Had lost my way, backtracked a bit, no loss of awe the second time around. McCarthy gives a dreary life, well…life. Listen to this:
"The old man gave him a little crooked grin, his jawseams grouted with black spittle."
Tobacco chewer, this one. Old, well weathered, worn, wrinkled. Juice dribbled down, hardened, dried.
We see the characters despite the minimal direct description we get. We learn them from watching them, get comfortable with them, almost know what to expect of them, but we find things that still surprise us as we follow them around.
And in the midst of laidback simple living, McCarthy gives us heavy things to think about. For example, as Suttree looks through an old family photo album:
"Put away these frozenjawed primates and their annals of ways beset and ultimate dark. What deity in the realms of dementia, what rabid god decocted out of the smoking lobes of hydrophobia could have devised a keeping place for souls so poor as is this flesh. This mawky worm-bent tabernacle."
Suttree is a free spirit, broken away from family chains, and yet not completely free. The thoughts will torment where the people are no longer allowed to walk, their tracks the marking of their lives in his mind.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
I’ve been working my way through Catcher in the Rye and I’m completely awed at the way J.D. Salinger’s portrayed his protagonist. It almost seems as though he’s crept into the mind of his character and let him do the talking. Simple but complex, prattling but profound…very, very strong book.
Thanks, Neha; you’ve gotten me to dig it out and add it to my line of books! Read Catcher and Franny and Zooey, my senior year in high school and always meant to reread them both.