
For adults? Not from what I’ve read. It’s really a question of allocating public funds. Bookstores should relish the opportunities. “Buy the book you can’t get at the library!”
And for children, of course - my 4th grader is not ready for Maus; my 9th grader is.
For bookstores yes, that's a profit and brings customers into the store. For those who can't afford or don't want to own the book, it's a loss. Living outside the US, one of the things that I miss most, are libraries. In Florida, it's not about allocating public funds, it's about the governors desire to control as many aspects of public life as he can.
It appears to me that he is reacting to the electorate’s loss of control to leftist ideologues over government agencies - schools and libraries - by restoring some measure of control to those who pay the bills, and whose children are at risk when ideologues of any ilk disregard their concerns. I have some reservations about DeSantis’ respect for the 1st Amendment, but not in this particular arena - more in the area of academic freedom in post graduate ed. And since I have relatives in Florida, I tend to drill down into the stories narrated by the national media, where I often find hysterical reporting about entirely reasonable positions being taken by DeSantis. Teachers and librarians do not own schools and libraries - the public does. They seem to have forgotten that they are employees.
All my "leftist ideologue" friends pay their bills, and I, a former Democrat, have loaned my Republican friends money to pay their bills. Personally, I no longer have an abiding interest in the mud that both sides sling, and read the news as a form of entertainment. When viewed from a distance, the whole political landscape looks like a war zone and the public are the victims of the war.
I read The Road during a particularly bleak passage in my own life—probably not the best timing—but still I will never forget simply putting my head down on the dining room table and weeping as the final pages of the story unfolded. And now, 15 years and several McCarthy books later, my frequent response to what I see around me, either uttered or imagined, is, "This ain't 'no country for old men'."
I’ve never read Cormac McCarthy. There are too many books in the world and our paths have never crossed. I think I might now.
I agree with what you say about the need for brutal writing to shake us out of the torpor we appear to be in in when it comes to letting more and more catastrophic events seemingly wash over us every day but I do understand the need of those who seek to use literature as a refuge too. I suppose the issue is that that choice should be made BY the individual consumer and not for them.
not sure about broad brushes like the 'culture industry' but you failed to notice the review by James Wood, easily the best writer on literature currently working in English. He did a deep dive that covered the essence of the two different styles of McCarthy and, especially compared with early works, it may be a bit of an overstatement to call either work a masterpiece. Regardless, Wood did his serious noticing and recognized what is to be appreciated and what rang false in both works.
Yes, and his was the only review I've read. I thought it deeply considered and insightful, a valuable primer for anyone to get their bearings before diving into the books.
His is pure ordinary opinion. Many long-time McCarthy devotees, including career McCarthy academics, consider The Passenger up there with his greatest work.
The problem is, jonny-come-latley dilettantes who only know his linear, commercial novels, don't understand that his work has always been about prose, not a neatly wrapped-up, made-for-tv-movie work, where the guy gets the girl and justice wins out in the end.
The Passenger is a return to his earlier work, where he simply tells the story of a character as it develops. It goes where it goes.
There are many McCarthy devotees who would say that a reviewer such as the one mentioned above simply don't actually know anything about McCarthy. Probably give their reviews on Tik Tok. "Hi guys...."
I still found it useful, more so than what would seem possible to glean from the excerpts of other reviews, which didn't like the books, or didn't engage with the works.
"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?" "The Shadow knows!"
As did Cormac McCarthy.
To read McCarthy is to risk unique pain, that of encountering the Devil and the mystery of one's own evil, other worldy and supranatural in origin, pehaps, but of fallen man's nature in its expression. In attempting to describe his experience of reading McCarthy, the lowly worm reader is confronted with imaginative constraints and the reader's poor power to communicate horror expressively. I can't say adequately what I see when I read McCarthy (my poor powers to add or detract are too poor) but I know it when I see it, and I see it also in the Book of Revelations, Augustine when he confesses, Conrad's Horror, Faulkner when he's most cynical, Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn in everything they wrote about the psychology of depraved and saved man, and Hannah Arendt in grappling with totalitarianism and Eichmann. To read McCarthy is to channel the Gulag Archipelago, One day in The Life..., Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, As I Lay Dying, The Unvanquished, Augustine's Confessions, The Brothers Karamazov, Prince Andrey's nihilism as he lay dying in War and Peace, and the Old Testament prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah.
So, that's all I've got-to describe my experience of McCarthy as best I can merely by saying that to me it's like reading a very select few other writers. Reasoning by analogy is insufficient, but it's the best I can do.
"To read McCarthy is to risk unique pain, that of encountering the Devil and the mystery of one's own evil, other worldy and supranatural in origin, pehaps, but of fallen man's nature in its expression. "
I appreciate what you and other readers have said here. I am not sure I am up to the task of Mccarthy right now, but I am curious what makes the journey worthwhile for you. I understand that the prose is amazing, but are you able to read it and retain any hope/empathy/faith?
Well, that may be too much, to read the man yet retain faith, empathy and hope. Like having sex while holding onto virginty.
McCarthy is very dark and sees man as fallen by nature and irredeemable. Unforgiving nature is cruel. Life is bleak, with little love (except in the post apocalyptic The Road, in which the love between father and son is divine.) Most of McCarthy's protagonists are nightmare evil or the unheroic victims of evil.
Tough stuff and not the right stuff for most folks, which is why Cormac McCarthy is not a household name among book lovers.
McCarthy's point seems to be that man is born in sin, lives in sin and dies in sin, and there's nothing to be done about it but struggle for survival. That sounds like he's a nihilist, believes life is pointless, and that not to be born is preferable to life's misery. But that is not so! It is most strange (and I can't identify it adequately,) but McCarthy's evil characters are psychologically fascinating. Here's a good explanation of what I mean: In Paradise Lost, Milton made the Devil a compelling, brilliant, life-like character (much like Iago in Shakespeare's Othello.) McCarthy does devils the same way as Shakespeare and Milton, while McCarthy's unheroic victims stand for the good, as those doomed to death who show strength and dignity in fighting to live.
But here's the real deal: McCarthy's writing is as beautiful as it gets. (Only Mark Helprin writes as well nowadays.) Blood Meridian is his best I've read and the most McCarthyesque in its doom. Read it if you're inclined to take the trip. I have not read his last two novels, which got great praise, some scorn and apparently are complicated. (I hate it when an author makes me wrestle with his plot. I'll go 100 pages and then I'm done.) Don't read No Country... if you saw the movie, which exceeds it. His All the Pretty Horses novels are exceptional if conventional works. Beautifully written and (for him) low-dose bleak, but were ruined because they were made into a boring movie (made worse by Matt Damon.) The Road is unbearably apocalyptic but heavenly in the love of father for son.
(Now there's good for you!)
I don't mean to dissuade you from your McCarthy venture. I love the guy! But you and I are probably opposites in how we view good, bad and ugly. McCarthy wallows in the starkness of his ugly and broadcasts the commonplace of his bad. Despair is everywhere.The beauty of the writing is most of the good he gives. But his bad and ugly force you to think deeply about the good. He's Old Testament Biblical and John Milton in that way.
For me, all of that together in a few hundred unforgettable pages is what makes McCarthy a great writer.
Maybe try Mark Helprin instead, say my favorites "In Sunlight and Shadow" or "Paris in the Present Tense," two of the most tender, touching love novels you'll read. Helprin is big on heroism, truth, beauty, love, truth as beauty, beauty as truth, love as beauty and truth, and heroism as human commitment to purpose and courage. His writing is lovely prose poetry. His heroes, by God's design, are inspiringly heroic. Helprin makes you cry and cheer and be grateful that you discovered him. And he's as fine a writer of magical realism as Gabriel Marquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Narrow and niche are the words for post-modern “literary” culture. A bigotry against inhibitors of “best seller” prospects rules publishing consolidated. Mass culture always ran the risk of competing for blandest novelty, a nifty-trick-skill sure, but not quite literature. CM was the real deal start to finish.
I'm still haunted by 'The Road'
There's a stretch of I5, southern Oregon, where you go up and down, a series of crests, then down into the wooded valley. Each and ever time I crest, and start down into the next valley, I'm scanning for the smoke from small fires, and I get a chill. My wife get's tired of me re-telling the story every time. She doesn't know it, but I'm thinking about it every single ridge cresting. Powerful. Another great post Ted, Thanks.
This Oregonian knows just what you mean!
I had read everything by McCarthy and just finished the last two a couple of months ago. A serious writer for serious readers. I am in awe of the magnificent, massive intelligence behind the writing. He may have been a recluse but he shared so much more humanity through his writing than through the "culture machine." He gave humanity to repugnant characters and asked us to look at them unflinchingly. As we should to ourselves.
I saw someone in a recent book review seem aghast at the idea that a book ( not by Cormac McCarthy) would ask a reader to have empathy for Nazis… my take is that empathy is not equal to approval or emulation. Empathy can, I think, be about understanding the human capacity for darkness, and in understanding, potentially even making more compassionate choices because we know the dangers that live inside of us all… on the other hand, I think I get that we may fear in looking deeply at our own darkness, we may be too weak not to give ourselves over to it. Love what you said about giving humanity to repugnant characters….
Thank you Kristen, very thoughtful and nicely written!
Getting real “honest broker” vibes from this post. I haven’t read Cormac McCarthy yet (though I’ve seen the movie of No Country for Old Men) and it seems that has been a serious omission.
My first Cormac was All the Pretty Horses, which was a good intro. Brutal and dazzling but not as rough as some of the others (Child of God and Blood Meridian esp).
That was my first of his, also.
Same here, only novel of his that I've read. Have seen the No Country movie. Chilling.
NCFOM and All the Pretty Horses were commercial endevours. I don't resent that. But as an everyday, non-academic and only moderately intellectual person, I could sense that immediately as soon as I started Pretty Horses. "This is designed to be more approachable and could be a movie."
I'm glad he found commercial and financial success but his earlier works, up to and including Blood Meridian constituted his greatest work. I'm still trying to decide about The Passenger.
Haven't read Stella Maris yet but am starting soon, just for the enjoyment digesting his prose.
This discussion makes me think of a quote from your brother Dana that I wrote down while watching the First Things podcast, Why Translate Seneca? May 30, 2023 Hercules Furens The Madness of Hercules https://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2023/05/seneca-poetry-and-suffering
"If you immerse yourself in the darker things they stain you. You cannot go to the underworld and come back untainted. If you descend into violence, if you descend into all these forbidden things, I think a metaphor for the ID, the darker elements of human nature, you cannot control them in the world of daylight. The darkness knows truths that the daylight cannot afford to acknowledge. . . . There are a certain set of taboos you cannot break." 1:22:24
A lot of my writer friends love McCarthy's work. So I tried reading No Country for Old Men and watched some of the movie. But, at the risk of seeming unsophisticated, I see no "urgent need" to read books or watch movies about horrible people doing horrible things. I can't voluntarily submit myself to being brutalized by a novel or a movie.
As one commenter wrote about what it is like to read, Blood Meridian, it was like "being punched in the gut or slack-jawed with horror every other page." All I have to do to experience those feelings is look at what society is doing.
Someone I read recently who reviewed McCarthy's last two books did another thing that other literary theorizers about why good people who deplore degradation do when they promote the reading of dark, horrifying fiction, and that reviewer went looking in the two books about siblings tormented by an unconsummated passion for each other, seeking glimpses of a sense of the transcendent. I don't think the effort is worth the time and it risks permanent harm.
James Lileks observed on watching the first episode of Game of Thrones “Why would I want to spend my time with these people?”
OTOH, Lolita.
Exactly. It's repulsive and ultimately tragic, gripping nonetheless, because so revealing and character-exposing.
I agree with you. I can get depressed all by myself without any outside help. There are some people, myself included, who shouldn't read McCarthy. I need to be uplifted, not brought down. I can find no reason to submit myself to horror. If I want to see man's inhumanity to man, I can go shopping.
Thanks. Or I can read about what kids are being taught in sex ed classes in many schools.
I don't know anything about that. I've been living in Thailand for the past 10 yrs. and don't keep up with what's being taught in US schools.
Good for you. Reality is being taught in schools here, there being a certain subset of the populace who object to it.
Where is and where is there? I'm not trying to be clever, I'm not sure of where you are referring to.
I meant to ask where is here, and where is there? It's bedtime and my brain is slowing down.
Roseanne,
I couldn't agree more.
When I was 17, I couldn't understand why anyone read Flannery O'Connor. They were well written stories of horrible people doing horrible things. I recoiled at them. I was the same age when I saw Blue Velvet at the Brattle. I ought not to have done that--it did not help me become a healthy woman. But the reaction of the crowd was even worse.
I had yet to become a horrible person at that time. Later, I became terrible, slipping the wrong ways (maybe led on by those rather too-formative experiences.). Once you're surrounded by darkness, the blood is more real than the stifling fakeness of people. Esolen, I think, speaks about the need for college students to remain virtuous and how differently they can experience literature than those who didn't. He claimed to know that those that experience real darkness never truly feel joy.
Then I found God. For a while I thought Esolen was still right, but while it took a while, he was wrong. I've had kids, and I've had true adulterated joy along side them.
After that, I tried again to read O'Connor, because I've been told every story is about grace--"we are all 'the poor'" she said, supposedly, and on every page I felt anxiety and despair. Nope. None of those characters experience grace. I cannot understand what my friends see in the brutality of those stories.
I have Orchard Keeper and Blood Meridian sitting beside me. Checked them out because of someone else's comment on this blog after his death. Didn't make it 20 pages into either. (Didn't make it through the Coen Bros. adaptation, either.)
Nope. I'm done. I don't know who needs to read about terrible people. I didn't when I was innocent of the world's darkness, and I don't now that I'm not. I wouldn't wish those books on anyone I cared about.
I don't know how far you have to go find the redemption in them, but I think there's something broken about people who don't have enough suffering all around them, and need more so they can seek redemption. Pro tip: there is no bottom--but that means, hopefully, you can pull up at any time.
I first read Flannery O'Connor when I was a teen. O'Connor's fiction always left me apathetic, feeling that I had just finished reading a kind of humorous story with a violent ending, a story about a group of freaky Southern grotesques (and writing about Southern grotesques was a trend in those days) who were doing absurd incomprehensible things. Eudora Welty was another writer of Southern grotesque fiction, and to me O'Connor's stories seemed as nonsensical as Eudora Welty's "Why I Live at the P.O."
Reading her essays Mysteries and Manners and her letters The Habit of Being on the other hand, left me in awe of her deep faith when all I had ever known were Sunday-only Catholics, and I became full of admiration for what she said she was trying to do. At the same time, I doubted that her "shouting" by portraying exaggeratedly bizarre humanity ever actually achieved her goal of shocking any of her readers into an awareness of grace.
I don’t believe that she succeeded in her goal of creating in her readers’ minds the grasp of spiritual realities that she sought to induce by portraying the grotesque people and violent happenings that filled her stories.
I reread "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" a few years ago. It's a story of a wacky Georgia family's road trip that starts out funny and suddenly goes off the road—into horror. (I bet you never saw a summary of that story like mine before.)
It was maybe the tenth time I've read it. I still didn't get out of it what others see. The story is supposed to end with some sort of redemption of the annoying grandmother, who to my mind isn't any worse than anyone else in her family. And what is so redemptive about her seeing the Misfit as one of her own children? What Grandmother would have that reaction just a few minutes after the Misfit just ordered the murder for no reason of her son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren?
Still on the question of who got the much-ballyhooed grace in that O'Connor story, I read a review that concluded the Misfit is the one that got the epiphany.
To my mind, who experienced the epiphany in that story and all her others is much too hard to find. But many young Catholic writers I know seem to hope to ride her coattails to lasting literary fame by writing brutal stories about horrible people doing horrible things to each other and sprinkling little crumbs of grace-filled insights for people to puzzle out if they can.
Whereas Dostoevsky? All about the suffering and brokenness and grace without indulging in the voyeurism of the evil.
I risk the scorn of many more-subtle sophisticates than I could claim to be, but my reaction to Dostoevsky is similar. Why should I read about self-destructive unappealing people doing horrible things? Drunkards, gamblers, prostitutes, and rich hypocritical wastrels, oh my.
Your comment says pretty much exactly how I think of this. So far, I've always ever only heard endless praise for Cormac McCarthy's novels. I've seen NCFOM, a couple times, maybe. I've yet to hear anyone give me a truly decent reason to read him. Even the 'warning passage' Ted provided near the end of his post here still tells me nothing about why McCarthy is any better at communicating the evil of humanity. As a committed Calvinist, I'm happy that he sees that "the heart of man is desperately wicked," but I hardly need a novelist to tell me that. I just have to turn on the news, or pick up a history book (Zinn's excepted).
I recognize the power of fiction to communicate truths that are otherwise difficult to articulate. But in that case, Flannery O'Connor beat him to the punch, it seems to me.
To get me to read McCarthy, I'm going to need more than what appears to be the literary equivalent of doom metal fans extolling the latest bat-head biting act. Did McCarthy propose anything, via any of his characters, that there is a reason all this dread is...dreadful? I'm share your concern, Roseanne (and by extension, Dana Gioia's).
Back a few years, now, my pastor was discussing his plans to delve into the imagery depicted in Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ" to help illustrate one of his upcoming Easter sermons. I simply pointed out how none of the Gospels, in the wisdom of their Divine Author, ever dwell long at all on the details of Christ's passion. Yes, the details are there; you read of the lashes, and the beard-plucking, the crown of thorns, the thirst and the spear in the side, but it's not the emphasis of any of the accounts. And yet, somehow...somehow, these accounts have inspired the greatest artistic works, in music, painting, sculpture, architecture, and literature, of all time. I'm glad I didn't see any clips or hear the lurid details drawn out in that sermon. It accomplished its effect perfectly without them.
I've always said that his work is not for women. He is a man's writer. Most particularly Blood Meridian. I do, however, believe that one must start with his earlier work to appreciate the journey he took us on. I think it would be tough for a women to start point blank with Blood Meridian.
yes yes sexist etc whatever
Ha, women can read his work and love/hate it. It's compelling and fascinating.
If that's true, the question is, Why do men like that sort of thing? I started with No Country for Old Men. Stopped there too.
Roseanne I don't think men read Meridian for enjoyment of the violence. It can be appreciated as a superb work of art, with astonishing prose not to mention the blunt historical comeuppance, all in spite of the violence. The violence is part of the story, which would be meaningless without it.
The price of admission is the ability to absorb the brutality and keep on with it. As an old dude with a long life, 5 sisters, a spouse and female offspring, I am under no illusion that any woman I've personally ever known - that I can think of - would start and finish this novel. And there is nothing "wrong" with that. It is human nature.
Usual banal exception statement: this doesn't mean that no woman will ever or has ever read it. Especially historians or women deeply interested in history.
I think not delving into literature from biblical stories, Shakespeare, at al , risks permanent and warped “harm”. Life itself is tragedy. How to manage good vs evil without having meta references of knowing?
How about managing good vs evil by following Christ and the Church He left behind to guide us?
There's a fascination with evil that frustrates the pastors. A 17th-century minister complained that Milton's Satan was by the most interesting character in the two Paradises and got a lot more attention than he deserved. The Romantics often felt of Satan that he was the true hero. A gentleman of wealth and fame ....
Yes. Most who’ve written are humbled by CM. Each paragraph should be slowly sipped, like the best poetry. Staggering talent. We’re not connected to the word as we once were. Expediency is the enemy of brilliant prose. He’ll be missed but will live forever in the words.
I think of him as the American Herman Hesse. He has a way of drilling to the essential core and dwelling in that dark place far longer than is comfortable.
I love that you brought Herman Hesse into this discussion. I'll never forget the horrible images in Hesse impressed on my mind when I read one of his books 60 years ago. I didn't pass any judgment then, but from this distance, and trusting my own reactions more at this advanced age, I now think, why write or read about such horrible things?
Reading about the darker side of life makes you reflect on your own dark side. You find yourself wondering how you would behave in the same circumstances. It is through reflecting on horrible things that we form and reinforce our own ethics.
I guess that answers the question. I have no illusions of who I have been or who i am or who I wish to be. I know what I've done in various circumstances, actions both terrible and heroic. I know every day what I have done and what I have failed to do; mea culpa mea culpa mea maxima culpa. Don't need to guess. That idea suggests to me these books speak to a voyeurism that means people haven't ever done a serious examination of conscience, nor have they ever put themselves anywhere that would test it.
Of course, Hesse also wrote things that weren't so dark, like Siddhartha.
I highly recommend checking out the review of McCarthy’s The Orchard Keeper that John Pistelli posted on his substack, Grand Hotel Abyss, the day that McCarthy died. He really nails how a publisher holding onto a loss leader like McCarthy for so long until he was finally noticed represents a different era in publishing. Now that publishing houses have been absorbed into ever larger media conglomerates, there is very little pretense of upholding artistry left, only profit motive.
It feels like Ted is driving at the same thing here when he’s examining the reception to McCarthy’s final books. It’s not just the media but a deficient literate culture (and its subsequent effect on the media) that ignores his genius.
The question is why is the culture so illiterate? I think there's plenty of young people who are craving deep, thoughtful writing but where are they to find it? Go to any bookstore and see how many of Cormac McCarthy's novels are available for purchase. None, usually. Libraries similarly chuck out half their collections on a regular basis. I'd bet good money that there is a significant chunk of people under 40 who consider themselves serious readers who have never heard of Cormac McCarthy, but who just might seek him out after reading of his death.
Highly improbable. Only 13 years ago No Country for Old Men won the best film Oscar, and The Road was released two years later. Even non-reading under 40s have at least heard of Cormac.
They might know the films but not know that they are based on novels or who the author is. I know it's likely in the film credits, but very few people seem to pay attention to those.
Yup - I flunked out on my 1st try reading Blood Meridian. Got maybe a quarter of the way in ? It was a very tough read. Guess I will have to dig it out of my pile & try for a 2cnd time... Who knows how many times it will take. Pretty unpleasant but - still. As Lars below says " "Inconceivable as a movie." I gotta agree.
I think some books need to be read at the right time in a person's life. Maybe that time hasn't come for you with Blood Meridian and maybe it never will, who knows? I haven't read Blood Meridian. My husband has and he loved it, but he's a total CM fanboy.
money is the short answer (as ever), and it's not a good one for most of these questions.
All the pretty horses
"Dark and cold and no wind and a thin gray reef beginning along the Eastern rim of the world. He walked out on the prairie and stood holding his hat like some supplicant to the darkness over them all and he stood there for a long time.
As he turned to go heard the train. He stopped and waited for it. He could feel it under his feet. It came boring out of the East like some ribald satellite of the coming sun howling and bellowing in the distance and the long light of the headlamp running through the tangled mesquite breaks and creating out of the night the endless fence line down the dead straight right away and sucking it back again wire and post mile on mile into the darkness after where the boilersmoke disbanded slowly along the faint new horizon and the sound came legging and he stood still holding his hat in his hands in the passing ground shutter watching it till it was gone."
!!!
McCarthy is one of my favorite authors, I read "Blood Meridian " twice through on a 2-day Greyhound bus ride home to Cleveland from Albuquerque, NM 20 years ago; it was a perfect companion to the sleepless, hallucinogenic feel of the trip.
I think the NPR/NYRB culture doesn't like covering his books for another reason: they have a bias against authors whose work they find too "masculine" in style and content; unless the authors are folks of "other" cultures that can be easily exoticized. They disdain the readership they imagine for books like McCarthy's, you could say.
Anyhow, if folks are nervous about reading CM due to gruesomeness, violence, etc.; give them "Suttree". It's my favorite and the least thorny book of his that I know of.
I love Suttree; it was my first McCarthy read and it drew me in. There is a lot of me in that book. I also sensed almost immediately that, whoever this McCarthy guy is, Suttree must be autobiographical. It screamed personal experience.
I was in Mineapolis on business when All the Pretty Horses came out, at a B&N where a university professor moonlighted at the information desk. I asked if they carried the book and he scoffed that it must be a Texas regional novel, of no interest outside of the region. "We wouldn't carry that book here." I think that explains a lot of the ignoring of McCarthy. My guess is that he wouldn't have cared one whit what this guy or anyone else thought. He as much as said so. Maybe explicitly said so.
UPDATE: my hard copy of Suttree purchased decades ago is apparently worth about 600.00! Think I'll hang on to it for a while. Maybe forever.
I am an old and timid reader but have found that reading The Honest Broker is one of the few best things I have ever done in broadening my exploration of literature. Cormac is now on my list of book authors yet to come into my home library. Reading this current review has been exciting and emotional to a significant degree. I appreciate everyone here who is offering meaningful comment.
No Country for Old and Timid Readers 💕
Love "The Honest Broker," I have many newsletters to read and yet Ted Gioia is the only one I always read because it is one of the best things I read period.
Start with 'All The Pretty Horses.' After that "....there be dragons".
Don't start with 'The Road'. It may have been awarded a Pulitzer but I would not call it a "great" or enjoyable read. Perhaps I am biased in my dislike of dystopian literature (I have read so many dystopian tales over the years that they strike me as tired and flat).
So don't agree with that, The Road being a favourite of mine. It is a deeply felt exploration of a father trying to protect his son in the most horrible circumstances. It packs a massive punch.
the Road was good but it wasn't "McCarthy McCarthy"
Oops! I just ordered it. But thank you for your input and suggestion! I saw No Country for Old Men as a starter. I'm pretty tough but we will have to see what happens.
Wonderful, but if you are a timid reader take care with Cormac McCarthy.
“ Just a few days ago, a novelist withdrew her book from publication—because it was set in Russia in the 1930s. This might hurt feelings (of Ukrainians, etc.). So the book got axed. For better or worse, that’s the literary culture in the year 2023. At this rate, we’ll soon have a new ending for War and Peace, with Napoleon returning from Moscow in triumph. Anything else would be indelicate.”
This was one of the dumbest developments in recent weeks, although there’s a lot of competition. In a world of physical books, what’s on paper is on paper forever, unless burned, but digital media brings with it the opportunity for the absurd, including even modifications to Tolstoy, at some future date.
I was deeply shocked when that happened. To take a book out of being leaves a hole in the world and almost seems barbaric. I hope this is not a trend.
Don't go to Florida. The trend is in full swing.
For adults? Not from what I’ve read. It’s really a question of allocating public funds. Bookstores should relish the opportunities. “Buy the book you can’t get at the library!”
And for children, of course - my 4th grader is not ready for Maus; my 9th grader is.
https://thedispatch.activehosted.com/index.php?action=social&chash=e515df0d202ae52fcebb14295743063b.1161&nosocial=1
For bookstores yes, that's a profit and brings customers into the store. For those who can't afford or don't want to own the book, it's a loss. Living outside the US, one of the things that I miss most, are libraries. In Florida, it's not about allocating public funds, it's about the governors desire to control as many aspects of public life as he can.
By allocation of public funds, I mean the decisions made by libraries in purchasing books.
It appears to me that he is reacting to the electorate’s loss of control to leftist ideologues over government agencies - schools and libraries - by restoring some measure of control to those who pay the bills, and whose children are at risk when ideologues of any ilk disregard their concerns. I have some reservations about DeSantis’ respect for the 1st Amendment, but not in this particular arena - more in the area of academic freedom in post graduate ed. And since I have relatives in Florida, I tend to drill down into the stories narrated by the national media, where I often find hysterical reporting about entirely reasonable positions being taken by DeSantis. Teachers and librarians do not own schools and libraries - the public does. They seem to have forgotten that they are employees.
All my "leftist ideologue" friends pay their bills, and I, a former Democrat, have loaned my Republican friends money to pay their bills. Personally, I no longer have an abiding interest in the mud that both sides sling, and read the news as a form of entertainment. When viewed from a distance, the whole political landscape looks like a war zone and the public are the victims of the war.
Me too. It's a dangerous path to walk.
I read The Road during a particularly bleak passage in my own life—probably not the best timing—but still I will never forget simply putting my head down on the dining room table and weeping as the final pages of the story unfolded. And now, 15 years and several McCarthy books later, my frequent response to what I see around me, either uttered or imagined, is, "This ain't 'no country for old men'."
Thank you for this.
I’ve never read Cormac McCarthy. There are too many books in the world and our paths have never crossed. I think I might now.
I agree with what you say about the need for brutal writing to shake us out of the torpor we appear to be in in when it comes to letting more and more catastrophic events seemingly wash over us every day but I do understand the need of those who seek to use literature as a refuge too. I suppose the issue is that that choice should be made BY the individual consumer and not for them.
The Judge is right with Milton's Satan.
not sure about broad brushes like the 'culture industry' but you failed to notice the review by James Wood, easily the best writer on literature currently working in English. He did a deep dive that covered the essence of the two different styles of McCarthy and, especially compared with early works, it may be a bit of an overstatement to call either work a masterpiece. Regardless, Wood did his serious noticing and recognized what is to be appreciated and what rang false in both works.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/12/19/cormac-mccarthy-peers-into-the-abyss-the-passenger-stella-maris
Yes, and his was the only review I've read. I thought it deeply considered and insightful, a valuable primer for anyone to get their bearings before diving into the books.
As a physicist, I find this review *very* interesting. I was unaware of these last novels of McCarthy.
His is pure ordinary opinion. Many long-time McCarthy devotees, including career McCarthy academics, consider The Passenger up there with his greatest work.
The problem is, jonny-come-latley dilettantes who only know his linear, commercial novels, don't understand that his work has always been about prose, not a neatly wrapped-up, made-for-tv-movie work, where the guy gets the girl and justice wins out in the end.
The Passenger is a return to his earlier work, where he simply tells the story of a character as it develops. It goes where it goes.
There are many McCarthy devotees who would say that a reviewer such as the one mentioned above simply don't actually know anything about McCarthy. Probably give their reviews on Tik Tok. "Hi guys...."
I still found it useful, more so than what would seem possible to glean from the excerpts of other reviews, which didn't like the books, or didn't engage with the works.
I love writers for the way they use language, and McCarthy’s prose in Blood Meridian is for me very nearly unparalleled.
The only other modern American writer I’d put in the same class is Thomas Pynchon.
"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?" "The Shadow knows!"
As did Cormac McCarthy.
To read McCarthy is to risk unique pain, that of encountering the Devil and the mystery of one's own evil, other worldy and supranatural in origin, pehaps, but of fallen man's nature in its expression. In attempting to describe his experience of reading McCarthy, the lowly worm reader is confronted with imaginative constraints and the reader's poor power to communicate horror expressively. I can't say adequately what I see when I read McCarthy (my poor powers to add or detract are too poor) but I know it when I see it, and I see it also in the Book of Revelations, Augustine when he confesses, Conrad's Horror, Faulkner when he's most cynical, Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn in everything they wrote about the psychology of depraved and saved man, and Hannah Arendt in grappling with totalitarianism and Eichmann. To read McCarthy is to channel the Gulag Archipelago, One day in The Life..., Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, As I Lay Dying, The Unvanquished, Augustine's Confessions, The Brothers Karamazov, Prince Andrey's nihilism as he lay dying in War and Peace, and the Old Testament prophets Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah.
So, that's all I've got-to describe my experience of McCarthy as best I can merely by saying that to me it's like reading a very select few other writers. Reasoning by analogy is insufficient, but it's the best I can do.
"To read McCarthy is to risk unique pain, that of encountering the Devil and the mystery of one's own evil, other worldy and supranatural in origin, pehaps, but of fallen man's nature in its expression. "
I appreciate what you and other readers have said here. I am not sure I am up to the task of Mccarthy right now, but I am curious what makes the journey worthwhile for you. I understand that the prose is amazing, but are you able to read it and retain any hope/empathy/faith?
Well, that may be too much, to read the man yet retain faith, empathy and hope. Like having sex while holding onto virginty.
McCarthy is very dark and sees man as fallen by nature and irredeemable. Unforgiving nature is cruel. Life is bleak, with little love (except in the post apocalyptic The Road, in which the love between father and son is divine.) Most of McCarthy's protagonists are nightmare evil or the unheroic victims of evil.
Tough stuff and not the right stuff for most folks, which is why Cormac McCarthy is not a household name among book lovers.
McCarthy's point seems to be that man is born in sin, lives in sin and dies in sin, and there's nothing to be done about it but struggle for survival. That sounds like he's a nihilist, believes life is pointless, and that not to be born is preferable to life's misery. But that is not so! It is most strange (and I can't identify it adequately,) but McCarthy's evil characters are psychologically fascinating. Here's a good explanation of what I mean: In Paradise Lost, Milton made the Devil a compelling, brilliant, life-like character (much like Iago in Shakespeare's Othello.) McCarthy does devils the same way as Shakespeare and Milton, while McCarthy's unheroic victims stand for the good, as those doomed to death who show strength and dignity in fighting to live.
But here's the real deal: McCarthy's writing is as beautiful as it gets. (Only Mark Helprin writes as well nowadays.) Blood Meridian is his best I've read and the most McCarthyesque in its doom. Read it if you're inclined to take the trip. I have not read his last two novels, which got great praise, some scorn and apparently are complicated. (I hate it when an author makes me wrestle with his plot. I'll go 100 pages and then I'm done.) Don't read No Country... if you saw the movie, which exceeds it. His All the Pretty Horses novels are exceptional if conventional works. Beautifully written and (for him) low-dose bleak, but were ruined because they were made into a boring movie (made worse by Matt Damon.) The Road is unbearably apocalyptic but heavenly in the love of father for son.
(Now there's good for you!)
I don't mean to dissuade you from your McCarthy venture. I love the guy! But you and I are probably opposites in how we view good, bad and ugly. McCarthy wallows in the starkness of his ugly and broadcasts the commonplace of his bad. Despair is everywhere.The beauty of the writing is most of the good he gives. But his bad and ugly force you to think deeply about the good. He's Old Testament Biblical and John Milton in that way.
For me, all of that together in a few hundred unforgettable pages is what makes McCarthy a great writer.
Maybe try Mark Helprin instead, say my favorites "In Sunlight and Shadow" or "Paris in the Present Tense," two of the most tender, touching love novels you'll read. Helprin is big on heroism, truth, beauty, love, truth as beauty, beauty as truth, love as beauty and truth, and heroism as human commitment to purpose and courage. His writing is lovely prose poetry. His heroes, by God's design, are inspiringly heroic. Helprin makes you cry and cheer and be grateful that you discovered him. And he's as fine a writer of magical realism as Gabriel Marquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Sounds like Helprin is the contra-Cormac McCarthy!
As an addendum to my reply to your question re McCarthy and hope/empathy/faith, I suggest you read this essay in the current issue of First Things:
https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/06/cormac-mccarthy-was-no-nihilist
Narrow and niche are the words for post-modern “literary” culture. A bigotry against inhibitors of “best seller” prospects rules publishing consolidated. Mass culture always ran the risk of competing for blandest novelty, a nifty-trick-skill sure, but not quite literature. CM was the real deal start to finish.