Wednesday, May 02, 2007

This is going to get me in trouble ...

... Slogging through best-sellerdom.

Correction: As will be seen in tomorrow's Inquirer, I made a gaffe in this piece. The Road was on the short list for the NBCC award, but didn't win it. Kiran Desai did. As James Taranto likes to say, Homer nods.

18 comments:

  1. Frank--I thought a cogent article. LOVE the phrase 'pornography of despair.' That has to be used in a poem somewhere. :) If I ever manage to write it, I'll be sure to attribute the phrase to you.

    best
    lisa

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  2. Why should it get you in trouble? Just because you happen to be wrong?

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  3. Anonymous11:40 AM

    Great article Frank I've linked.
    I also love the phrase ljcohen mentions.

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  4. No, Lee, I thought I'd get in trouble for suggesting that the so-called great stylist is a literary phony. But if you liked The Road, that's fine by me. De gustibus and all.

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  5. Anonymous2:11 PM

    Trouble. Hmmm...maybe, maybe nor. There does seem to be a contradiction in how absolutely you disparage McCarthy's prose and plot for their vagary while supplying precise political stances behind what remains a symbolist fictional account of an imaginary world. And a compelling one at that.

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  6. *GASP*

    How dare you disagree with Oprah!

    j/k :-)

    Great article Frank.

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  7. Okay, so after the last regugee eats the last can of spam--the last scavenger (bite by precious slow bite) eats the last refugee. There are then nothing left to eat and no more humans, animals or anything alive to eat anything else anyway. And that last scavenger wins?

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  8. Anonymous2:46 PM

    I'm not going to disagree with you, Frank, but this review felt just ever-so-slightly co-written by Andy Rooney.

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  9. The Andy Rooney comment hurts, Tom, but I can take it.

    WB: I didn't take it to be symbolist fictional account of an imaginary world. The world was this one. The fictional premise is that it has been destroyed. The poltical stances are clearly implied in the text.

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  10. Hi, Frank. My comment was meant as a joke, though in fact I respectfully disagree with you on almost all counts, and feel you fail to discuss some of the essential aspects of the novel, most obviously the nature of the father/son relationship.

    McCarthy's style is really difficult to examine properly in a comment - though I'd be glad to do so at length elsewhere - so I'll also let it go as matter of taste, except to note that punctuation is a perfectly acceptable stylistic device, and in any case I feel the use of apostrophes in most common contractions is superfluous.

    But I'm ever so glad you mentioned cockroaches, which brought to mind Kafka's Metamorphosis. Another implausible tale?

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  11. Anonymous3:42 PM

    So clearly implied that you weren't able to produce one passage of clear political import? McCarthy expresses nostalgia for a previous era, including one that was less polluted. Does it follow that he's an environmentalist? And are you ignoring the novelistic device of the narrator? Can we really ascribe the political views (that I am still at a loss to find) directly to McCarthy?

    And I don't understand how any novelistic world can ever be anything other than fictional. But it seems more than clear that we don't see eye to eye.

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  12. Anonymous4:39 PM

    Apologies for that below-the-belt Rooneying I gave you (read: me making an entrance). As I said, I agree that this is far from McCarthy's finest, but I think a mere catalog of its stylistic faults hardly constitutes a cogent review, basically tongue-in-cheek as it is. Where MY "pornography of despair" is centerfold is in book review pages that could otherwise house coverage of overlooked, GOOD reading.

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  13. Hi Lee,
    Fear not. I figured you were joshing me. Reviewing isn't an exact science. It isn't even a science. Anyone is entitled to like like - without apology - whatever they, well, like.
    Hi WB: I think it worth noting that I never use the word "political" in my review.
    And Hi again, Tom: Thanks to the blogging community, I'm managing to get reviews of books that would otherwise be overlooked. Jane Gardam's Old Filth is one example that comes to mind. The review The Inquirer ran of The Road, by the way, praised the book highly. Mine is a dissenting opinion. I wrote it because I was asked to. Usually, I confine myself to reviewing books that I've read and liked and think others would like to. I do that because space is at a premium and I don't want to waste it unnecessarily on negative reviews.

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  14. Anonymous10:11 PM

    Maybe you thought this piece would get you into trouble because there is an error in the first paragraph. The Road did not with the National Book Critics Circle award, though McCarthy's novel was shortlisted for it this year. Kiran Desai won it, and I doubt he's sharing. Mr. McCarthy, however, did win that award as well as the National Book award in 1992 for All the Pretty Horses, you know, when he must have been really hungering for some "mainstream literary recognition." Mr. Wilson, if your grasp of basic facts are any indication of your reading comprehension skills, it's not really a mystery why The Road barely registered with you.

    McCarthy's book forces his readers to examine what sacrifices they would make for their loved ones when the social contract breaks down. How strong is the bond between parent and child? What does it mean to be good? You saw only the despair and political posturing where there was love and hope and morality. Didn't even the dedication to the book give you a moment's pause?

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  15. Well, you see, A.L., not all of us are like you and never make mistakes.
    A noble theme does not in itself a great book make. It must be dealt with nobly as well. By removing any and possibility of hope - the people are going to die, all of them - McCarthy makes his book an exercise in nihilism. There is no ground for hope in The Road. If you take the book on its own terms, it seems to me you have to follow it to its logical conclusion: the father/son bond is an exercise in futility. Everybody loses in the end and there is going to be no starting over. That is the message of the book. If you find that uplifting, fine.

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  16. I just want to add that Russell Hoban's novel "Riddley Walker" is on an almost identical theme, and Hoban's book is so much better-written. And the book lives you with hope at the end, to boot.

    Perhaps a really well-written book on the apocalyptic theme might be the erotica of despair, rather than the pornography of despair.

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  17. Anonymous2:32 PM

    Dear Frank: So this is what we have to expect from the B Tierney led, "branded", shock journalism school of newspaper sales. I was not sure whether your article was in fact a 'review' or a simple statement intended to produce a response. From your tag line above, I now know it to be the latter. BTW, McCarthy may be many things, nilhistic is one, but he definitely does not lack a command of language; and as such you can be fairly sure that the repetition and simple sentence structures were intended to reflect the subject matter and the reduction of the world to its 'parsable entities' (or some such, as I am without the book). I just wish the Paper would devote more resources to book reviews.

    chj

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  18. Anonymous4:02 PM

    If you can still spark this much passion and even anger with a book review, maybe there's still hope for the world of books yet.

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