Literature is filled with dudes that wax poetic about other dudes as they travel the harsh terrain of life in a singular and lonely way. Some are hailed as geniuses; most don’t do much for me.

But from this tradition of dudery comes Cormac McCarthy. He’s a writer who matters.

Over 40+ years and 10 novels, McCarthy has moved from ultraviolent yet flowery and verbose works to stripped down and utterly heartrending pieces of fiction. He’s a natural rebel as he breaks common writing structure rules: Witness the complete absence of dialogue tags or even punctuation. Ride along with his run-on sentences, followed by fragments, completed with entire thoughts expressed in a word. Just try to follow the time and space jumping, and keep pace with narrator and perspective changes.

But McCarthy’s quiet rebellion goes further, and establishes a truly genre-bending and exciting canon. A good majority of his work, especially the most well known books, revolve around a Southwest of the past or the present. Westerns of book and film could once be said to be the domain of pride and (male) code and rah-rah country sentiment. They were traditional, with a firm sense of morality, of who was right and who was wrong. McCarthy completely upends that tradition, narrating with characters that make questionable actions, that are pushed by confused and degraded driving forces. They’re often the bad guys. Even in the rare cases when his characters are acting from a sense of right and protecting others, their inherent selfishness is still carefully displayed.

The world is messy and violent and dangerous. McCarthy shows that to extremes, but also makes the tales seem natural, inevitable, even necessary. It’s exhilarating, and truly frightening. That’s the power of good writing, and it comes from McCarthy.

A few choice examples from the McCarthy realm:

• Outer Dark. A man and a woman search for each other in a desperately poor landscape haunted by nightmarish figures. Incest! Cannibals! Wandering! A dark little tale that’s often overlooked in his canon, but one that sticks with you.
• Blood Meridian. A band of men “patrol” and hunt the lands of Texas and Mexico. The book is dominated by two words: The Judge. One of the creepiest, most hilarious nightmare figures in literature. An ultraviolent and dirty book steeped in historical accuracy, one currently being translated to film, which could be transcendent or just sick and wrong.



• Border Trilogy. Three novels placed on the border of territory and myth, with men done in by their loves, their lusts and their loneliness. All the Pretty Horses and Cities of the Plain are the bookends that garner most attention, but for a simultaneously amazing and infuriating read go for the middle chapter, The Crossing.
• No Country for Old Men. A good old boy takes a stash of cash left behind from a drug deal gone bad. A chase ensues. Seen the movie? It’s terrific and terrifically faithful to the source, with some amazing performances. But you get more from the book. It’s sweeping and focused at the same time, with yet another creepy, funny and just wrong villain in Chigurh.
• The Road. After an unnamed apocalypse, all hell breaks loose. But McCarthy keeps his vision of this nightmare almost exclusively pointed at a father and son traveling together. The fear is palpable, and the despair inescapable, and when we finally see a little bit of what’s to fear, it’s shocking. Just as shocking is the capacity for real emotion and love in its presence.

Got a McCarthy favorite? Tell us about it in the comments!

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