Murakami vs. McCarthy

Looking at the technical (ha) back end of this site and its statistics, I see someone found me on Google by searching for Haruki Murakami vs. Cormac McCarthy. Well, that person, this is your lucky day, for I am here to answer that conundrum using the type of technical know-how and analysis that this blog is famous for.

The answer is Murakami, via fatality. That one where Sub Zero rips out your spine, specifically.

Trapped in L-Space...

Today I feel like writing stuff, but I couldn't be arsed with the concentrated attention (well, attempted) required for a proper book review, so instead here's what you might call a normal blog post, where I'm going to ramble on in a self-absorbed manner until I run out of steam. It's like an adventure, and we're all in it together. Anyway, I managed to catch up a little on my list of things to review, though there's always the danger of quickly adding to it by getting absorbed in a new book. It actually makes it easier to keep this blog updated when I'm labouring through something that I don't particularly enjoy but feel like I have to finish. I had that with A Feast for Crows and then John Updike's Marry Me, which is a pretty small book but took me ages. Here's a preview of my eventual review (it's third in the queue right now); I didn't like it. Right now I'm reading Haruki Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart, which won't take long to devour because I'm addicted to Murakami's writing; and running dangerously low on unread material.

The real problem is the to-read pile, which is more literally a to-read cabinet. I'm wary of looking over and counting the actual number because it's out of control now. Sometimes I do look at it, and each time I spot something I don't remember buying. It's giving me the nagging feeling that I've opened up a hole into L-Space. I think there's about forty paperbacks sat in the cabinet, plus four I haven't bothered putting in, plus Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files Vol. 10, plus my yet-to-be-delivered copy of The Absolute Sandman Vol. 3, which was kind of a Christmas present to myself, because I'm generous like that.

The thing is, as I've mentioned many times in my blog, I can't resist a second-hand book shop. While I occasionally get tempted by Amazon, almost every time I'm in town I check out one of the two shops I like, and usually they've got something for around £2.50 that I like the idea of reading at some point in the far future, so the pile keeps growing. Plus, the thing with charity book shops is that if you don't grab it when you see it then it won't be back in stock when it's gone.  There's even a few things that I've grown less fond of the idea of reading, like Cormac McCarthy's complete Border Trilogy. If I don't like the first one, they're all getting kicked out of the pile. Just not literally because it is actually a glass cabinet.

But as overgrown as it is, I do love having this ever-expanding personal library to pick from, and it's going to give me plenty of material for this blog, as long as I don't let the laziness slip in. I've got a review of Douglas Coupland's Generation X to do next, and I'm always tempted to get back to the Discworld, especially with the next installment being a Granny Weatherwax episode in Witches Abroad. Ah well, back to the real world...

Cormac McCarthy- No Country for Old Men

No Country for Old Men

Picador Press

Cormac McCarthy
2005

“I always thought when I got older that God would sort of come into my life in some way. He didn't. I don't blame him. If I was him I'd have the same opinion about me that he does.”

As I frantically and purposelessly rush to catch up with my surplus of finished but yet-to-be-reviewed books before adding more to them- though I've just started reading George R.R. Martin's A Feast for Crows and it's about six million pages long- I found myself returning to the polarizing figure of Cormac McCarthy. When I use the word polarizing I'm referring to my varying opinions on the first two McCarthy novels I've read; The Road was a superb modern novel, a slice of thoughtful post-apocalyptic fiction written fairly recently and winner of the Pulitzer prize. Blood Meridian, however, was written twenty years earlier than The Road, back when McCarthy was mainly known for very bloody, and very gritty Western/cowboy fiction.

I did not like Blood Meridian at all, which left me feeling rather apprehensive about starting McCarthy's third very famous book; No Country for Old Men (famously adapted by the Coen brothers two years later into an Academy Award Best Picture winner that I should probably watch some day). I honestly wasn't expecting to enjoy it because it's another Western, albeit a modern one, and I think the combination of typical accented, regional Western dialogue with McCarthy's regular decision to abandon regular speech punctuation can create a frustrating experience for a reader not attuned to it, like me.

With my expectation of enjoyment pretty low, I was still surprised that I ended up liking it. Not a huge amount, but I liked it. In hindsight the key to this was I hadn't realised that No Country was a lot more contemporary than Blood Meridian. Set in the present day, No Country revolves around a small cast of tough, gritty and very western characters all caught up in the aftermath of a drug deal gone badly wrong. Tough, gritty Westerner Llewellyn Moss accidentally stumbles upon the the crime scene, where amongst a collection of bullet-ridden bodies and heroin he discovers a bag containing $2 million dollars. After some internal debate, he takes it (and spends much of the novel re-evaluating and regretting his decision). He also sees and speaks to the only survivor, who is mortally wounded, and Moss later returns with some water for the man. He's already dead though, and his friends have turned up to investigate. Moss barely escapes the scene, and the chase that comprises the rest of the book is on.

Moss has a charismatic and introspective detective on his trail, as well as a psychopathic hit-man, who essentially exist as an angel and a devil both fighting for his soul. Moss is an ambiguous, unpredictable character who certainly isn't evil, but is easily capable of making the wrong decision. The set-up from then on is actually kind of simple and easy to follow, as the reader follows the inevitable fate of each of the three main characters in a standard-length novel. The contemporary nature of the novel, including the writing style, character portrayal and (importantly for me) the dialogue was far more typical than the genre-specific style of Blood Meridian. I'm probably making myself out to seem like an idiot here, but I can't be bothered to mentally invest in a genre and style I get nothing out of, but No Country only takes what it needs from the classic Western genre rather than all of it, which made it far more interesting for me. Recommended to most fans of contemporary fiction, particularly if you like grim, gritty and introspective. I'll have to watch the film next.

Cormac McCarthy- Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West

Random House

Cormac McCarthy
1985

"And the answer, said the judge. If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now? Wolves cull themselves, man. What other creature could? And is the race of man not more predacious yet? The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day. He loves games? Let him play for stakes. This you see here, these ruins wondered at by tribes of savages, do you not think that this will be again? Aye. And again. With other people, with other sons."

I really didn't like Blood Meridian.

Apologies to all dedicated Cormac McCarthy loyalists out there. Apologies to the legions of my fellow book reviewers out there, to the hundreds of men and women who have put pen to paper or fingers to keypads to compose a no-doubt sterling and well thought-out and well-received pieces that have all eventually combined through the power of the Internet to pronounce McCarthy's break-out work of fiction as a legitimate classic in twentieth century American fiction. Sorry you guys, but despite all the fawning plaudits I thought it was kind of a bad book; by no means lacking in substance or craftsmanship, but consistent of different factors put together as a package that didn't give me very much enjoyment.

Blood Meridian is only my second exposure to the now very large literary figure of Cormac, with the first naturally being previously reviewed The Road, which (spoiler alert) I really quite liked. Of course The Road remains McCarthy's most recent novel (published 2006), while Blood Meridian is twenty-years older, written back in a section of the author's life where his favoured preoccupation was the genre of the Western (leading towards The Border Trilogy, which sits on a unread pile of mine) , and Blood Meridian is very much a Western. It follows a portion of the life and adventures of a lead character known only as 'The Kid', introduced as a tough-as-nails teenage boy with a murky, escaped history, who has been traveling the wilderness of Texas, surviving with his fists and wit. He soon meets a series of quirky, dangerous, and equally mysterious individuals who cast a shadow over the story, and play a major part in its developments; particularly 'Judge' Holden, charismatic and vicious.

The Kid's ramblings and new friendships lead him through San Antonio, and into Mexico as part of a group of army irregulars hunting for Mexicans. The result is a mass of violence, mayhem and murder, continuing as The Kid travels back over the border, and characters such as the Judge pop in and out of the narrative. McCarthy unexpectedly (to me, anyway) stretches the story over decades to follow The Kid into adulthood suddenly, and into further conflicts and contacts that ultimately lead to his fate, in a somewhat ambiguously downbeat ending. Supposedly, according to others, the many intense trials and tribulations of The Kid's life leads towards the ending being not only climactic, but meaningful and poignant, but unfortunately by this point any real remnants of my interest had crawled into a ball and died.

A Cowboy and Indian, yesterday.

Despite being somewhat of a grammar Nazi, I've gotten over the fact that Cormac McCarthy doesn't like quotation marks, or really much punctuation at all. I'm also happy with the fact that McCarthy chooses to go with an established genre feature of not giving his lead character a real name. My real problem with this book as a whole was that, after maybe a hundred pages or so, I was completely sick of the repetitive tone of the narrative. Dedicated stylistic prose is an incredibly tough trick to pull off over a sustained period without becoming a self-parody; not only from a technical standpoint but through running the risk of becoming stale. If your style isn't entertaining or personable, then it can become boring, and the dry, unhelpful tone of McCarthy's narration couldn't sustain my interest. Even the much-vaunted brutality, staining many of the pages red and black with blood and death, gets old and meaningless, unimpressive to me compared to the striking individuality of something like Patrick Bateman in Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho.

So again, I apologies to all those that worship this book, because perhaps it was simply not for me. I greatly enjoy authors who are full of variety and surprise; whom mix reality and the surreal on a whim, and whom make me care about their characters on a personal level. Cormac McCarthy doesn't do that for me, not even in The Road, which I liked. It worries me slightly that I've got four Cormac McCarthy books to read from my pile (Border Trilogy and No Country For Old Men) and it might worry you, dear reader, that I might have four more dismissive, self-righteous rants about why I don't like them. Ah well, can't say I didn't warn anyone. 

Cormac McCarthy- The Road

I'm getting through A Clash of Kings far quicker than I anticipated, which is for the best considering I've got about thirty books sat in my wardrobe waiting to be read (including graphic novels). I'm about half way through that fantasy epic, brutal fantasy soap opera. In the meantime...

The Road

Alfred A. Knopf

Cormac McCarthy

1996

"In those first years the roads were peopled with refugees shrouded up in their clothing. Wearing masks and goggles, sitting in their rags by the side of the road like ruined aviators. Their barrows heaped with shoddy. Towing wagons or carts. Their eyes bright in their skulls. Creedless shells of men tottering down the causeways like migrants in a feverland. The frailty of everything revealed at last. Old and troubling issues resolved into nothingness and night. The last instance of a thing takes the class with it. Turns out the light and is gone. Look around you. Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all."

Though published almost six years ago to universal critical acclaim, I wasn't really aware of this book until very recently, entirely due to the fact I simply don't find myself attracted to contemporary fiction very often; nothing personal, it's just that I figure it's more likely to find a book that I'd really like among the hundreds and hundreds of older (and I'm just talking twenty years), already recognized classics than it is spending time on a modern novel that's yet to settle in the collective mindset of a truly great piece of work. Nonetheless, I'd heard people talking about this book on various forums and websites quite a lot, and once I saw it on the shelves for a very modest £3, new, I couldn't resist such a deal.

The Road was my introduction to Cormac McCarthy, very-well established Rhode Island-born author of such famous works as No Country for Old Men and Blood Meridian (one of the books sat waiting in my wardrobe) and I was very, very impressed; if not totally blown away then at least pushed a very great distance by gale-force winds. The Road's genre is one that, I've since discovered, has been debated with gusto regarding its sub-genre classification and ethical or deconstruct-able (yes I have made that word up) meaning, but at its undeniable plot-point basis is a post-apocalyptic thriller. An omniscient third person narration tells the gripping and harrowing story of one unnamed man and his young son traveling across a destroyed American landscape simply fighting for food and warmth. McCarthey crucially negates answering some of the biggest questions that the reader may have, choosing to leave them as mysteries to be pondered and debated on. Instead he merely shows us a world of death, where the sun fails to shine and the only life that remains is of a few struggling humans and creatures on a constant hunt for food. McCarthy tells us little about his two main characters either, simply giving a few details here and there throughout the book. 

 

It's perhaps this lack of detail that encapsulates the grip that The Road takes upon the reader. McCarthy's stark, immaculately composed prose reeks of the desperation and fear that he places on the father and son. The reader is given few hints as to what to expect except more fear, danger and desperation. We know that horrific gangs of desperate, cannibalistic men roam the landscape, abandoning every rule of civilization for the sake of survival. McCarthy describes desolate scenes of captivating apocalyptic surroundings that I found haunting and thrilling. Crucially, he fills every page with the concern and love of the father for his child, making his reader fear for the safety for the boy. Though his father is a very capable survival expert, his son shows glimpses of humanitarianism that he has long since lost, as the innocence of youth shines like a beacon.

The Road isn't a book based on plot-twists or an expected deus ex machina, but instead a bleak, unpredictable odyssey. There are very, very few supporting characters, none of whom exist for more than a few pages. Some passages are so extremely bleak it's hard to continue reading for the moment. There are a few moments of unequivocal, shocking horror. But despite all of this the love of parent and child jumps off the page as a major theme. While this book is so acclaimed partly because it's possible to read into it into so many different ways, it wouldn't be nearly as readable or successful if McCarthy didn't make you care about his two characters as people rather than extended plot devices. As a result it's completely possible to read The Road without having to think too hard about the extended ramifications, but simply as a nerve-wracking survival horror. However you choose to look at it, The Road is a stunning achievement. I have another author's bibliography to (slowly) explore.