When I run out of factory fresh books, I turn to my bookshelves and re-read older books. I stumbled into the Cormac Mcarthy section recently (I have most of his books) and read Cities of the Plain. Most things go wrong in this book, but I read it all the way through because l like McCarthy’s dialogue, descriptions, and the tone of his books. I think he writes with grit and stars rather than ink. This book has a few good people in it.
I thought, what the hell, I’ll read another. I chose Outer Dark. This novel has a lot more grit in it and even the stars aren’t clean. It doesn’t have any good people in it, though some try hard to be good in narrow ways.
Guy Davenport, in The New York Times, said, “Nor does Mr,. McCarthy waste a single word on his character’s thoughts. With total objectivity, he describes what they do and records their speech. Such discipline comes not only from mastery over words but from an understanding wise enough and compassionate enough to dare to tell o abysmally dark a story.”
The fact that it’s so well written commits one to keep reading even though reading McCarthy is often like drinking poison for recreation. If it were badly written, it wouldn’t bother readers so much, especially when the world around us during this pandemic seems to have come out of something McCarthy might have orchestrated for his next novel or screenplay.
Time to move on to another section of my bookshelf.
Malcolm
Malcolm R. Campbell’s Mountain Song is free on Kindle.
At least the spammers aren’t here in my den and, insofar as I know, their messages don’t transmit COVID-19 even though some of them promise that they can provide the most accurate information on the planet about the pandemic. I see those people as just another example of folks with no qualifications who are disputing the statements being made by people with medical/research qualifications. Plus, they want me to pay for their opinions. I think not.
This morning, I found a couple of store brand packages of toilet paper at the Food Lion. First time I’ve seen any there in almost a month. They also had paper towels and Kleenex. My lucky day.
I’m also coping by re-reading old books, currently James Patterson’s Instinct about a serial killer who leaves cryptic clues to his next victim by placing a playing card next to each person he murders. The novel came out in 2017 and was co-written by Howard Roughan. It demonstrates the problem with the police using the services of an expert. If the murders keep going on and on an on, the expert really isn’t solving anything. If the murders stop right after the expert solves the whole case on page 20, you don’t have much of a novel.
I listened to Queen Elizabeth II’s brief pandemic speech on TV last night and though it was a reasonable appeal for working together to solve this crisis as Brits have done before. She’s old enough to remember the Blitz, the country’s attempts to find safe places for the children, and the resolve with which everyone mobilized for efforts in battlezones and on the homefront.
Comfort food is a high priority with us right now. I just took a squash casserole out of the oven to be warmed up for several meals. My wife’s been making pies and rice casseroles. We usually pair these with whatever we can find on TV, including “How to Get Away With Murder.” Our joke with that series is that (like “Lost”) we seem to know less and less about what’s going on after watching each episode.