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Considered from Orchard Keeper to Blood Meridian, Cormac McCarthy has produced
one of the most notable contributions to American literature in the second half
of the twentieth century, and--the argument may be made (within those parameters)
--he has written the single most effective and potentially enduring novel (Blood
Meridian). However, his recent excursion into the religious/painterly mode (the
publication--with the final installment of The Border Trilogy--of the equivalent
of literary triptych) has marked a diminishment of, if not his imaginative powers,
then certainly his aesthetic, and culminated in the lowest qualitative output
of his career and what possibly will come to be regarded (if recent accolades
may be extrapolated toward the future) as his highest achievement.
 In order to appreciate the extent by which Cities of the Plain missteps,
however, requires an awareness of the considerable scope of McCarthy's talents,
and, for these purposes, the seeds-of-undoing which reside within them. As
early as his incestuous, second novel, Outer Dark, the apparent contradiction
of McCarthy's ability to combine an overt lyricism and proclivity for detail
with an almost cinematic obsession for the unfolding of his narratives when
contrasted with what appears to be an inability to recognize (or acknowledge?)
what Yeats described as the clicking of the box when the poem (or, in McCarthy's
case, the novel) snaps shut, has necessitated a critical question mark.
He has allowed, in the case of Outer Dark, a biblical, and, in the case of
Blood Meridian (which will be discussed more specifically in these terms further
on) a historical scope to supersede the internal logic of his narratives, so
that precisely at those moments at which integral issues of tension character
and diction cease to pertain, McCarthy continues to a self-imposed finish line
while the artful and more cohesive marks of the tramp of his horse remain
unattended some good distance back.
While this willfulness has been disregarded easily in the cases of Outer Dark
and Blood Meridian, with the publication of Cities of the Plain--the final volume
of The Border Trilogy--this tendency (or trademark?) has been more difficult to
look beyond in part because the entirety of that novel can be argued to be a
willful continuation of an unnecessary goal rather than an unimpeachable record
of an inevitable act as witnessed in the more cohesive portions of The Orchard
Keeper, Child of God, Suttree, Blood Meridian, and, Outer Dark:
They crested out on the bluff in the afternoon sun with their
shadows long on the sawgrass and burnt sedge, moving single file and slowly high
above the river and with something of its own implacability, pausing and
grouping for a moment and going on again strung out in silhouette against the
sun and then dropping under the crest of the hill into a fold of blue shadow
with light touching them about the head in spurious sanctity until they had
gone on for such a time as saw the sun down altogether and they moved in shadow
altogether which suited them very well. Outer Dark opening-page
The language possibly will be noted--as well crafted language should be--as
holding the reader within its cadences; engaging their sensibilities in such a
way as to render aesthetic possibilities impertinent for that moment; suspending
the perception of moment indefinitely; and yet, upon second reading, or third or
fourth or fifth--however many readings may be required to reoccupy the autonomy
of one's critical faculties--instances exist in which the overreach of the
writing exampled in such words as "implacability" and such phrases as "spurious
sanctity" seem fore-runners to the overwroughtness of Cities of the Plain which
overflows this point to one of saturation.
In an effort, though, that these observations not come to be regarded as
nearsighted in the face of McCarthy's obvious talents, the following is offered,
if not as an example of narrative perfection, then certainly as representative
of his considerable skills:
Later Sylder realized that the man had passed up one chance with
the jack handle, had waited until he took the jack from under the car and handed
it himself to the man to put in the trunk. And realized too that the man had
only miscalculated by part of a second the length of time it would take him to
bend and slam the hubcap back on the rim with the heel of his hand. So although
he never saw it, had no warning he had already made a half turn and started to
rise when the jack crashed into his shoulder and slammed him into the side of
the car. Something crashed alongside his head into the quarterpanel--he
remembered that too, but couldn't know until later that it was the base of
the jack. He didn't duck the second time either, but only slid down the door
of the coupe when the man swung, sideways--he was watching him now--tearing a
ragged hole in the metal. Then he was sitting on the ground, his head leaned
back against the door, looking up, not yet outraged but only in wonder, at the
figure above him, his arm trailing in the dirt.... But when the man jerked the
shaft of the jack from the punctured door he reached up, slowly, he thought, and
laid his hand onto the jack and still slowly closed his fingers over it. The man
looked down at him, and in the gradual suffusion of light gathered and held
between the gloss of the car's enamel and the paling road dust he saw terror
carved and molded on that face like a physical deformity. They were like that
for some few seconds, he sitting, the man standing, holding either end of the
jack as if suspended in the act of passing it one to the other. Then Sylder
stood, still in that somnambulant slow motion as if time itself were running
down, and watched the man turn, seeming to labor not under water but in some
more viscous fluid, torturous slow, and the jack itself falling down on an angle
over the dying forces of gravity, leaving Sylder's own hand and bouncing slowly
in the road while his leaden arm rose in a stiff arc and his fingers cocked like
a cat's claws unsheathing and buried themselves in the cheesy neck-flesh of the
man who fled from him without apparent headway as in a nightmare. The Orchard
Keeper pp. 37-38
Despite the debt of influence paid by the Faulknerian "somnambulant"--and
other minor maladjustments--McCarthy delivers (mostly) an accomplished third
person narrative and colloquial approximation of inner monologue in which the
narrator's diction comes to resemble the imagined diction of the character
described so as to cause the reader to participate inside and out of the scene
and character both as a witness and a participant simultaneously.
In order that the scope of McCarthy's talents might be chronicled properly
though, the qualifications of that perspective must first be detailed. The
earlier assessment that Blood Meridian may well be the single most
linguistically powerful achievement of the second half of the century (at
least in America, and, outside those bounds, not counting the contentious
One Hundred Years of Solitude, or, the magnificent Correction) must be hedged
in order that its greatness or the facts there of not be misconstrued or
improperly applied.
The integral power of the book lies between the "opening line" a few pages
in which reads: "The Reverend Green had been playing to a full house daily as
long as the rain had been falling and the rain had been falling for two weeks,"
and ending with a sequence perhaps half way through the book which concludes
with the sentence: "Small boys ran among the hooves and the victors in their
gory rags smiled through the filth and the dust and the caked blood as they bore
on poles the desiccated heads of the enemy through that fantasy of music and
flowers."
To consider the scope of the book beyond these parameters is to be guilty of
the oversight perpetrated by McCarthy; is to opt for historical mimicry rather
than narrative integrity; is to fall victim to the hypnotic melodrama of
biblical retribution and prophesy rather than to be satisfied by the more
brutal realities expressed in his pornographically scientific details of
violence. For, in conclusion, the narrative urgency which underlies the core
of this his most powerful work supersedes any momentary syntactic overreachings,
which, although present in Blood Meridian, are fewer and farther between than
those in evidence in the most recent of his fictions.
*
Don DeLillo has created a body of work which consists of, at its best, highly
realized--perhaps hyperly realized--accounts of the contemporary American
situation, and, by contemporary, the normally associated cozy sort--of the
lusterfull/meaningless variety usually intended--is not. His representations
have magnified the mundane and otherwise seemingly ordinary to super-levels of
clarity. Disappointingly, however, his latest effort mistakes grandness of
scope for precision of execution. While the opening sequence potentially could
have stood as a self-contained tribute to the sensibilities commonly associated
with the "golden age" of American history and sport (as juxtaposed with the
actuality of the implications that era bequeathed (nuclear/political) to the
unfolding of the second half of the twentieth century), DeLillo labors dutifully
on to chronicle the surfaces of true contemporanity in all their quirks and
stylizations. In this case, however, as opposed to the bulk of his earlier work,
the quality of the description mimics the underlying misjudgment of the
necessity.
I was driving a Lexus through a rustling wind. This is a car
assembled in a work area that's completely free of human presence. Not a
spot of mortal sweat, except, okay, for the guys who drive the product out
of the plant--allow a little moisture where they grip the wheel. The system
flows forever onward, automated to priestly nuance, every gliding movement
back-referenced for prime performance. Hollow bodies coming in endless
sequence. There's nobody on the line with caffeine nerves or a history of
clinical depression, just the eerie weave of chromium alloys carried in
interlocking arcs, block iron and asphalt sheeting, soaring ornaments of
coachwork fitted and merged. Robots tightening bolts, pro-grammed drudges
that do not dream of family dead. Underworld p. 63
Aside from the issue of melodrama raised by the last half of the last
sentence and the laughable techno pop of the first, the rest of the paragraph
serves chiefly to propagate the "sterility at the heart of the modern world"
argument which suffuses the remainder of the novel as juxtaposed to the flawed
gritty pre-ironic idyll represented in the opening chapter which, again,
although self-referentially appropriate, when taken as a backdrop against
which the rest of the novel unfolds, comes mainly to serve as a foil
pitting its "the way it was" remembrance against the technical sterility
of the modern world message inappropriately attributed in the book's final
section.
In previous fictions, DeLillo's ability to represent the identities of
character historically denoted by signifiers such as he thought and she wondered
with brief uses of the colloquial has served remarkably as a permeable barrier
between which the actuality of the described and the intricacies of implication
(not overtly detailed, in his case) of authorial intention may transmit.
Scott was still doing lists, moving toward late May now, making
lists of things that needed doing, doing the things, going along project by
project, room by room. Of course the lists of things were also things. An item
on a list might generate a whole new list. He knew if he wasn't careful he'd
get mired in a theory of lists and lose sight of the things that needed doing.
There was pleasure in lists, taut and clean. Making the list, crossing off the
items as you complete the tasks. It was a small whole contentment, a way of
working toward a new reality. Mao II p. 139
Although written in the third person, this example neatly both expresses the
temperament of the described and mimics the neurosis by which he is
possessed--the central statement demonstrating an awareness of the neurosis
("He knew if he wasn't careful he'd get mired in a theory of lists.") and a
slight sheer at the end (the "new reality") promoting the notion that language
simultaneously alters the environment described, and is, or, creates, that
environment--what is recorded effects the record; is reflected in the
description; is mimicked by the words chosen and what they represent.
Whereas the previously mentioned specifically made its intended mark, the
following excerpt--quoted from Underworld--does not.
They were in a small basement place in Chinatown eating broad
noodles that were very tasty, chow fun or chow fon, the menu was
spattered--a place with formica tables and spattered menus and no liquor
license and Miles with a mint toothpick in his mouth.
"I've got a movie to show you that you're going to hate me for
this movie."
"We can't be talking about Normal," she said.
"We shot about eleven hours in Normal. She was inexhaustible, this
woman, because she was born that way. She comes across like a law of
physics but I still don't know what we've got. Could be crap."
"And in the meantime."
"You're going to hate this other thing but there's no question of not
seeing it because you have to see it."
He deferred to Klara in a number of ways, sometimes subtle, sometimes
not, and forced soft arguments he knew he could not win and played certain
subjects toward her strength, which should have annoyed her but didn't, and
was otherwise thoughtful, carrying her brand of cigarettes and talking her
through this dormant period in her work, a time of small despair.
Underworld p 486
In this case, an attempt at mimesis--incorporated in order that a sense of
contemporary authenticity might be conveyed--pantomimes a slapstick mimicry of
DeLillo's previously (almost) tone perfect colloquial ear.
In order to appropriately chronicle the fine-tune of his abilities as
witnessed in previous fictions, however, (especially concerning subtle
combinations of objective description and small fragments of the colloquial),
the next segment will contrast his inappropriate use of the vernacular--as
witnessed in the selection quoted at the beginning of this discussion--with
itself.
He stood against the chair, eyes averted. Lyle sensed that the
others were watching him to measure the comic dimensions of his reaction to
the boy. He walked toward them, looking out over the umbrella that was set
into the table. Deliberately he placed the tray down, moving objects out of
the way with calculated disdain. They waited for him to say something. He
sat, moving slowly as possible. His nose started bleeding again. This became
the joke, of course. It was funnier than anything he could have said. He
inserted a tissue in his nostril and let it hang there, his expression one
of weary forbearance. Players p. 83
The paragraph, of course, hinges on "of course." What competently would have
served as an implementation of traditional narrative elevates with the personal
aside to a manner of inside joke; a short-hand which allows the reader a
succinct glimpse into the vital chemistry of the described. The language becomes
or serves as a conduit that transmits the colloquialisms of their gestures--its
use succinct and taut and yet providing an awarness of the psychology of the
characters more thoroughly than the standard authorial intrusions might
allow--whereas, in the first paragraph quoted, his use of the word "okay" rings
out as a sort of mimicry, an impersonation, a stereotype of personalized
diction, and, in that case, of course, the narrative provided is in the first
person, which, beyond the details previously supplied, goes a long way toward
explaining why Underworld accomplishes minimally more than its intentional
scope: the singular voice, no matter how interwoven, lacks the structural
integrity to replicate the true arc of the second half of this or any other
century.
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