I will confess that I only thought to read this book after having seen the movie. I kind of hate it when that happens; I feel like a bandwagon jumper or some other brand of hanger-on. A johnny-come-lately or what have you. If we were talking about music and I told you that I only started listening to Sonic Youth because of their Carpenters cover on the Juno soundtrack, you (some amorphous hypothetical you, not any specific you who might be reading this) would definitely ridicule me, and given the hipper-than-thou politics of the music scene, you would have cause. More and more lately I’ve seen a similar attitude among readers; if a film has been made or Oprah has heard of the book, then God help your street cred if you get caught reading it on the subway. You are branded a mindlessly consuming sheep. Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir. In my defense, I’ve had Cormac McCarthy on my to-be-read list for quite some time, and though I had thought to start with The Road, or maybe Suttree, this book was cheap, available, and familiar. At least I managed to get the Chip Kidd cover instead of some horrible movie tie-in, although some idiot did place a big gold “Now A Major Motion Picture” sticker on it. I’ve been trying to figure out how to remove it without damaging the book.
What can I say about this book that hasn’t been said a million times in the last six months, or however long it’s been since the Coen brothers released their masterful interpretation? I like McCarthy’s prose style; it’s clean and slow and has a mystical feel to it, like Faulkner with a smaller vocabulary, and his dialogue has that strange southern dignity, that curious blend of ignorance and sophistication that you don’t find anywhere else in the English speaking world, or at least that you don’t find written down. In some ways I’m reminded of Ian Fleming’s prose, though I know that’s a comparison that a lot of people won’t understand. Both writers eschew (Bob Harris be damned) extraneous detail or overt emotional exploration, but McCarthy’s world feels spartan, while Fleming’s seems decadent. It’s a conundrum, and I suppose if I sat down with the works of both men I could explain exactly what constructions and turns of phrase created the difference, but that’s not really what I do here. Suffice it to say that the book and the movie were more or less equally good, and often for the same reasons, and that I will be enjoying more of McCarthy’s work in the future.
Next: The Fiend in Human, by John Maclachlan Gray.
