The Gospel According to Cormac McCarthy, or, What’s Greek for “bad news”?

February 28, 2012 in General, Staff Posts with 4 Comments

 

Cormac McCarthy

This was posted on the Gospel Coalition blog earlier this month and I am grateful to the author, Mike Cosper, for several reasons. Firstly, it is great to see that in a blog consisting of posts by various theologians, pastors, and church leaders there is still some recognition of the significant role that literature has even in our current culture (and everyone with Relief said “Amen”). Despite the apparent conflict between certain subsets of Christianity and mainstream art, there are those of us who are willing to affirm the potential use of the latter in the service of the former. Coincidentally, this brings me to my second reason for gratitude: Cosper’s emphasis on the consequential role of Cormac McCarthy in both the development of the history of American Literature and individual (and potentially Christian) readers.

At the end of his post Cosper quotes something John Piper wrote on Twitter, “Cormac McCarthy is to the American literary canon what Judges is to the biblical canon.” I remember considering the aptness of that tweet myself some months ago. What book of the Bible is McCarthy most like? If that question had been posed to me, I would have suggested Ecclesiastes, but as I have been working through Judges in a study with a group from my church, I see the connection.

Let me give you some of my own context. While I am not particularly well versed in contemporary fiction, Cormac McCarthy is perhaps my favorite living author, and among my favorite authors of all time. I first encountered his work in high school when The Road was published. I read the entire book in one afternoon. Since then I have worked through his other novels, but at a much slower pace. If I have done my math correctly (insert English-major joke here), I have read 10 of his 13 published works. Simply put, there is something I find deeply appealing in his writings.

Cosper does a very neat job of outlining the distinctive features of McCarthy’s literary voice, so I will not spend time reiterating the various reasons McCarthy is important. Instead, let me emphasize one important feature: McCarthy’s unrelenting portrayal of good and evil, the beautiful and the horrific.

McCarthy’s villains are absolutely terrifying and downright compelling. Certain novels feature specific villainous characters in prominent roles, but none are as memorable as Judge Holden in Blood Meridian. To go into much detail would be pointless, you really need to experience the evil that this character exudes through the novel itself.

That said, let me assert that the Judge is eerily compelling, mostly because he is a realistic and depraved human taken to a mythological level. He embodies the evil innate in the human condition and forces those around him to confront it. His worldview is Enlightenment reason taken to a logical extreme which is why he boldly declares “Moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak…A moral view can never be proven right or wrong by any ultimate test” (263).

The Judge is scary because he makes a lot of sense. Given the darkness of the world we live in, McCarthy’s villains are particularly frightening because they are so hard to disagree with. Evil, as portrayed in McCarthy, is not something to ignore. Yet, as Cosper writes, there is always a glimmer of hope. Phil Christman described McCarthy’s world as suggesting “a kind of Calvinism minus God” in a Books and Culture review, which is certainly accurate, though not necessarily the full story. McCarthy’s novels certainly portray darkness in such a manner, but by doing so they seem to be fashioned to suggest the need for something more. “This cannot be the whole picture,” readers think as they see the horrors committed by a Judge Holden or Anton Chigurh. If evil and brutality is shown explicitly in McCarthy’s novels, goodness and beauty shine all the brighter by comparison.

As Cosper aptly writes, McCarthy is not for everyone. His tamest books are still brutally honest about the violence that comes with the territory of his subject matter. Yet, for the reader willing to accept this, there is so much richness to be found in his works. If you have never read anything by him I recommend beginning with The Road or All the Pretty Horses, or, for the more daring reader, I strongly urge you to take on Blood Meridian, which I feel is McCarthy’s darkest but most important work. At the very least, watch the Coen brothers’ impressive 2007 adaptation of McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men for a taste of his unique voice.

Jake Slaughter is an editorial intern with Relief.

Sixteen (or so) Candles

February 24, 2012 in Staff Posts, Writing and Publishing with 3 Comments

Michael Dean Clark

Since this blog will publish on my birthday, I decided to make some wishes with it. Yes, I am aware that wishes made public supposedly won’t come true. And yet, wishes kept captive in the inner-recesses of my addled mind go nowhere anyway, so I feel safe in putting a few out there. And yes, I am also aware that making my wish list public might be taken as a tad self-serving. That’s because it is. And I’m ok with that.

Wish #1  This year, my 38th if you must know, I really hope to be found by a story that makes me feel so inferior I am compelled to write it. This is not because I have an inflated opinion of myself and my abilities. Rather, I want desperately to be stunned into the process of telling an amazing story that, for some reason or other, has not been told. I am convinced that it is not an artistic duty that drives story as much as it is the incumbent need to bear witness to the invisible.

Wish #2 Re: Wish #1 – Because so many stories worth telling get ignored for ones we’ve heard too many times before, my second wish is that anyone who ends up reading this blog will also be confronted with a story they must tell. If it happens, I’m hoping the candle I blew out with your name on it compels you to find the keyboard rather than think “Someone should really write about that.”

Wish #3 Re: Wish #1&2 – Because the desire to write a story is the response we SHOULD automatically heed, my third wish is that all of us who commit these stories to prose actually seek their publication so we are not the only ones who get the opportunity to experience them. Instead, I wish for all of these stories to eventually be submitted to various publications (and no, this is not me shoe-horning in two wishes, Jafar). If you’re not sure where to send the story you write, spend some time here.

Wish #4 And for my final wish, a little selfishness on my part (as if taking one more wish than the customary three is not selfish enough). I wish that all our stories find homes, bear witness, and inspire others to stand in the path of stories that will force them, in turn, to be witnesses themselves. 

So don’t let me down people. It is my birthday and all.

Michael Dean Clark is the fiction editor at Relief and an assistant professor of writing at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, California. When he’s not writing or parenting via shame and sarcasm, Clark is waiting (im)patiently for the return of Psych, and you know that’s right.

Reading Period Ends March 1st!

February 23, 2012 in Relief News with 0 Comments

It's time!

Just a reminder that the reading period for Relief 6.1 ends March 1st. Submit your fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, photography, graphic narrative, or images soon or we can’t help you. Click the Submit tab above for more info.

“In Time” Out of Touch

February 22, 2012 in Faith and Culture, Staff Posts with 0 Comments

Go to movie facebook pageLyle Enright likes his sci-fi a little more subtler.

I remember trying to work my way through John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress when I was much younger. I don’t remember a whole lot of the content, rather I recall the throbbing intellectual pain that comes with trying to process something way over your head way before your time.

I do, however, remember developing my first real appreciation for allegory based on the little I was able to get through, and by the time I finished Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia I believed all the best stories in the world worked on that most noble of narrative devices.

I’ve been proved wrong since then, of course – it seems like we as a species are quickly losing our ability to speak in parables. George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead tetralogy notwithstanding, many attempts at modern allegory tend to fall short, the latest example being Andrew Niccol’s sci-fi thriller film In Time (2011). But in a very interesting twist, while the film bumbles over the sort of melodramatic dialogue that can only be acceptable to a sense of misplaced self-righteousness, it does bring up a number of interesting points.

At its core, the film is a very driven and well-intentioned treatise on social justice, something that we here at Relief care very much about. In this case, it’s in regard to the growing disparity between the rich and the poor when it comes to quality of life. In this not-too-distant-future, time is money – literally, it is currency. You get your first twenty-five years free and then (what a birthday present) your heart lights the fuse to a genetic time-bomb of sorts. Congratulations; you have a year left. Spend it and die, or work and earn your next sunrise.

Of course, if you’re a savvy capitalist, you can quickly make a minute last an hour. In fact, there are people who have literally millions of years stored up for themselves.

Hundreds of thousands of lifetimes that, in most cases, could have and originally did belong to other people.

There are some, though, who see something very wrong with a system that can turn out like this. Not least among them is Will Salas (Justin Timberlake) who, after receiving a “monetary” gift of astounding proportions and losing his mother at her last second, decides to take his new-found century and… What else? Overturn society, of course.

“For a few immortals to live, many people must die” – It’s a mantra that gets tossed around a lot in this film, and our Christ-given sense of justice should cringe accordingly. Who has that right, exactly? “No one,” the film answers, “And we’re going to fix it!”

…By enlisting the help of an impulsive socialite and holding up time banks at gunpoint and redistributing those eons to preachers, children and the downtrodden, apparently.

Truth be told, the situation doesn’t sound too far off from what we see in our own world today. “We are the ninety-nine percent!” – how often have we heard that recently? This is a film in which the ninety-nine percent fights back and literally dissolves the one percent among the masses. It’s a Robin Hood tale told by some of our most recognized actors. Subtle it is not, but it does get its point across.

The efficacy of that point, however, is another matter. It should set us on edge that this film’s idea of social justice essentially amounts to terrorism, and at several points we lean forward and expect that the protagonists are about to learn from the repercussions of their actions: among the first things anyone does after benefiting from Salas’s generous crime spree is to go out and buy a gun to defend themselves. Even the misguided paladin, Time Keeper Raymond Leon (Cillian Murphy) – yes, I gagged too, you are forgiven – has moments of very real wisdom and social consciousness. Yet he and everyone else who serves “The One Percent” gets what’s coming to them in the end; bad people are confirmed in their badness, good people remain responsible and, at least onscreen, incorruptible, and whether you’re bad or good is almost as simple as asking how rich you were at the beginning.

Every nationalist revolution in history, every change in power, every religion, every drama of government and society – not to mention the Gospel of Jesus Christ – will tell you that the whole question is far messier than that.

“What I tell you in the dark, speak in the daylight; what is whispered in your ear, proclaim from the roofs. Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father. And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.” – Matthew 10:27-30

Lyle Enright is an editorial intern with Relief. He will graduate in English from Trinity University Illinois this May.

Listening to Kerouac

February 17, 2012 in General, Staff Posts with 3 Comments

Buy the album

Kerouac on CD

Jake Slaughter is inspired to seek the voice of a generation.

Maybe it isn’t the case for everyone, but I tend to think of poetry as being a primarily written form of communication. Spoken word poetry, while certainly enjoyable, is always risky. While the written poetic voice typically inspires a familiarity with readers, the spoken voice allows for no ambiguities: once heard, it cannot be unheard.

Have you ever seen an interview or heard a reading from an author whose voice is either off-putting or ill fitted to their work? I certainly have. Maybe it is a good thing that we don’t have recordings of any of the historical literary greats. Can you imagine our horror if Shakespeare had a high, squeaky voice? I remember when I found a recording of T.S. Eliot reading “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” It’s not that I think it bad, simply different. Eliot certainly has the type of voice I would imagine him to have, but there is little of the emotion I would expect to hear in such a poem.

Part of this comes down to cultural convention. Many of the earliest recordings of poets from this era have a similar persona. This persona almost unanimously suggests the authoritative sage, content with reading a poem rather than performing it.

In direct contrast to these types of poetry recordings stands Jack Kerouac, specifically his 1959 album Poetry for the Beat Generation. Within the first few seconds the contrast is made apparent, for Kerouac’s poetry is accompanied by some jazzy piano music played by the television personality Steve Allen.

I had read some of his works throughout high school and I was hesitant to listen to his recordings for fear of it hurting my enjoyment of the fascinating Kerouac persona. But when I finally sat down with my iPod, I was more than pleasantly surprised: I was captivated.

There is something unique about Kerouac’s voice. He is both regional and universal, both dated and modern. Most importantly, he gives life to his work. There is no monotone in Kerouac’s performance style. He finds a way to make known all his little poetic tricks: alliteration is biting, assonance abounds, and his timing is impeccable.

Kerouac is one of those rare authors whose reading voice makes me enjoy his writing voice all the more. And for me, he is representative of all his generation.

As part of the Beat Generation, Kerouac’s writing voice is obviously memorable and distinctly important in the history of American literature. I sense a kinship between my generation and Kerouac’s. For just as the Beats decided to hitchhike across America in search of both personal and national identity, we seek identity through our journeys on the World Wide Web. Inevitably, the same loneliness is there, along with the same need for answers to life’s ultimate questions.

What are the answers being given in response to the loneliness of our generation? And more importantly, what are the answers we ought to be giving?

The true answers to life’s questions are like the spoken voice of the poet: once heard, it cannot be unheard.

Jake Slaughter is an editorial intern with Relief. He will graduate this spring with a degree in English from Trinity International University.

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