Reading Cormac McCarthy 2–OUTER DARK: RGBIB 276

Fasten your bathing seat-belts, ladies and germs. Every intricately funny/depressing adventure with McCarthy feels like your last!

[larrycarr]

“I know things I ain’t never thought of”… 🤔truly a thought worth meditating in the 🛁👍! Thanks Scott

[lukestables]

Good review. I think the humor of Mccarthy is often just totally lost on many people. I found this latest one just hilarious in places (interestingly also featured incest for some reason).

[samferguson]

I just read The Orchard Keeper for the first time and was blown away by the sentences themselves while also being befuddled at points by the book's plot/structure/overarching meaning. I agree that he was "finding his way" with that one -- a strange and beautiful book. Of his early Tennessee novels, I've also read Child of God, which is (I think) far greater than Orchard, if also far more deranged. Next on my list is Outer Dark, then Suttree!

[larrycarr]

Hi Scott, season’s bathing greetings from Los Cabos! We hang out here until late February… having finished The Passenger and Stella Maris (great stuff, looking forward to the 🛁 discussion). Now taking your suggestion, reading Orchard Keeper, and will proceed to Outer Dark, and then 🛁 willing proceed chronologically through his work. In between, I bet my pulp fix, having exhausted Willeford, been reading Ed Lacy and Frederick Brown (his mysteries). Also the latest Harry Bosch (perhaps last) Desert Star, which was excellent. Connelly for my money (one of the writers I’ll shell out more the $10 bucks for) writes the best police procedurals out there and Harry is a character I never tire of including his Jazz likings and LA eating spots. Don’t recall you ever giving him a mention… not a fan?

[scottlyons]

McCarthy seems to have a thing for airborne flightless animals. (Pigs in this book, mules in Blood Meridian).

[architchaudhary]

Really strange and powerful book this one! I also felt that there was a change in style half way through the book. The beginning felt, as you say, reminiscent of Faulkner, but halfway through the style with long, careering polysyndetic sentences started to resemble more and more McCarthy's quite distinctive prose.


Also, just food for thought: The book is said to take place in Appalachia but Outer Dark's version of Appalachia does not resemble any historical map or place. Those towns do not exist where they are shown to be and not with that geography surrounding it. Similarly the name Culla is undoubtedly taken from McCarthy's young son: Cullen. During the writing of this book he got divorced and lost custody of his 1 year old son. The tense Father son dynamic in this book seems to come from it. Weirdly, the surname Holme seems to be distortion of McCarthy's wife's name: Holleman. For a writer so obsessed with Geography it cannot be unintentional. There might be some store in the idea that the book is McCarthy's metaphorical Inner life during a perilous period, depicted through some vivid and powerful imagery (not unlike vivid nightmares/dreams). The irrationality and general strangeness of the World could also be explained that way.

[donaldmartineau]

Love McCarthy: Loved Outer Dark, Blood Meridian, Border Trilogy. Trying to get into Suttree. Very difficult

[donaldkelly]

You mentioned Erskine Caldwell! I tackled Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre in college and thanked the Almighty I was born above the Mason Dixon Line.
I think the pigs jumping off the cliff comes from the Gospel of Luke, where Jesus casts demons into a herd of swine, who promptly do a half gainer into the ocean and drown.
I strongly suspect McCarthy has inhaled the KJV!
Also, your plot description reminded me of Child of God.

[dennisbento]

Scott, I advise you to never take DoDo for a walk as this Elon Musk guy wants to control all tweets.