cormac mccarthy

stories

Dear friend now in the dusty clockless hours of the town when the streets lie black and steaming in the wake of the watertrucks and now when the drunk and the homeless have washed up in the lee of walls in alleys or abandoned lots and cats go forth highshouldered and lean in the grim perimeters about, now in these sootblacked brick or cobbled corridors where lightwire shadows make a gothic harp of cellar doors no soul shall walk save you.

Old stone walls unplumbed by weathers, lodged in their striae fossil bones, limestone scarabs rucked in the floor of this once inland sea. Thin dark trees through yon iron palings where the dead keep their own small metropolis. Curious marble architecture, stele and obelisk and cross and little rainworn stones where names grow dim with years. Earth packed with samples of the casketmaker’s trade, the dusty bones and rotted silk, the deathwear stained with carrion. Out there under the blue lamplight the trolleytracks run on to darkness, curved like cockheels in the pinchbeck dust. The steel leaks back the day’s heat, you can feel it through the floors of yours shoes. Past these corrugated warehouse walls down little sandy streets where blownout autos sulk on pedestals of cinderblock.
—
Hey Suttree, they called.
Goddamn, said J-Bone, surging from the bowels of the couch. He threw an arm around Suttree’s shoulders. Here’s my old buddy, he said. Where’s the whiskey? Give him a drink of that old crazy shit.
How you doing, Jim?
I’m doing all around, where you been? Where’s the whiskey? Here ye go. Get ye a drink, Bud.
What is it?
Early Times. Best little old drink in the world. Get ye a drink, Sut.
Suttree held it to the light. Small twigs, debris, matter, coiled in the oily liquid. He shook it. Smoke rose from the yellow floor of the bottle.
Shit almighty, he said.
Best little old drink in the world, sang out J-Bone. Have a drink, Bud.
He unthreaded the cap, sniffed, shivered, drank.
J-Bone hugged the drinking figure. Watch old Suttree take a drink, he called out.
Suttree’s eyes were squeezed shut and he was holding the bottle out to whoever would take it. Goddamn. What is that shit?
Early Times, called J-Bone. Best little old drink they is. Drink that and you wont feel a thing the next mornin.
Or any morning.
Whoo lord, give it here. Hello Early, come to your old daddy.

Yeah, right? Lyrical isn’t close to being the right word. How do you do that?

There’s an odd, not too interesting and short story of Suttree and me. I bought the book nearly two years ago, read all up to the last 80 pages, then shelved it, for a reason I didn’t understand, not worth a rat turd; really, I had no idea why. Bad book? Oh no, amazing book. It is a bit slow to read, absolutely, but that’s because it’s not hardly even a ‘book.’ The words of the first page tie together and together stop and kick and knock around and in one page there’s some myth and some lost and some found and it is the slowest reading page I’ve read. It feels like he’s more a painter than a writer, pencil his brush. And so now I crack the cover and remember how brilliantly this man uses words.

Edit:
I posted this halfway through the book, then finished it. Whewee. Not sure I like the last quarter. It’s weird, it’s definitely kinda weird; I could only reccomend this book if you’re real good and ready for a weird few final chapters.

ideas

Asked about writing stories:

You always have this image, of the perfect thing, which you can never achieve, but which you never stop trying to achieve. But I think, that at the core of it, there’s this image that you have, this interior image of something that is absolutely perfect, and that’s–that’s your signpost, your guide. You’ll never get there, but without it you’ll never get anywhere.

stories

There’s anothern.
He ran his arm down the hole and lay on the ground feeling about in the dark beneath them. He closed his eyes. I got him, he said.
The dog he brought up was dead.
Yonder’s your runt, Billy said.
The little dog was curled and stiff, its paws before its face.
He put it down and pushed his shoulder deeper into the hole.
Can you find him?
No.
Billy stood. Let me try, he said. My arm’s longern yours.
All right.
Billy lay in the dirt and ran his arm down into the hole.
Come here you little turd, he said.
Have you got him?
Yeah. Damn if I don’t think he’s offerin’ to bite me.
The dog came up mewling and twisting in his hand.
This aint no runt, he said.
Let me see him.
He’s fat as a butterball.
John Grady took the little dog and held it in his cupped hand.
Wonder what he was doin off back there by himself?
Maybe he was with the one that died.
John Grady held the dog up and looked into its small wrinkled face. I think I got me a dog, he said.
——-

You sure you don’t want a glass of water?
No mam. I’m alright.
Betty, he said.
Yes.
I’m not what you think I am. I aint nothin. I don’t know why you put up with me.
Well, Mr Parham, I know who you are. And I do know why. You go to sleep now. I’ll see you in the morning.
Yes mam.

From Cities of the Plain, by Cormac McCarthy

I’m gonna make a big stretch…McCarthy is like Messi. Yup. Messi doesn’t use tricks or gimmicks or anything that he doesn’t need, just perfect timing and sense of the game. He’s so good he doesn’t need that silly stuff. Reading these books, it’s like that–there aren’t tricks or gimmicks in the plot, and it’s all so much more story for it.

Down drift the leaves of change, I think the long time standing winner in my book of series of books, the Hitchhikers Guide, has come to the end of it’s season there.