Robert Elkin wrote:
Sidenote: this "florid style" is really just the voice of a
nineteenth-century narrator cast in the prose of his time.
Perhaps stark brutality contrasts any medium of
representation?--equally polar is American Psycho, to cite
only one example. By the way, & referring to an earlier
post, why do you think McCarthy a "fascist," whether you love
him for it or not?
***************** Your comment about his style being "really
just the voice of a 19th century narrator cast in the prose
of his time" is like saying Mark Twain is "just writing in
the colloquial patois of the era." Even if true to a degree,
it trivializes a significant and potent accomplishment in
style. Here's the first three paragraphs of BLOOD
MERIDIAN:
"See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and
ragged linen shirt. He stokes the scullery fire. Outside lie
dark turned fields with rags of snow and darker woods beyond
that harbor yet a few last wolves.
His folk are known for hewers of wood and drawers of
water but in truth his father has been a schoolmaster.
He lies in drink, he quotes from poets whose names are
now lost. The boy crouches by the fire and watches him.
Night of your birth. Thirty-three. The Leonids they were
called. God how the stars did fall. I looked for the
blackness, holes in the heavens. The Dipper stove.
The mother dead these fourteen years did incubate in her own
bosom the creature who would carry her off. The father never
speaks her name, the child does not know it. He has a sister
in this world that he will not see again. He watches, pale
and unwashed. He can neither read nor write and in him broods
already a taste for mindless violence. All history present in
that visage, the child the father of the man."
The fascist comment was somewhat in jest, but not totally.
Blood Meridian portrays man as naturally violent, born to
war. Rather than offer some salvation from this predicament
or, at a minimum, condemn this deplorable state, McCarthy
embellishes it with a savage grace.
And no, I don't think stark brutality contrasts any medium of
representation. Hammett's terse style in RED HARVEST is
perfectly matched to the content.
miker
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