The Stonemason: A Play In Five Acts (1995) - Plot & Excerpts
After the 2011 HBO production of his play The Sunset Limited and last year’s Hollywood film of his script The Counselor, Cormac McCarthy’s work as a playwright began to intrigue me. Known more for his description-laden prose, McCarthy (arguably one of the most important American authors of the late 20th century) doesn’t at first blush seem like the kind of guy who could pare his style down enough for the stage. Clearly, though, he is fascinated by drama. He was likely inspired by director Richard Pearce, who approached him in 1974 to write the script for an episode of the PBS series Visions. The resulting two-hour episode, which aired in 1977, secured an Emmy nomination for McCarthy.The only other work in this genre he has produced is the 1995 play The Stonemason. Set in Louisville, Kentucky, in the 1970s, this five-act tragedy centers on the Telfairs, a family of stonemasons. The protagonist in Ben, who has abandoned his college studies of psychology to apprentice himself to Papaw, his grandfather, who even at the age of 101 continues to practice “the trade” with the younger man.The two live in the house of Ben’s father, who runs the family stonemasonry business. With them reside Ben’s wife, mother and sister, single mom to Soldier, a troubled teen. While the plot nominally follows various problems that threaten to tear the family apart, the core of the play is the relationship between grandfather and grandson.While many critics focus on the unusual monologues given by Ben while the actor’s double carries out a sort of dumbshow, I was drawn more to the interactions between Ben and Papaw. The older man shares a unique vision of the world predicated on his fealty to the craft. Stonemasons, differently than other stone workers, pull stone directly from the ground where they work and set those undressed stones, whole and unhewn, using mortar when needed, but seeking to use gravity and physics ("the warp of the world") to hold masonry in place.Papaw implies that this is the true will of God and that human attempts to chisel the world into other shapes are doomed to fail, being effaced by time and tragedy (a major theme of all of McCarthy's work). The blows to the Telfairs arise from their betrayals of the family trade and from Ben's insistence on trying to control and reshape the lives of his loved ones. Tellingly, though a fine stone mason, Ben violates the journeyman code that insists a man complete the work that can be done during the course of a normal day, leaving for the morrow the work that remains. Arrogantly or anxiously, he wants to get things done as quickly as possible.McCarthy's novels are replete with spot-on, terse dialogue as well as odd philosophical pseudo-speeches, so it's no surprise that the play excels in those areas. Some of the secondary characters (Soldier and Ben's father) are too one-dimensional for their fates to have the impact needed, however, and the relationship between Ben and his wife feels jarringly out of sync. However, though it doesn't approach the impact of other portraits of working-class African-Americans (like A Raisin in the Sun), the ideas in The Stonemason make it well worth reading.
A powerful play of the black experience that belongs in the same conversation as A Raisin in the Sun and Fences. McCarthy's powerful language is on full display here with no epic descriptions in which to hide, and it succeeds masterfully. Ben is a tragic character, one of those idealistic good guys who thinks he can help everyone yet winds up arguably doing more harm. His grandfather, Papaw (Pap-paw) is a fascinating man; Ben heeding his wisdom and both Big Ben and Soldier ignoring it makes for compelling drama, as do Ben's podium "sermons," which border on pretentiousness yet are far too interesting and compassionate to fall into that abyss. The plot itself doesn't pack an abundance of "wow" moments and some scenes feel far too short, but I'd love to see the play performed and am curious about its performance history.
What do You think about The Stonemason: A Play In Five Acts (1995)?
I liked it. Powerful and moving. As others have noted, the stage directions are extensive and complicated. You can read this as a novellla and probably it should have been written as one. In any case, the prose is classic McCarthy: "Things that you can touch go away forever. I dont know what it means that things exist and then exist no more. Will that namelessness into which we vanish then taste of us? The world was before man was and it will be again when he is gone. But it was not this world nor will it be, for where man lives in is in this world only."
—Chris
This play tries to do too much—too many characters, too many thematic threads, too many generations and relationships and moral dilemmas for such a short piece. I did like this little bit, though, from a conversation between the main character and his wife about justice:The rain falls upon the justAnd also on the unjust fellasBut mostly it falls upon the justCause the unjust have the just's umbrellas.I also liked this:In my dream I had died or the world had ended and I stood waiting before the door of some ultimate justice which I knew would open for me. I stood with my job-book beneath my arm in which were logged the hours and the days and the years and wherein was ledgered down each sack of mortar and each perch of stone and I stood alone in that whitened forecourt beyond which waited the God of all being and I stood in the full folly of my own righteousness and I took the book from under my arm and I thumbed through it a final time as if to reassure myself and when I did I saw that the pages were yellowed and crumbling and the ink faded and the accounts no longer clear and suddenly I thought to myself fool fool do you not see what will be asked of you? How He will lean down perhaps the better to see you, regarding perhaps with something akin to wonder that which is his own handiwork, He whom the firmament itself has not power to puzzle. Gazing into your soul beyond bone or flesh to its uttermost nativity in stone and star and in the unformed magma at the core of creation. And ask as you stand there alone with your book—perhaps not even unkindly—this single question: Where are the others? Where are the others. Oh I've had time in great abundance to reflect upon that terrible question. Because we cannot save ourselves unless we save all ourselves. I had the dream but did not heed it. And so I lost my way.
—Frank
I had high hopes for this short play, which actually feels rather longish, owing to the lengthy stage directions. Alas, it did not live up to expectations. While there are some good things about this piece, including characters I wanted to like, the writing quality was surprisingly lacking. There are some truly odd lines in here, including such clunkers as, 'The Semetic God was a god of the common man and that is why he'll have no hewn stones on his altar.' It feels strange to say I thought the writing in a work by Cormac McCarthy was...not very good, but it could've been better.My other issues have to do with the idea that these characters don't feel entirely genuine or well fleshed out. I felt the dialogue was clumsy at times. Eventually, I began to feel as uncomfortable reading this play as I did while reading Kathryn Stockett's The Help, particularly because of the way McCarthy attempts to represent stonemasonry as a clumsy metaphor for freedom in the lives of black characters frustrated by racism and financial distress. That seemed hackneyed and obvious to me.I hope CM's screenplay is better than this.Edited to add: There was at least one moment in The Stonemason that did reasonate with me, if for no other reason than it shocked me. At one point, PawPaw relates a time when even ministers were creepy racists: 'A lot of the old time preachers used to preach all kinds of foolishness...I heard any numbers of times how when colored folks got to heaven they'd be white.' WTF? That is awful.
—SmarterLilac
