No Pictures: Cormac McCarthy And Omar, More Noir & Scumbags

The Road
By Cormac McCarthy, 2006

A few years back, one of those sociopaths who writes for Pitchfork said that if, at this point, you don't believe in Lil Wayne, you're just fooling yourself.  The same could be said about Cormac McCarthy.  While his biggest public exposure to date is now the Coen brothers No Country For Old Men, McCarthy's star continues to rise based on his prose.  The Road is one of his best--it can't take the title justly owned by Blood Meredian, but it's on the same level of quality as the Border Trilogy.  A book that demands attention, that's almost painful to put down, McCarthy's post-apocalyptic novel of a father and son in the wastelands, hunting food and struggling to survive, The Road's acclaim is well deserved.  It's a tremendously good work, even though some of the ground it treads may be well-covered territory, and although it may currently bear the anti-hipster Scarlet O of Oprah's club, it's a book that's going to feature The Wire's Omar and Viggo "Just Fucked Your Mom!" Mortenson when it becomes a movie.  You didn't like it why?  Oh, cause you like Green Lantern.

The Dain Curse
By Dashiell Hammett, 1929

Dain reads like it what it is:  a book that was published in a serialized format.  It piles a hell of a lot of stuff, and a hell of a lot of murder, up onto the same characters throughout the entire book, preventing the total collapse of narrative by constant forward momentum and then ends with the sort of "should've seen that coming, probably kind of did but forgot that guy's name" kind of ending that most of these type of thrillers have.  It's a fine enough read, but it's not the Hammett of the Maltese Falcon, with a tightly wound narrative--it's the Hammett of pulp magazines, with a loose grip on a whirlwind of events.  What's tastier than a whirlwind?  Besides not watching any of those straight to DVD sequels to The Prophecy?  Answer:  Nothing.

The Little Sister
By Raymond Chandler, 1949

Out of all the Chandler books this reader has been exposed to, this is probably the most un-entertaining one yet--of course, it's one of those books that's based in Hollywood and features a bunch of actors and producers.  With the possible exception of Altman's The Player, and a couple of parts of Ellroy's LA Confidential, there's very little that's even flirtatious with the prospect of being interesting about the "realities" of Hollywood.  In a way, that sort of makes this book interesting, since it's from 1949.  That means Hollywood has been a boring ass place to set fiction for over fifty years.  They should put that up on that mountain.

Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member
By Sanyika Shukur, aka Monster Kody Scott, 1993

Here's some of the quirks that "Monster" Kody Scott uses in his book:

1) Instead of the popular and real word "understand," Scott uses the totally made-up, and totally cheesy "overstand."

2) White people are referred to as "Americans."  Blacks are "New Africans."  Anyone of any sort of hispanic descent, regardless of country of origin, is referred to as a "Chicano."  The only asians ever mentioned are called "Koreans," although this reader guesses that it's unlikely that Mr. Scott/Shakur took the time to discern anyone of Asian descent's actual heritage.  Meaning that those who he called "Koreans" may actually be from--oh, any Asian country.  He doesn't care.

3) White people are mutants.  (Not the X-Men kind.)

4) The word "human" is a bastardized word coming from the word "hue-man" which, wait for it, it's awesome, is about the original man who walked the earth, who had a "hue" and was black, and was therefore "hue-man."  Which is sort of genius, if by genius you mean, fucking retarded.

Whatever.  It's fine to write racist books about black supremacy.  It's fine to pronounce that shit openly, to lionize acts of meaningless (while totally horrific, unnecessary and disgusting) acts of violence being perpetrated on your neighbor in a hideously poor neighborhood.  Hell, it's a free country.  White people write ugly books of horrific racism.  They actually do it a lot more often then the opposite occurs.  But make no mistake--that's all that's going on here.  It's a book that operates like this:  grow up, be angry, join gang, hurt people, learn nothing, treat parents like shit, get older, get gun, kill people, and then start mixing in going to jail.  Then repeat "kill people and go to jail" until one becomes a black supremacist.  (Not nationalist.  That's a different thing.  That's an understandable thing.  Understanding white/black supremacy is sort of like understanding why priests rape children.  It's impossible to do when you're not mentally unstable.) 

There's nothing to learn from this book that couldn't be grasped by smashing ones face into the wall over and over again.  Stupidity and violence are a shitty way to spend ones time, and they're a waste of one's life.  Did you do it because you were poor?  Sorry, I'm already tremendously fucking bored.  Was I supposed to get angry?  Or Care?  Writing a book about how you were a lousy violent version of humanity:  right next to David Archuleta singing about poor people as "the very least you can do."  The thing were you shot other poor people?  That was the opposite.  Of course, there's no reason why anybody who's ever suffered the weight of oppression, the horrors of racism, the hopelessness of poverty--there's no reason at all why they shouldn't be allowed to write books that are angry responses to it.  But bragging about killing people?  Throwing out pat, shapeless apologies for your horrible past?  Seriously.  Go fuck yourself.  Fuck your shitty book while you're at it.

-Tucker Stone, 2008

Comments

[Matthew J. Brady]

So, in terms of tastiness, a whirlwind ranks below NOT watching Prophecy sequels? I'm still trying to figure that analogy out...

[Jones, one of the Jones boys]

After everyone went on and on about how bleak it was, I was disappointed that The Road wasn't more depressing. Did anyone else wish it were more depressing?

[Tucker Stone]

No, you got it. The only thing tastier than a whirlwind is being able to have not seen the Prophecy sequels. I believe this is true, although I have only seen a few minutes of the straight-to-dvd sequel to Dusk Til Dawn, and I would propose that the Prophecy sequels, ipso facto, are far tastier to have not seen.

Jones: I didn't really get the "bleak" comments about The Road. It's no more bleak than anything else that's post-apocalyptic, and considerably less so than Master Blaster.