What do You think about Outer Dark (2007)?
It's been said that for writer's first novels, it is inevitable that they wear their influences on their sleeves. This is certainly the case with Cormac McCarthy's second novel, Outer Dark. Steeped in the tradition of Southern Gothic writing, this story of wandering siblings perpetually on the wrong side of luck and fortune reads like a Faulknerian nightmare.Rinthy Holme has no sooner given birth to her first child than its father, her brother Culla, hoping to rid himself of the incestuous offspring steals it away and leaves it to the fates and the elements to dispose of. Fate has other plans for the babe, though, and a traveling tinker soon finds the child and cares for it. Not believing Culla's protestations that the infant is long dead and suffering from an overproduction of milk, Rinthy heads off down the road to track down her child. Feeling somewhat responsible (as well he should), Culla soon follows after, searching alternately for his missing sister and the child that seems to have cursed his very existence.From town to town throughout the South these siblings wander, Rinthy meeting the good people of the land and benefiting from the charitable nature that lies within most while Culla is plunged from one doomed misadventure to another in a descent toward madness that makes one wonder whether his long odyssey is some act of Old Testament vengeance a la Job. Throughout the tale he is run out of town, suspected of murder, trapped on an out of control boat with a frenzied horse, nearly plunged over the side of a cliff during a stampede, until finally coming face to face with evil incarnate in the form of three murderers who have been dogging his footsteps through every town and hamlet, leaving behind the bodies of those who dare to show friendship or kindness to this damned soul. This is an old school morality tale of the sort that I had long thought extinguished from contemporary fiction. There is none of the moral relativism or justification for a person's actions that is a hallmark of postmodern thought, but rather absolute morality of a sort that calls to mind a darker and harder age- if not the Old Testament then further back to the first tragedies of the Greeks. The writing isn't McCarthy's greatest, large swaths of the book read like minor rewrites of Faulkner's A Light In August, but there are all the ingredients I've come to expect from McCarthy- violence, hopelessness, a sense of loss at the changing of one epoch to another, and a yielding to the vicissitudes of fate. I don't think it stacks up to his more well-known works, but is an exceedingly entertaining early effort from an author that I am swiftly coming to regard as one of the most important thinkers still putting pen to page.
—Chloe
Outer Dark: Cormac McCarthy's Novel of Judgment and Responsibility And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Matthew 25:30, KJVIf there were ever a more unprofitable servant to appear in literature, it would be difficult to find one less so than Culla Holme. Brother to Rinthy, he has perpetrated the social taboo of incest. He fears his sin will be found out. When Rinthy's water breaks, he allows her to suffer through labor, refusing to even summon a midwife. She bears a son, whom Culla never allows her to hold or nurse. Rather, he abandons his child in the woods and tells his sister the child has died.A travelling tinker finds the child and saves it. To hide his abandonment of the child, Culla prepares a grave, a deception Rinthy sees through, digging up the grave herself to find that no body is there.Culla leaves their home and seeks work from town to town. Rinthy also leaves home to find her child, her "Chap," as she calls him.Each of Culla's efforts to find work and become a profitable servant fail. He is pursued by three violent men, perhaps symbols of an angry God, who leave a path of death and destruction in their wake. I wondered that there were not four horsemen. But I remembered that McCarthy was the fourth, driving each of the three on and on. The targets of their violence are those with whom Culla has come into contact. The simple honesty of Rinthy brings her into contact with individuals of a kinder and gentler nature than those with whom Culla deals and deceives. That Culla ultimately is confronted by the vengeful trio is inevitable. I leave the outcome of Culla's judgment to the readerm just as must also leave the outcome of Rinthy's search for her Chap.McCarthy's second novel descends into darkness of a degree much greater than seen in his debut novel, The Orchard Keeper. "Outer Dark" is a work intentionally marked with the grim, grotesque, and gothic. With this novel, the reader sees McCarthy's escalating violence that is vivid in its ability to shock and appall.This is a tale that might have been ripped from the pages of the Brothers Grimm and ramped up to a degree that is sufficiently shocking for a society that has become more jaded and unable to wince at the vilest acts of men. It will not easily be forgotten, once read. Nor is it a tale one will easily pick up again.
—Mike
Sono tempi duri.È la gente che rende duri i tempi. Ho visto tanta cattiveria fra gli uomini che non so perché Dio non ha ancora spento il sole e non se n'è andato.Avendo letto prima altri romanzi di McCarthy, posso dire che - secondo me - questo è il meno riuscito. Lo scrittore deve ancora raggiungere la piena maturazione letteraria e sviluppare a pieno i suoi temi. Scrive sempre benissimo, non scade mai nel raccontato ma mostra tutto, la natura emana un potere proprio e la violenza è insita nell'uomo.In questo libricino di sole duecentootto pagine, l'incestro tra fratello e sorella è alla base della narrazione. Per nascondere il fatto al mondo intero, Holme abbandona il neonato in mezzo alla foresta, neonato che verrà trovato da un calderaio. Rinthy, sorella di Holme, è sicura che il figlio non sia morto, così si mette alla sua ricerca per mesi interi, seguendo la scia lasciata dal calderaio in ogni città. Holme si metterà quindi a cercare la sorella.È in questo continuo girovagare che i protagonisti troveranno le più grandi sofferenze. Molti offriranno loro un bicchiere di latte o una cena, e qui la miseria umana si contrappone a una bontà umana assai rara in chi ha già poco di suo. Sulla loro strada incontreranno un malvagio trio di uomini che semina morte ovunque passi. Anche se l'ho apprezzato meno de "Figlio di Dio" o "Meridiano di sangue", questo "Il buio fuori" è comunque un pugno nello stomaco. Perché dimostra fin dove possa spingersi la violenza dell'uomo. Perché mostra un America dimenticata, l'America del sud rurale della prima metà del secolo scorso. Perché, a differenza di tutti i romanzi ambientati a New York o nelle altri grandi città americane, qui il buonismo non esiste. Tutto è male, e la felicità la si trova solo nei piccoli gesti e per istanti brevissimi.
—Marco Tamborrino
