Eddie Whitlock's Blog: Reader and Writer - Posts Tagged "outer-dark"

I just realized that there is another living author whom I would love to meet: Cormac McCarthy. This guy doesn't write books. He writes literature. If people aren't reading his stuff 200 years from now, it's because there are no people.

The Road was the first of his books that I read. I grabbed it when I first heard about the movie, wanting to read it before seeing it. I love a good post-apocalyptic tale and this is one of the best. It is sad and hopeless. That's what an apocalypse would (or will) be like. It's also horrific in a way that horror novels only want to be. The worst monster is us.

Outer Dark is a creepy tale of a girl looking for her brother, who took away - and maybe killed - her baby. It is also a horrible story, wonderfully told. It hurts to read it. Still, it is wonderful.

Child of God is the heart-warming tale of a necrophiliac. Okay. Maybe "heart-warming" is not accurate. Well. It's totally not accurate. Child of God manages to make an outcast at least human. Most of us have experienced being outcasts at some point. McCarthy lets us see the loneliness of a man willing to touch the dead in an effort to touch someone.

Blood Meridian is a Western and it is one I recommend to those fellows who think how much better it would have been to live in the untamed American West. I don't think so. You'd have starved to death. Or been killed by some lunatic. Or died of disease. And any of them long before you hit middle age.

So. To recap: Read Cormac McCarthy. Trust me.