[FRIAM] Best Cormac McCarthy novels

Wed Jun 14 15:44:24 EDT 2023

> I read perhaps two thirds of Blood Meridian a few years ago. My memory
> is a little hazy about it now, but I just remember it feeling a little
> "disjointed", and quite bloody and violent (unnecessarily so, IMO). I
> might give it another go someday. Meanwhile, perhaps I'll try reading
> The Crossing on Frank's recommendation.

I too found Meridian difficult in several ways and at the time (a few 
years after publication) I took the "disjointedness" and gratuitous 
violence to be an artifact of it's place in popular fiction...   it 
shocked and offended and irritated me.

On reflection decades later after discussing this (and similar/related 
works) I came to appreciate that if nothing else, it's structure and 
content was reflective of the moment Cormac was exposing.   I took it, 
at the time, to be an (appropriate) expose' of the tragedy that was 
(mostly) the American West which is normally romanticized by "Western" 
novelists such as Evans, L'Amour, Grey.   I came to realize to what 
extent it was a (bit of a) parody on that romanticization.   I think his 
"No Country for Old Men" was the same, but updated to the modern era of 
"wild west" romanticism.   I haven't been able to  find/apply the same 
frame to "The Road" though some seem to give *it* a lot of credit as well.

Literary critics often criticize his work as "nihilistic" which is 
definitely a component or vehicle he uses.   Others credit him with 
showing us the lost and forgotten, "everyman" if you will. I felt 
Steinbeck did a much better job of that (esp. Cannery Row, but also 
Grapes and Mice) as well as Ed Abbey.

What I *think* Cormac was trying to do with BM was (IMO) done much more 
effectively by Larry McMurtry in Comanche Moon (in particular) with his 
various renderings of the TX Rangers (Call, McCrae, Scull ...), the 
Mountain Men (Bartle and James...) as well as a caste of Native 
Americans (Famous Shoes, Buffalo Hump...). Hollywood did not do these 
characters justice IMO, and these too were caricatures.  I possibly was 
more receptive to them because of the extra larding in of humour that 
McCarthy didn't seem to engage in.   In many ways McMurtry's old-west 
depiction was just as stark and critical but as referenced earlier not 
as nihilistic?

I grew up among the descendants of many of these "frontiersmen" under 
the specter of that heritage which was a concoction of toxic masculinity 
and human chauvanism.  It all seemed pretty "normal" to me because it 
was all I knew and my father, being somewhat more mild (but also 
educated) than many of the other men/fathers I knew was also a product 
of the romanticism of "the West" raised in the Depression/WWII era.  He 
worked for the Dept of Agriculture in the role of managing/regulating 
the use of public lands (Masters in Forestry/Range Mgmt) but was raised 
under the shadow/image of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett (in KY) before 
moving "west" to seek his bliss.    The heroes of the area were the 
likes of Ben Lilly <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Lilly> (credited 
with single-handedly wiping out virtually every apex predator in the 
southern Rockies) and Kit Carson 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kit_Carson> particularly in his brutal 
reputation as an Indian Figher.    My father's heroes were more likely 
conservationists like Aldo Leopold 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldo_Leopold> who are credited with 
presaging the environmental movement. Unfortunately the distinction 
between these two forms of Western Romanticism were variations on the 
idea of Manifest Destiny 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifest_destiny> with one using personal 
blunt-force trauma and the other intrusive government "oversight".

John Gast's 1872 painting romanticizing the westward expansion of the 
white man.

It is worth carefully parsing this image visually.

I had the benefit of knowing the descendents of some of that era.   One 
of my father's good friends went to school in Ft. Sill Oklahoma with 
Cochise's grandson, another was born and raised in a one-horse town 
named "Horse Springs" on the edge of the San Augustin plains (where the 
VLA sits), not learning English until he went to a one room public 
school as a young teen (his grandparents were Spanish descendents who 
moved to the area after the Civil War and the expulsion/extinction of 
the Apache in the area).

  Two of my classmates were the great grandchildren of the main 
antagonists in the "Frisco Shootout 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frisco_shootout>" and one was born/raised 
in a cabin inhabited by (possibly built by?) the afore mentioned Ben 
Lilly.   Elfego Baca (Frisco Shootout) was a self-appointed lawman who 
tried to apprehend a member (McCarty) of a former Confederate Army gang 
(by way of TX) working as what was effectively a private army for a TX 
ranch interest trying to displace the Spanish-Colony descendents who had 
recently settled the area as the *Union* army flexed it's muscles to 
exterminate/capture the remaining Apache in the area (who had done the 
same to the Mogollon, and other Puebloan's) a few hundred years 
before!   The Baca twins and the namesake McCarty were entirely innocent 
of all of this history which I only began to sort out over the 
decades.   In fact we played in the ruins of the building Baca hid out 
(under the floorboards) in during the famous "shootout" and probably 
even touched if not recognized some of the thousands of rounds of ammo 
fired into it by the "cowboys".   The building had been the home of 
another one of my classmates (great) grandparents (Geronimo Armijo).

This all happened a couple-hundred miles West of Wimberley's tales of 
his childhood a half-generation before me:

    https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/new-mexico-legacy-frank-c-wimberly/1126593949

I'm rattling on here (partly) because it is this arc of mythology which 
I believe has driven us to (or reflects) our hyper-exploitative nature 
(Western/Rural US)...   and our continued misogynist/racist 
behaviour/attitudes cloaked in "patriotism" and "old fashioned 
values".   I personally have been caught in various currents and eddies 
of this (e.g. working on/near Nuclear Weapons' programs and other highly 
questionable technologies) myself.

Los Alamos is about to host some serious celebrations of the 
Manhattan/Oppenheimer legacy which itself is wonderfully ambiguous in 
the same vein, only involving neutrons instead of lead bullets?

https://ladailypost.com/sala-presents-oppenheimer-festival-celebrating-the-legacy-of-j-robert-oppenheimer/

OK... I'll stop now.

> On Wed, Jun 14, 2023 at 7:02 AM Frank Wimberly<wimberly3 at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> Blood Meridian is his masterpiece but I enjoyed reading The Crossing more.
>>
>> ---
>> Frank C. Wimberly
>> 140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
>> Santa Fe, NM 87505
>>
>> 505 670-9918
>> Santa Fe, NM
>>
>> On Wed, Jun 14, 2023, 1:29 AM Jochen Fromm<jofr at cas-group.net>  wrote:
>>> Cormac McCarthy died yesterday in Santa Fe where he lived for the last 30 years. Douglas Preston lives in Santa Fe too. There must be something in Santa Fe which attracts good writers :-) What's your favorite McCarthy novel?
>>> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jun/13/cormac-mccarthy-dead-novelist
>>>
>>> -J.
>>>
>>> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
>>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>>> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoomhttps://bit.ly/virtualfriam
>>> to (un)subscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>>> FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>>> archives:  5/2017 thru presenthttps://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
>>>    1/2003 thru 6/2021http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
>> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
>> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoomhttps://bit.ly/virtualfriam
>> to (un)subscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
>> FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
>> archives:  5/2017 thru presenthttps://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
>>    1/2003 thru 6/2021http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoomhttps://bit.ly/virtualfriam
> to (un)subscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives:  5/2017 thru presenthttps://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
>    1/2003 thru 6/2021http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20230614/5e0ad3e5/attachment-0002.html>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/attachments/20230614/5e0ad3e5/attachment-0003.html>