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Rating:  -
McCarthy's novels are certainly not for everyone, for they are dark pessimistic interpretations of the human condition, often showing mankind at our worst. Outer Dark is exceptionally well written. The journeys of a sister and brother has many characteristics of dark folk tales and Greek drama on cosmological justice, or the lack there of. The tale evokes Greek Tragedy and Old Testiment Judgements. The story is mythlike and makes reference to concepts around Original Sin and Redemption.
Because the characters are early 1900 Appalachian, there is of course a comparison and contrast to William Faulkner's work. McCarthy, like Faulkner, is a master of the English language and complex sentence structures. But McCarthy is more straight-forward and less ambiguous in his sentence structure and narrative style. McCarthy is also a master at identification of out of style, low frequency words, which he resurrects in his writing. McCarthy, like many great writers, invents words also. However he invents words with such strong reference to English language etiology that they are immediately recognizable and useful. Like Faulkner before him, McCarthy explores dark themes of human deprivation, but McCarthy actually takes these themes further than Faulkner since he explores ancient themes from the Greeks regarding fate and destiny and inescapability from the dark human condition.
At the core of many novels by McCarthy is a killing machine, a dark and mysterious man who kills his fellow humans as would an earthquake or hurricane or forest fire or any other force of nature. Some critics have linked these serial killer forces of nature to Achilles in the Iliad, one of the earliest serial killer anti-heroes from literature. For Achilles, the son of a water goddess is a marvel of masculine aggression and adroit, athletic slaughter. When such a serial killer engages in murder, he has no more emotion than a tidal wave. He expects no justice or injustice for killing is like breathing. It is a personal tragedy like being killed by a falling tree or drowning in a pond. For there is no justice against the tree or the pond and McCarthy sees his murderers as beyond earthy human justice or any cosmological justice from a absent and unconcerned God. Because this natural killer is in total touch with the worst aggressive aspects of human nature, they frequently can see the darkest instincts within their fellow men.
Outer Dark however also has a familiar narrative structure to the dark folk tales of Eastern Europe where children are eaten by wolves. For in this story, an 18 year old girl and her slightly older brother commit incest and the brother hides the baby in the forest telling his sister that the baby died, a story she doesn't believe for a minute. He leaves home on a quest away from his sin and deed. She leaves home on a quest for the child which has been taken by a Rumplestilkin tinker that uses terminology that evokes the anti-semitic descriptions of Jews in the Middle Ages.. Simultaneous to their parallel paths through darkness, three murderers stalk the land and seem oddly related to bringing rough reconciliation or completion to the tragedy.
A Jungian interpretation of the novel is really in order also for the boy is a thief and liar in a world of thieves and liars. The girl seeks her child for 8 months and never stops lactating. This odd feature to this story may reflect the miraculous in the lives of Catholic Saints for the girl believed that as long as her breasts weep milk, that the child is still somewhere alive in the world. The boy and girl may represent two sides of the human personality and each has a path to follow toward reconciliation with the other. Underneath much of the horror is a redemption story for the innocent child he denies is the product of his sin. However the redemption is extremely dark in this tale of horror.
Rating: -
I thoroughly enjoyed this book (if "enjoyed" is the right word) but I have no idea what it's about. Like all the other McCarthy books I've read, it is compelling from word one. No one today shapes the English language like McCarthy. His every word is poetry. His ear for dialog and dialect is staggering. His description of everything, I mean EVERYTHING, is unerring, uncannily so. His ability to set a (mostly) dark and somber mood is (literally) scary. But I don't know what the book was about. I guess it was about a lot of things. No matter to me: I just enjoyed reading it. I enjoyed the suspense, the symbolism, the gothic emotion, the rawness of it. I've read several McCarthy books. I was lukewarm about the Border Trilogy, but hooked after "The Road", "No Country..." and others. Wonderful, masterful book. But I still don't know what it was about....
Rating:  -
I found Outer Dark to be the kind of novel that Faulkner would have written if he had been from Appalachia. Rife with symbolism and biblical allegory, Outer Dark takes the reader on a brother's journey to find his sister while also taking the sister on a journey in search of her baby that the brother has given away. The journey meanders past a slew of interesting characters on its way to its final outcome.
The biggest problem that I had with this one was that it felt too much like McCarthy was trying to do his best Faulkner impression. This was still early in McCarthy's career, and you can see the writer drawing from one of his influences in lieu of having his own writing style. Yet, McCarthy does Faulkner as well as anyone possiblty good other than Faulkner himself, so this does not detract too much from the book. It is still a very good story that introduces the reader to some interesting characters. This one isn't quite as good as some of his later works, but it is still a good book in its own right.
Rating: -
A sister gives birth to her brother's child. The brother takes the infant into the woods, where it is found by a travelling salesman. When the girl finds out about her brother's deception, she heads out to find the salesman, as her brother heads out to find her. All the while, they are pursued by three murderous, mysterious strangers, hellbent on an agenda all their own.
There's a lot in "Outer Dark" that is just plain confusing; I'm still not entirely sure who leaves home first, the sister or the brother, or even the brother's reason for leaving. It doesn't matter, though; this novel isn't supposed to be an easy read. No McCarthy novel is. It's supposed to be an HONEST read--and it certainly is that. So honest you will sometimes wince; the cannibalism scene, while never fully stated, is still so disturbing you'll cringe in disgust and fear as you read. And the final scene around the fire...well, I won't go into more, for fear of spoiling it for you. Save it to say that this one will cause you some nightmares; hopefully, it'll get you thinking about your own life as well. What would you do for the ones you love? What would you do for yourself?
Rating: -
Cormac McCarthy was born in Rhode island and grew up in Tennessee, but now lives in Tesuque, New Mexico. He is viewed by many as one of the more unusual and most talented of the current American writers. For example, Harold Bloom has written a number of things about McCarthy. I selected this book after reading pretty Horses. I was interested in some of his early work.
This is McCarthy's second novel published in 1970. The story is about a very poor brother and sister living in the rural south some time around 1900. The sister has a baby and the brother, Culla, does not want the baby and tells his sister it died and leaves it in the woods. The sister, Rinthy, does not believe him and sets out on a journey to find the baby. Simultaneously, Culla sets out on his own "dark" trip.
McCarthy has developed trademark prose, and some might not like it. He writes long rambling sentences to describe the natural setting and between he uses spartan narrative and dialogue.
The prose is complicated by design. I thought the prose was very effective in the middle of pretty Horses. He uses the same technique here but in a less developed way. He opens the book with just three sentences in one page, including one sentence 12 lines long. He reminds me a bit of the opening of Farewell to Arms where Hemingway tries to set the mood through the use of prose: Hemingway uses a narrative of the natural surroundings. McCarthy uses expressions such as "the sun sat blood red and elliptic" in his late book Pretty Horses" and here again we find the similar expression. Sometimes this prose seems out of place when compared to the spartan dialogue of a father and son talking over a breakfast of eggs and coffee.
Also, in later books McCarthy uses what is called polysyndeton, or the use of several conjunctions in close succession, especially where some might be omitted. It is a stylistic scheme used to slow down the tempo. As pointed out by others, polysyndeton is used extensively in the King James Version of the Bible. For example:
"And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark." Genesis 7:22-24
We see a bit of that here in the early work.
So, this a pretty dark novel about some poor people traveling around rural America set around 1900 or earlier. It is a short but entertaining read and gives us a picture of the young McCarthy as a writer.
Recommend: 4 or 5 stars.
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