Cormac

“When your dreams are of some world that never was or of some world that never will be and you are happy again then you will have given up. Do you understand? And you cant give up. I wont let you.”

Cormac McCarthy,
The Road

 

 

A month ago, I was saddened to hear the news of writer Cormac McCarthy’s passing from natural causes. When I think about it, it’s actually sublime, how the death of a literary figure could have quite an impact on me. Art connects us in this strange, telepathic way that isn’t bounded to space and time. I certainly never met Cormac McCarthy, let alone knew him personally. But in some way, I feel as though I knew him in spirit through his writing.

Honestly, I can’t say that I’ve read many of his books. I have only read three to date, namely Blood Meridian, No Country for Old Men, and The Road (twice). Nevertheless, these books have left an indelible mark on me, in both my life and work. Most noticeably, perhaps, is the fire logo that I’ve been using on my blog in the past two years, which I intended as an homage to the concept of “carrying the fire” in The Road.

My journey with Cormac McCarthy’s work began when I was an undergrad. I was a freshman in an electronics engineering program, which I later aborted. At the time, there was a newly-opened 24-hour BookXcess a few minutes away from my campus. And that was how I came across The Road, a story about a father and son’s journey through a post-apocalyptic world. I had never heard of the Pulitzer Prize winning book or the author, but I thought it was interesting enough — and cheap — so I gave it a chance.

Right from the get-go, McCarthy struck me as a contrarian — a maverick who stood by his own rules. He wrote in sparse and concise sentences, and had almost no regard for punctuation marks. His writing style was already hard for me to wrap my mind around, but this was only the tip of the iceberg.

I’d like to think that Cormac McCarthy wrote stories that the world wasn’t altogether ready for. From his earliest writings to his last, his stories are dark, mercilessly violent and amoral. It is not that he had a sick and twisted imagination or a heartless view of the world. Rather, he was as human as he could possibly be, in that he was honest in depicting the world as it is, and not as it should be. Just as poet T.S. Eliot wrote of William Blake, McCarthy’s honesty is “peculiarly terrifying” for “a world too frightened to be honest.”

“It is an honesty against which the whole world conspires, because it is unpleasant,” wrote T.S. Eliot. Perhaps the world did conspire against McCarthy in some way. Even though many of his earlier books were critically praised, they were commercial failures, virtually ignored and out of print. He only had his first taste of success when he was entering his 60s, after his book All the Pretty Horses became a bestseller.

He was a writer that pulled no punches. Reading a Cormac McCarthy story can feel like you are undergoing therapy of some sort. It’s so much easier to read a book that keeps you nestled in the comfort of thinking the same thoughts, of thinking that life is simply beautiful. But no, here you are, being gutted and heartbroken, as you are forced to confront yourself and the amoral realities of the world, only so that you could be better.

Prior to reading McCarthy, I loved to champion the archetype of the rational villain. It’s the premise that evil people often commit evil deeds out of rational or even good intentions, because they are justified necessary by the villain for their own good or for the collective good.

We have this a lot in literature, especially in many of Shakespeare’s plays. It has become increasingly common in pop-culture too. In The Godfather films, Michael Corleone takes his father’s place as a mafia boss, out of a genuine desire to protect his family. This however deludes him into thinking that he could achieve the impossible task of legitimizing his family business.

Most of the villains in the Marvel films fit this archetype too. Of course, there’s Thanos, whose goal for genocide is justified by his altruistic intention to bring balance to the universe. Then there’s Wenwu, who returns to his life of crime due to his lacerating grief over his wife’s loss, bargaining that if only he didn’t give up his old life, his wife would have still been alive. And then there’s Gorr, who desires to kill all gods and to resurrect his dead daughter, as he believes that the gods are ultimately indifferent to their people’s suffering.

And on top of all of this, the good guys always win in such stories.

But Cormac McCarthy made me realize that not every evil in the world can be explained through reason, despite us wanting to believe so. There is senseless violence in the world, and it has always been this way. There are definitely psychopaths out there, who aren’t able to feel empathy, and could commit evil like it’s a grocery chore. These are the villains that you see in McCarthy’s stories.

And no, in his stories, as in life, the good guys don’t always win.

Among the three books I’ve read, I see this being most clearly personified in No Country For Old Men. This neo-Western partly revolves around an old sheriff who is disillusioned with the senseless violence that he witnesses on the job. He struggles to come to terms with the reality that the world is indifferent to our moral stances. Evil things happen to good people, and evil people get away with their crimes.

He longs for simpler times when he was a child, when the world apparently made more sense. It was a time when reason and morality triumphed, or at least this is how he remembers it. He eventually realizes that such times never existed, except in his own imagination and ideals. The world hasn’t changed at all, rather he has only seen more of the world as it truly is. Still, he couldn’t reconcile with the chaos and disorder that prevails in the world. There is no country for old men like himself with his archaic ideals.

Yet, even with all the gloom and dreariness, this doesn’t mean that there aren’t also moments of beauty and awe in McCarthy’s stories. In The Road, there’s the father’s unconditional love for his son, as well as the care and kindness that strangers can exhibit to each other. In Blood Meridian, there’s the pale glimmer of light that The Kid sights before his journey comes to an end. And in No Country For Old Men, there are the pleasant dreams that the sheriff has of his late father, and the warm comfort that such dreams provide him in trudging through a cold, cruel world.

With that being said, McCarthy’s books often leave me feeling hopeful, not necessarily in that the world may change, but in that we can carry on with our lives nevertheless. We may “carry the fire”, as the father and son would say to each other in The Road. We may shine a light, and put one step forward at a time, no matter how terrifying and bleak the journey ahead may be. We may share that light with others, so that nobody has to walk alone in this arduous journey.

Thank you for leaving this world better than you found it, Cormac. You can rest knowing that the living world will always celebrate your life’s work, and that no one can come close to writing about the world in the way that you did.

I know I would remember you not merely for your passing, but most of all, for what you represented — the fearlessness in seeing the world as it is, and the humility in simply sharing your point of view to the absolute best of your ability. 

As you wrote in No Country For Old Men, “I tried to put things in perspective but sometimes you’re just too close to it. It’s a life’s work to see yourself for what you really are and even then you might be wrong.”

I hope you find peace on the other side.