Isaiah's review

Is this review a joke? If not, can you elaborate on your views of the book?

Can you elaborate on what could possibly be joking about this review? (Besides that I don't really think -- publicly -- that Oprah should be hanged.) Perhaps that would clarify what I am to "elaborate."

1. There is nothing "we must accept" when discussing a novel or any other work of art. There's nothing "we must" do except be honest about our reactions.

2. There are many ways to approach the novel. As part of a genre, as part of a creator's body of work, or in isolation, as the New Critics attempted, etc. All methods have their advantages and disadvantages. There is no one right way.

3. "The content of that statement is what makes the book interesting, and that McCarthy saw fit to write an entire novel on it ought to foster critical dialogue." What in your opinion is the "content of [his] statement"?

4. Why become "furious" because a book wins some middle-brow award? All awards are largely irrelevant. And anyway, award committees are always playing catch-up. Remember when Pacino won the Oscar for Scent of a Woman? The critical hosannas for The Road came well before Oprah chose it for her club.

Actually Brendan, I don't see it as much of a joke either. I'm not sure I entirely agree with all of Isaiah's opinions - I think <em>The Road</em> is a bit more removed from McCarthy's previous works than he - and while I might put it in slightly less post-grad tones (no offense), I agree with about 90% of what is here.

Can you read it as allegory? Yes, but once we get out of highschool, I don't think everything needs to be seen as anything that simple. It is narrative and allegory at once, it is the thing itself and needs no further explication to give it meanting (perhaps I lied - I might put it in post-grad terms as well) and make it easier to digest. McCarthy reveals the world as ugly and violent yet tinted with hope, and that is enough without adding anything else.

And yes, in light of McCarthy's other work, giving him the Pulitzer for <em>The Road</em> is like a joke. <em>Blood Meridian</em> is one of the greatest American novels of the 20th century, and while <em>The Road</em> was one of my favorite books of the year, it is certainly not the shattering, epic work that <em>Blood Meridian</em> is.

Though in Operah's deffense, if she can get more of America reading McCarthy, I'll let her escape the gallows. . .

Well-concluded, Chris, and I'll take no offense, painful though it might be for me to accept anything in Oprah's defense...
I still haven't wrapped my head around McCarthy agreeing to an interview with her. I guess I just have to withhold judgment until I see it.

Bryan:

1. What I said you "must accept" is that a work of fiction is representational. This is not a reaction to or an interpretation of the work, it's a simple objective fact. The novel consists of words which stand for something else in our minds. The dystopian world of McCarthy doesn't "exist" in the sense that this keyboard does. It's a representation of an imaginary world in the same way a non-fiction book is a representation of the real world. This is the nature of writing. My point was that we don't have to impose an intermediate level of symbolism (which allegory does) between the imaginary dystopian world and the real world. We can accept it as "the thing itself," as Chris said.

2. Agreed, but there is still such a thing as misinterpretation. Once heard a kid in a history class describe Madame Bovary as the "hero" of "Madame Bovary." Whoops, missed the boat on that one.

3. Well that's precisely what I said "lies outside the scope of this little review." To be honest, I'm not sure. I only read the book once, and I felt it conveyed on one reading the gist of its place in the McCarthian canon/universe, but that it would merit a lot more study if I wanted to flesh out the exact content of that place.

4. You're right, of course... trouble is, I'm a belligerent little fart. Still mad about Pacino...

Well-concluded, Chris, and I'll take no offense, painful though it might be for me to accept anything in Oprah's defense...
I still haven't wrapped my head around McCarthy agreeing to an interview with her. I guess I just have to withhold judgment until I see it.

Bryan:

1. What I said you "must accept" is that a work of fiction is representational. This is not a reaction to or an interpretation of the work, it's a simple objective fact. The novel consists of words which stand for something else in our minds. The dystopian world of McCarthy doesn't "exist" in the sense that this keyboard does. It's a representation of an imaginary world in the same way a non-fiction book is a representation of the real world. This is the nature of writing. My point was that we don't have to impose an intermediate level of symbolism (which allegory does) between the imaginary dystopian world and the real world. We can accept it as "the thing itself," as Chris said.

2. Agreed, but there is still such a thing as misinterpretation. Once heard a kid in a history class describe Madame Bovary as the "hero" of "Madame Bovary." Whoops, missed the boat on that one.

3. Well that's precisely what I said "lies outside the scope of this little review." To be honest, I'm not sure. I only read the book once, and I felt it conveyed on one reading the gist of its place in the McCarthian canon/universe, but that it would merit a lot more study if I wanted to flesh out the exact content of that place.

4. You're right, of course... trouble is, I'm a belligerent little fart. Still mad about Pacino...

Not to defend Scent of a Woman or anything, but there seems to be some misdirected anger here. That Blood Meridian was unjustly overlooked for the Pulitzer I can wholeheartedly agree on, but for that we should probably blame the 1985 committee, not the 2006 one.

Isaiah, you gave this book four stars, but you "conceive of it as an excursus of a unitary statement in the McCarthian universe" and think it should "foster critical dialogue." Um... did you like it?

>>Um... did you like it?

Excellent question! The only one that matters.

Loved it! Damn good book.

Damn FINE book, I would go as far as to say. (though I would disagree that its the only question that matters; many people "liked" The DaVinci Code, and I will gladly suffer the title of cultural-snob by saying they were wrong and that the book was objectively bad).

And while I completely agree with Kate's point (not lauding a masterpiece doesn't make lauding a merely great book incorrect), I have to admit I feel some of Isaiah's pain. From his comments, its obvious he has been reading McCarthy for a while now, and as a fellow long-term McCarthist (have you now, or have you ever been . . . ?) I understand. McCarthy has been the most ignored, over-looked, and under-read of America's great contemporary authors (in the pre e-bay days, I spent a number of years trying to find his older books in used book-stores) its not easy to suddenly hear his name tripping off the tongue of Oprah and every clerk at B&N.

Its the classic delema of the underground art-fan: while we long for more of the world to read McCarthy (and blame them for bad taste and cultural heathendom when they do not), we somewhat resent it when they do, as inevitably it is the "most accessable" of their work that gets popular (and we've lost our out-sider cool, which, let me be honest, I secretly enjoy). Fortunately for us McCarthists, he didn't have to "sell out" to get big - this isn't MMBT or R.E.M.s "Green". McCarthy wrote an amazing, gut-wrenching book which used sentences less than a page long and small adjectives, and the world appreciates that.

So, as per usual, I am the great mediator (and very long winded), as I agree with (almost) everyone. Let everyone enjoy the book, and let us have our simmering resentment.

After walking my dog, I have some more thoughts:

Here's the danger with popular culture makers like Oprah. Al Pachino won his Oscar for scent of a woman, but it was really for his previous work and everyone knows that. If you say "I love Al Pachino," no one says "You mean that guy from Scent of A Woman? Where there is a real possibility that in two years if I ask someone if they've read Cormac McCarthy, they'll say not just say "Isn't that the guys that wrote The Road," but "Wasn't one of his books an Oprah pick"?

While disseminating good literature is good, the danger is that an artist be reduced to a slight, compressed misrepresentation. Pepsi used The Ramones in a comercial. It would be good that all my kids now know "Blitzkrieg Bop," except for the fact that if I play it in class they don't say "Hey, the Ramones are cool," but "Hey, that's the band from that comercial." And then I weep.

Take three:

I just found a review which might be what Isaiah was responding to in the first place. Read this analysis and tell me you don't want to scream "you missed the point you dick!":

"Another way to see the father-son relationship is as an allegory. The ever-cautious father represents Survival. He frequently threatens, steals from and sometimes even kills other people to save his son and himself. The son, contrarily, represents Compassion. He often pesters his father to assist the ravaged, desperate people they encounter. The novel, then, becomes the inner struggle between serving oneself and serving others.

A final interpretation is to see “The Road” as an attempt to face mortality. An old, accomplished writer at the end of his life, McCarthy faces the mystery that lies beyond the grave. Perhaps the darkness of the post-apocalyptic world is the darkness of death, and the father and son are our wandering souls searching to make sense of the incomprehensible terror of the present and the rapidly fading memories of the past."

That, Bryan, is the danger of allegory. You read one of the best books of the year and end up writing shit like that.

Your review criticized other reviews for their misunderstanding of the work but presented no information, which might be useful to those curious about your views, on WHAT exactly we are to think about the work. From atop your Ivory Tower, you flung feces at the peasants below, but gave us no turds with corn so that we might pick about in the brown gold and find some nourishment.

Chris wrote:

Can you read it as allegory? Yes, but once we get out of highschool, I don't think everything needs to be seen as anything that simple. It is narrative and allegory at once, it is the thing itself and needs no further explication to give it meanting (perhaps I lied - I might put it in post-grad terms as well) and make it easier to digest. McCarthy reveals the world as ugly and violent yet tinted with hope, and that is enough without adding anything else.

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But it doesn't HAVE to be. Your sneering contempt for the literary method of allegory could just as well be for anything: synecdoche, symbolism, metaphor. "Once you're out of high school, well, you don't need to regard ANYTHING as a stand-in for anything else. That's ABSURD!"

Isaiah wrote:

1. What I said you "must accept" is that a work of fiction is representational. This is not a reaction to or an interpretation of the work, it's a simple objective fact. The novel consists of words which stand for something else in our minds. The dystopian world of McCarthy doesn't "exist" in the sense that this keyboard does. It's a representation of an imaginary world in the same way a non-fiction book is a representation of the real world. This is the nature of writing. My point was that we don't have to impose an intermediate level of symbolism (which allegory does) between the imaginary dystopian world and the real world. We can accept it as "the thing itself," as Chris said.

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But we don't have to, and it's not "nonsense" or juvenile to do so.

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2. Agreed, but there is still such a thing as misinterpretation. Once heard a kid in a history class describe Madame Bovary as the "hero" of "Madame Bovary." Whoops, missed the boat on that one.

Many readers' empathy for a selfish, thoughtless character leads them to call him or her a "hero." Is Oedipus a hero? Probably not, but he certainly is the center of his tragedy, and many may feel his attempts at fixing destiny are heroic.

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3. Well that's precisely what I said "lies outside the scope of this little review." To be honest, I'm not sure. I only read the book once, and I felt it conveyed on one reading the gist of its place in the McCarthian canon/universe, but that it would merit a lot more study if I wanted to flesh out the exact content of that place.

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It isn't necessary to examine an author's work through the lens of their previous works.

And while I completely agree with Kate's point (not lauding a masterpiece doesn't make lauding a merely great book incorrect), I have to admit I feel some of Isaiah's pain. From his comments, its obvious he has been reading McCarthy for a while now, and as a fellow long-term McCarthist (have you now, or have you ever been . . . ?) I understand. McCarthy has been the most ignored, over-looked, and under-read of America's great contemporary authors (in the pre e-bay days, I spent a number of years trying to find his older books in used book-stores) its not easy to suddenly hear his name tripping off the tongue of Oprah and every clerk at B&N.

Its the classic delema of the underground art-fan: while we long for more of the world to read McCarthy (and blame them for bad taste and cultural heathendom when they do not), we somewhat resent it when they do, as inevitably it is the "most accessable" of their work that gets popular (and we've lost our out-sider cool, which, let me be honest, I secretly enjoy). Fortunately for us McCarthists, he didn't have to "sell out" to get big - this isn't MMBT or R.E.M.s "Green". McCarthy wrote an amazing, gut-wrenching book which used sentences less than a page long and small adjectives, and the world appreciates that.

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This, not allegory, is a juvenile reaction. "You shouldn't be reading this, because you just don't understand it. MY love for McCarthy transcends yours. I've spent hours thinking about how all of his books fit together and what they MEAN. And here you are, a peon from a pop-culture book club trampling on my hidden field of daisies." I myself often despise or avoid art that's popular with many, many people. But that's a feeling to be overcome.

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Let everyone enjoy the book, and let us have our simmering resentment.

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Simmer away!

While disseminating good literature is good, the danger is that an artist be reduced to a slight, compressed misrepresentation. Pepsi used The Ramones in a comercial. It would be good that all my kids now know "Blitzkrieg Bop," except for the fact that if I play it in class they don't say "Hey, the Ramones are cool," but "Hey, that's the band from that comercial." And then I weep.

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Literary critics in general have little control over what literature does in the mainstream or whether it's read. That's part of the reason I found the post-grad literary theory world a bit of a joke. Thousands of professors writing for each other about how important works were, with the rest of the world scratching its head over the absurdity and unreadability of their papers.

In 100 years, most of the contemporary things you love will disappear into the void and be appreciated as dust of a former world and footnotes in the history of new artists who are lauded as much better than their predecessors. For every Shakespeare and Andrew Lloyd Webber, there are a million critics' darlings.

Read yourself into "Ozymandias" today and ease your simmering resentment with a reminder that the argument over what's good and what's bad is USUALLY for the benefit of the arguer and seldom affects the universe of readers, who, as we do, will stumble into what they like.

"Another way to see the father-son relationship is as an allegory. The ever-cautious father represents Survival. He frequently threatens, steals from and sometimes even kills other people to save his son and himself. The son, contrarily, represents Compassion. He often pesters his father to assist the ravaged, desperate people they encounter. The novel, then, becomes the inner struggle between serving oneself and serving others.

A final interpretation is to see “The Road” as an attempt to face mortality. An old, accomplished writer at the end of his life, McCarthy faces the mystery that lies beyond the grave. Perhaps the darkness of the post-apocalyptic world is the darkness of death, and the father and son are our wandering souls searching to make sense of the incomprehensible terror of the present and the rapidly fading memories of the past."

That, Bryan, is the danger of allegory. You read one of the best books of the year and end up writing shit like that.

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Feel free to crucify me, but those are valid interpretations. They may not be the BEST ones, but what's with the dogpile on allegory?

Chris wrote:

"Here's the danger with popular culture makers like Oprah...While disseminating good literature is good, the danger is that an artist be reduced to a slight, compressed misrepresentation...That, Bryan, is the danger of allegory. You read one of the best books of the year and end up writing shit like that."

What's all this talk about "danger"? There's nothing at all "dangerous" about any of your examples. All they boil down to is, "I don't like the fact that people don't appreciate X work as deeply as I do."

Let's say your hypothetical comes true and McCarthy becomes known only as The Road Guy. Who cares? How does it diminish your enjoyment/appreciation? There's no sense in worrying about what is "objectively" good or bad. History will take care of those questions.

"McCarthy wrote an amazing, gut-wrenching book which used sentences less than a page long and small adjectives, and the world appreciates that."

The "world appreciated" it? Dude, billions upon billions of people don't give a fig about McCarthy or any of his writing.

FWIW, I'm one of them. I thought The Road was terrible. Based on that book, McCarthy is inept as a storyteller and I found his prose style to be tired and boring. I tried reading Blood Meridian a few years ago and gave up after a couple of pages. Not my cup of tea. I'm sure I'll try again in the future, but only after I've read a few hundred other books I'm more curious about.

The larger public will never have our refined sensibilities. In a poll a few years ago, 12% of Americans believed Elvis was still alive. Elton John's Candle in the Wind tribute to Diana is the highest grossing single of all time. Adjusted for inflation, Gone with the Wind is the highest grossing movie of all time. But, really, who gives a shit? Let's talk about what excites us and stop trying to police or fret over the taste of others.

Chris wrote:

"Here's the danger with popular culture makers like Oprah...While disseminating good literature is good, the danger is that an artist be reduced to a slight, compressed misrepresentation...That, Bryan, is the danger of allegory. You read one of the best books of the year and end up writing shit like that."

What's all this talk about "danger"? There's nothing at all "dangerous" about any of your examples. All they boil down to is, "I don't like the fact that people don't appreciate X work as deeply as I do."

Let's say your hypothetical comes true and McCarthy becomes known only as The Road Guy. Who cares? How does it diminish your enjoyment/appreciation? There's no sense in worrying about what is "objectively" good or bad. History will take care of those questions.

"McCarthy wrote an amazing, gut-wrenching book which used sentences less than a page long and small adjectives, and the world appreciates that."

The "world appreciated" it? Dude, billions upon billions of people don't give a fig about McCarthy or any of his writing.

FWIW, I'm one of them. I thought The Road was terrible. Based on that book, McCarthy is inept as a storyteller and I found his prose style to be tired and boring. I tried reading Blood Meridian a few years ago and gave up after a couple of pages. Not my cup of tea. I'm sure I'll try again in the future, but only after I've read a few hundred other books I'm more curious about.

The larger public will never have our refined sensibilities. In a poll a few years ago, 12% of Americans believed Elvis was still alive. Elton John's Candle in the Wind tribute to Diana is the highest grossing single of all time. Adjusted for inflation, Gone with the Wind is the highest grossing movie of all time. But, really, who gives a shit? Let's talk about what excites us and stop trying to police or fret over the taste of others.

In 100 years, most of the contemporary things you love will disappear into the void and be appreciated as dust of a former world and footnotes in the history of new artists who are lauded as much better than their predecessors.

...readers... will stumble into what they like...

__

I think you're being a little cynical. For well over a thousand years, millions of scholars from Iberia to Isfahan slavishly followed Cicero's advice on prose style. People are perfectly capable of valuing and sometimes overvaluing literature of the past, particularly when they don't see much of value being produced in the present. Not that Harold Bloom is the typical reader, but his assessment of Shakespeare as the inventor of humanity and the backhoe and ice cream and babies and everything else that is right and good does overlook the accomplishments of many, many thinkers and writers since. But out of all the idiots I've ever met, not a single one has ever felt that the more recent a book was published the better it is.

People put together genealogies in their head (at least, people who read writers who have bothered to read other writers first.) This sense of genealogy and tradition (alongside a whopping vocab disparity) is, I think, what separates Nora Roberts from Toni Morrison. You can see Faulkner in Morrison, if you stretch a little bit. You can see Melville in Pynchon with little or no effort. (Those songs!) Unlike you, Brendan, I think this matters. We are left with scraps of some of Catullus's poems because he fell out of favor politically. If Catullus had had a popularizer following him things might have been different. Sappho scandalized a lot of the people who read her, and there weren't all that many poets like her at the time, so our reading of her work will always be incomplete because most people were too puzzled to keep it around. Some people think this is less of a problem in the current era because of the profusion of printed matter, but it was a profusion of printed matter and not a lack of care that got some of Plato's dialogues and most of Heraclitus and Sappho and some of Demosthenes' speeches and Cato's and some of Aristotle and Shakespeare and everyone lost. I don't see much stumbling - no one decides to read Middlemarch because they stubbed their toe on a copy.

What you're saying is that it doesn't matter if Blood Meridian gets pulped in the long run because in a couple hundred years no one will care that anyone ever thought it was important, but if we (meaning any bunch of well-read speakers of the most widely written language on the planet) think it's important and it expresses something about our own surroundings unlike anything else, then that alone makes it important enough to be worth saving and promoting and sharing, and arguing about the way Isaiah is. It does matter what we think of The Road compared to Blood Meridian because who knows what'll get pulped in a hundred years? We can never establish the "objective" value of a text because the word "value" does not permit it, but if we all talk about Blood Meridian enough, then someone will pick it up and find something worth remarking on. Whether it ends up as a seminal text or a more private, insular pleasure depends on the temperament of whoever's next, and that we can't predict.

Critical conclusions may have little to do with the ultimate reception of a text, but critical attention is still important.

[editor's note: holy shit, sorry this is so long!]

Wow. I'm not sure where all this anger is coming from - I guess I missed the mark when I was aiming at somewhat self-deprecating humor mixed with serious literary debate. I guess I missed the memo that said we must be deadly serious at all times.

I said:
"Its the classic dilemma of the underground art-fan: while we long for more of the world to read McCarthy (and blame them for bad taste and cultural heathendom when they do not), we somewhat resent it when they do, as inevitably it is the "most accessible" of their work that gets popular (and we've lost our out-sider cool, which, let me be honest, I secretly enjoy). Fortunately for us McCarthists, he didn't have to "sell out" to get big - this isn't MMBT or R.E.M.s "Green". McCarthy wrote an amazing, gut-wrenching book which used sentences less than a page long and small adjectives, and the world appreciates that."

Brendon, you didn't need to point out that my some of my reaction was juvenile - I pointed that out myself. I was readily admiting that my feelings are somewhat immature and reactionary; that was the point I meant to make with such self-mocking items as saying I" condemn them as cultural heathens," that I "secretly enjoy" my "out-sider cool" and comparing myself to a late 90's Mighty Mighty Boss Tones or R.E.M. fan (to continue the self-flagellation: I was both).

Please note that, when this began, I was a bit on everyone sides: I understood why allegory and the recent pulitzer annoyed Isaiah, and yet I said anything that gets people reading McCarthy is good, a la Oprah.

Then I said I understood the innate reaction to recoil against Oprah and such, but I meant to do so in a somewhat ironic way - yes, I am a bit of an innate snob, but yes, I realize its silly and elitist of me. I'm sorry that point didn't get across. Did I secretly like it back when I could say "What, you've never heard of Modest Mouse - they are TOTALLY under-appreciated"? Yes. Did I resent it a bit when they became a readily available pop-icon? I hate to admit it, but yes. Is that a silly, childish, immature reaction? Yes again. Dito McCarthy.

Did I say that popular culture makers are dangerous? Yes, but I've a great weakness for hyperbole and melodrama, and a bit given to overstatement. I thought that was all in good fun, and a way to make a point.

All this is to try to put this in context - I believe everything I said, I'm just confused as to why the conversation went from literary exchange to irate, wounded defensive-offense.

Brendon, you seemed confused as to why we would argue over whether something is good or bad; Bryan, you seem offended that I dislike allegory. Isn't disagreeing and debating and arguing over what's good and bad the point of this site? I don't just want to hear what someone thinks is good; I want to hear what they think is bad and to tell me why. Tell me I'm wrong, tell me you disagree or that my ideas are shit, but let's do it as friends; there's no reason not to.

p.s. I posted this at the same time you did Conrad, so this comes before your little essay. Consider yourself ignored in totum until I have a change to mull over your tretise.

Conrad wrote:

Critical conclusions may have little to do with the ultimate reception of a text, but critical attention is still important.

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All well said! The debate is the thing, if I can rudely use Shakespeare. After all, if I didn't value the debate of literature, I wouldn't be here. But when the critics stand up to talk down perfectly valid interpretations of the text, well, I enjoy crying foul. Why not defend the underdog before the caterwauling bands? If one person likes _The Road_ 'cause it's violent, well, bully for him. It IS violent in parts and awful, so that's a wonderful thing to draw from it. If someone else enjoys picking at the text to draw its similarities to previous McCarthy books they've loved and studied closely, marvelous!

So, in that vein, the Father, the Son, and everybody else in _The Road_ is presented in a world that's awful and makes no sense. To interpret that as allegory, to see the Father and the Son as religious symbols or allegorical symbols for Compassion and Survival, well, I could write a dissertation on that. McCarthy's choice to paint this world with so light a brush on explication and so dark a brush on horrors makes me feel alienated from his main characters. The fact that the Father is so relentlessly lost makes me think of him less as a human like me, and more a fundamentally distorted image or a person who's scarred beyond repair with a Son who gets...

** SPOILER! SPOILER! SPOILER! **


... whisked away by deus ex machina at the end of the book. In fact, by thinking about this book more and more, I'm talking myself out of liking it. How's that for debate?

Chris wrote:

Wow. I'm not sure where all this anger is coming from - I guess I missed the mark when I was aiming at somewhat self-deprecating humor mixed with serious literary debate. I guess I missed the memo that said we must be deadly serious at all times.

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No, not at all! I didn't feel angry at all.

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All this is to try to put this in context - I believe everything I said, I'm just confused as to why the conversation went from literary exchange to irate, wounded defensive-offense.

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I was just having fun. When one person leans over the precipice into elitism, someone else can pop up and bark back for populism.

The truth is, my initial comment, which I should have left and deleted the rest, was my main question. Isaiah pissed on somebody's else idea of what the book meant, but neglected to tell us what he thought. That's no fun! I wanted to learn.