Recién se acaba de estrenar en Estados Unidos la película The Road, basada en la novela de Cormac McCarthy, por si no han leído el libro, esta es una buena oportunidad para leerlo antes del estreno del filme en México; no se preocupen, quizá esta película llegue a México hasta el año que viene… así que sobra tiempo para leer esta excelente novela apocalíptica. Abajo un ensayo sobre La Carretera por William Kennedy, tomado del New York Times.

Left Behind

Cormac McCarthy’s subject in his new novel is as big as it gets: the end of the civilized world, the dying of life on the planet and the spectacle of it all. He has written a visually stunning picture of how it looks at the end to two pilgrims on the road to nowhere. Color in the world — except for fire and blood — exists mainly in memory or dream. Fire and firestorms have consumed forests and cities, and from the fall of ashes and soot everything is gray, the river water black. Hydrangeas and wild orchids stand in the forest, sculptured by fire into “ashen effigies” of themselves, waiting for the wind to blow them over into dust. Intense heat has melted and tipped a city’s buildings, and window glass hangs frozen down their walls. On the Interstate “long lines of charred and rusting cars” are “sitting in a stiff gray sludge of melted rubber. … The incinerate corpses shrunk to the size of a child and propped on the bare springs of the seats. Ten thousand dreams ensepulchred within their crozzled hearts.”

McCarthy has said that death is the major issue in the world and that writers who don’t address it are not serious. Death reaches very near totality in this novel. Billions of people have died, all animal and plant life, the birds of the air and the fishes of the sea are dead: “At the tide line a woven mat of weeds and the ribs of fishes in their millions stretching along the shore as far as eye could see like an isocline of death.” Forest fires are still being ignited (by lightning? other fires?) after what seems to be a decade since that early morning — 1:17 a.m., no day, month or year specified — when the sky opened with “a long shear of light and then a series of low concussions.” The survivors (not many) of the barbaric wars that followed the event wear masks against the perpetual cloud of soot in the air. Bloodcults are consuming one another. Cannibalism became a major enterprise after the food gave out. Deranged chanting became the music of the new age.

Leer más aquí…

The Road: 4/5

This movie was based on the Cormac McCarthy novel of the same title.  I have wanted to read the book for quite some time, but have yet to do so.  From conversations with individuals that have read both The Road and No country For Old Men, they contain a lot of the same style.  McCarthy frustrates some readers with ambiguity.  Complaints about the movie version of No Country For Old Men seemed to echo this as well.  I thought No Country was extremely good (unfortunately I’ve not read that book either.)

For anyone that has seen Will Smith’s I Am Legend, you may have flashbacks during The Road.  There are similarities, but the Road goes well beyond a horror flick.  It relies on emotional drama opposed to fierce bursts of action.  Some may feel the movie is slow, boring, or uninteresting.  It is not a summer action movie, nor is it a feel good movie.  All that said I really liked it.  The Road was well done.  It did a beautiful job of creating a real world, a horrific world, a world that forced you to empathize.  How would I react?  What would I do?  Could I do things differently?  Any better?

The basic plot is a man and his son trying to survive after some type of apocalypse.  Viggo Mortensen plays the man and Kodi Smit-McPhee plays his son.  Charlize Theron and Robert Duvall are also in the movie briefly.  The entire movie was dark.  Very little color was used, which helped create the post-apocalyptic atmosphere.  Another strange aspect of the movie (and I assume the book as well,) is that no names were used.  Your never given a name for the dad, the son, or any other character in the movie.  I actually did not notice this until looking the movie up on IMDB.  Some of the scenes are just downright haunting.  If nothing else, the movie will give you the opportunity to reflect.  It yanks you out of your cozy surroundings for two hours and forces you to feel dirty.  The movie forces you to question.  It will make you uncomfortable.  I loved it.  I needed some time away from reality.  I needed some new questions to ponder.

Would believing in God be easier or harder in a post-apocalyptic world?

Would the spiritual be more or less prevalent in a post-apocalyptic world, and how would that affect the first question?

Could I kill someone for protection?

Could I kill myself for protection?

Could I live for someone else?

If God asked me to persist when everyone else was giving up, could I persist?

The Road is a movie worth seeing in my humble opinion and there really are not a whole lot of those out right now.

Viggo Mortensen and Kodi Smit-McPhee take the long road to nowhere

Hollywood can be pretty predictable. For Example: once super hero movies hit it big, it seemed like every second movie was based on a comic book or graphic novel hero… they made alotta of money, but they were also alotta crap.

Thankfully, when dealing with great American literature, it’s a little harder to mess it up…. or maybe easier? Not in this case at least, thank God.

Last years big Oscar flick was No Country for Old Men, directed by the Coen Brothers and based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy. This year, I have a strong feeling that this years interpretation of McCarthy’s The Road, directed by relative unknown John Hillcoat may tempt the Academy’s appetite for gorgeous cinematography and dystopian plot-lines. I find a general rule with the academy is if you contemplate ending it all by drowning yourself in your bucket sized soda while watching it, you probably will see it on the ballot. But I digress…

The Road stars Viggo Mortensen (Lord of the Rings, Eastern Promises) as ‘Man’ or ’Papa’. He is perhaps one of the most talented actors of our time, despite being a bit of a late bloomer in terms of his star status. It also stars Oscar’s favourite blonde, Charlize Theron (in the smaller supporting role of ‘Woman’). But the hopeful glue holding this otherwise bleak and grey post-apocalyptic flick is newcomer Kodi Smit-McPhee as ‘Boy’. At only 13-years-old, his innocence and depth of emotion is far beyond his years, and becomes the only reason you continue watching.

Mortensen (right) may finally taste Oscar Gold for his role as Papa

Interestingly, the boy is the only reason why Papa continues to stay alive in a world decimated by some unknown natural disaster, devoid of living things and running rampant with cannibals and gangs of outlaws. But this is no Mad Max; it is picture of the fall of humanity is terrifying. In a sense, the film is about the nature of humanity. What would a human do to survive? Who are the ‘Good Guys’ when the concept of conscience, decency and basic order are lost to basic survival?

It’s not for everyone. Silent for long stretches of time, the film is a realist depiction of a common movie trend- the end of the world. NOT for children, the easily bored, or the weak stomached, it is nonetheless one of the greatest novel-to-film adaptations in a long time. At its core, it is about how much one father will sacrifice to see his son survive, and the hope that a child can find in the most hopeless of worlds.

- Kate B.

Actually, my esteemed colleague informs me that the movie is in limited release this weekend, and that it will open to a broader audience next week. Despite my display of internet rage now having been proven to be entirely inappropriate, I must admit I’m still somewhat miffed. This film has been delayed for over a year now, and this half-hearted release is actually disappointing. Jeez guys, you’re already pushing the envelope on getting it out there before the Oscars – make with the andale and get this sucker out there, no?

The horses, bowed to sparse patches of grass raised their heads as one.  From the salt plains below came again the muffled roar, an ululation of thousands hidden by foothills where, many miles off, the plain gave way and climbed to the horizon.

Rising and falling on the wind, the sound still came, long enough now to become part of the ambient world for the horses, so that again as one they bowed to the grasses.  After their stoic fashion, the three travelers bowed as well to continue counting. 

This was not an obsequious bow before some potentate, that infamous gesture of concession and disgrace so recently enacted to the horror of those living off the map to the right of the foothills.  No.  Each man was isolated in his own financial maze.  But also, like their horses they formed a unity as they counted, the thin tens and twenties fluttering on each man’s counting rock, small change ringing on the slabs like wind chimes.

By now, the distant sound of shopping had lost its power for the three.  Resigned, each man had relinquished the adrenaline rush that precedes combat.  Still counting they concentrated, each confident in his weapons, his kit—the debit cards and letters of credit, checks, and the Krugerrands secured around each man’s waist, gold coins that would serve as a final, last resort should yet another blow to the economy come just as some key transaction was taking place, some much coveted video game  for this boy, the push-up bra and bustier needed for cheerleading practice by that teenage girl, the new tap shoes and red fedora and the floor lamp for a loyal spouse left at home and, like the counters, bent no doubt to her own task, at laundry hamper, staff meeting or hydrangea bed.

The ululation grew again and the men stopped counting.  All their hard-won sang froid suddenly gave way, slipped from sturdy shoulders down the slope past their mounts to flow in rivulets into the pumice dust and small stones of the desert.  There would be no victory this Black Friday, no triumph.  After the battle with women slashing through piles of men’s sweaters, hacking and pounding in a ravening search for this same chartreuse-and-fuchsia tartan leotard but in a plus-size, the men saw as one their collective defeat–the money, the checks and letters of credit, even the precious Krugerrands all snatched away by clerks who handed them, grinning and awful in victory, plastic sacks heavy or light with wearable, edible, playable or readable fecal matter that, for all their efforts, would turn out to be wrong.

And so, stoic and wordless they gathered up the reins, swung creaking into worn saddles and not hesitating began the slow downward first leg of their ordeal to the salt plain, the horses knowing it all already, the terrible morning and afternoon to follow of the annual trek into Retail.

Most post-apocalyptic novels start with the actual end of the world as we know it.  Nuclear war.  An asteroid.  The cancellation of How I Met Your Mother.

Cormac McCarthy doesn’t bother.  He puts a man and a boy on a long march to the sea, hoping to escape one more winter in their northeastern home in an America that no longer exists because most life on Earth no longer exists.  The world is not only abandoned, but nothing lives on the surface.  The animals, save for a stray dog spotted in the ruins of an abandoned city, are gone.  The plants are all dead.  Almost every human they meet – less than two dozen over a period of months – is surviving by cannibalism or stealing.  The man and the boy survive on meager supplies they bring with them, looting the occasional house, a bomb shelter, and a wrecked oil tanker.

It’s hard to say exactly where the man and the boy are from or where they are headed.  They do seem to end up in South Carolina based on descriptions of the coastal plain and a city near the end that looks suspiciously like Savannah, Georgia.  But the south is anything but warm in this ash-covered husk of a world.  Even in places where temperatures are warm, it snows.  The sun is a rumor, a hidden object that turns the sky a meager grey.  The stars and moon no longer appear, thanks to a perpetual overcast.

The crux of this story is the man’s drive to keep the boy alive at all costs in a world where, by all rights, both of them should have died long ago.  We’re not told what destroyed the Earth, but a flashback scene on the night of the cataclysm and a scene on a blackened plain where corpses had been burned into the asphalt of a highway imply that multiple asteroids started Earth’s rapid demise in a single night.  All the man knows is that they are alone, they cannot survive another winter where they are, and there’s a vague chance that things are better in the south along the coast.

The Road has as much of a happy ending as possible in a dying world such as this.  But even happy endings can be heartbreaking, and how the man and the boy reach their destination is more heartbreaking than anything else that could happen to them.

Mr. O'brien

I’m in the mood for ambitious fiction. Earlier this year I was blessed with a run of incredible reads,  topped off by Yvegeny Zamiatin’s masterpiece, We.

Mr. Zamiatin

Since then I’ve taken on more projects that inevitably have eaten into my reading time, and I am becoming more zealous in my quest for inspired reads. Ambition is the only flavor my literary palate wants to taste right now. I’m hungry for books that make me break out the booksdarts and re-read for pure pleasure. I want prose and plots that cause reactions, page turners that remind me how lucky I am to know how to read.

I’m compiling a list (in no particular order) of ambitiously written books and additions are requested in the comments section! I’d love suggestions for a 2010 reading list…

Mr. Baldwin

The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien

Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh

The Inferno by Dante

Morvagine by Blaise Cendrars

Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller

Candide by Voltaire

The Electric Koolaid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe

Black Boy by Richard Wright

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Who’s Afraid of Virgina Woolf? by Edward Albee

Bowl of Cherries by Milliard Kauffman

The Whapshot Chronicle by John Cheever (as well as many of his shorter works)

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

The Iliad by Homer

If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino

Her by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

The Twits by Roald Dahl

Lolita by Vladamir Nabakov

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Monkeywrench Gang by Edward Abbey

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Stranger by Albert Camus

The Godfather by Mario Puzo

Peanuts by Charles Schultz

Mr. Abbey

more:

Bluebeard/Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut

The Aeneid by Virgil

The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

Matilda by Roald Dahl

Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger

His Dark Materials Series by Phillip Pullman

At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’brien

White Noise by Don Delillo

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

The Watchmen by Alan Moore

More..?

Happy Thanksgiving Readers!

On this Turkey Day, Hollywood is trying to offer you a feast of holiday options, but it ended up bringing you an overcooked turkey, a few exciting side dishes, and a doggy bag full of rotting leftovers.  Okay, that metaphor is as confusing as the headline for this roundup, but the movies coming out range from likely Oscar nominations to embarrassingly bad.  In other words, it’s a typical holiday release schedule.  For all of you who had to travel for this holiday, we begin with the last road movie ever: The Road (Rotten Tomatoes – Metacritic).

“It’s hard not to divine that The Road will be receiving near universal acclaim and a truckload of Oscar noms.”  Brandon Judell CultureCatch

Well, ‘near universal acclaim’ currently includes a fair number of nay-sayers, including those who were on the opposite side of the quality spectrum.

“Watching this is suicidal. Excrement on celluloid.” Fiore Mastracci Outtakes With Fiore

It ranges from divine to doo-doo, what what accounts for the chasm?

“Hillcoat took it as far as he dared and created a beautiful suffering; a film that somehow manages to be both unwatchable and unmissable at the same time.”  Chris Laverty Clothes on Film

I’d better run out and not see it right away.

Would the sequel be called "The Roadies"?

“This year’s entry in the Movies You Admire and Respect but Don’t Ever Want to Watch Again Sweepstakes.” Eric D. Snider Film.com

Previous sweepstakes winners include Schindler’s List and Requiem For A Dream.  I’m starting to understand the suicidal and divine comments a little better now.

“The Road isn’t a masterpiece…But I cannot think of another film this year that has stayed with me, its images of dread and fear – and yes, perhaps hope – kicking around like such a terrible dream.” Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Speaking of dread, fear, and terrible dreams, the worst reviewed movie of the weekend will likely be the one that makes the most money.  John Travolta is travolting and Robin Williams was robbed of his comedy prowess in Old Dogs (Rotten Tomatoes – Metacritic).

“Trashing Old Dogs is a bit like kicking a puppy. But here goes.” Roger Moore Orlando Sentinel

Okay, we’ve been duly warned – Punt away.

“Old Dogs does to the screen what old dogs do to the carpet. It’s unfortunate that only the latter can be taken out and shot.” New York Post Kyle Smith

Wait, you want me to shoot the carpet?

“There are some experiences no one should be subjected to even in the name of science. It may be that forced viewing of this film has been outlawed by the Geneva Convention.” James Berardinelli ReelViews

Forget water boarding, this movie causes real life agro in people.

“Adults should steer clear. Kids should be sent to it only if they’ve been extraordinarily naughty.” The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

They got tired of dreaming of a white Christmas

At last, we have a use for Old Dogs – as a cinematic lump of coal.  And speaking of meaningful Christmas presents, the release most likely not to be in your multiplex deals with the man behind Rosebud: Me and Orson Welles (Rotten Tomatoes – Metacritic).

“Welles is brilliantly embodied by Christian McKay in one of those, hey-who’s-that? performances that tends to draw Oscar talk, even if the film itself isn’t much more than an extremely pleasant lark.” Mary F. Pols TIME Magazine

“What do you say about a movie that proves Zac Efron can act, introduces a master thespian in Christian McKay and launches a charm assault that is damn near irresistible? I say, see it.” Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Even more interesting, this movie was written and directed by Richard Linklater (the writer/director of Dazed and Confused).  So with all the surprising talent crammed into this movie, why aren’t people likely to have it show up in their multiplex?

“Quippy, fast, and enjoyably corny, Welles is like a musical comedy without songs.” David Denby New Yorker

“It’s slight, only sporadically enjoyable and sometimes corny.” Claudia Puig USA Today

Wait.  What?

“The rotten cliches pile up faster than the bodies in this Z-movie disaster. A total dud start to finish.” Geoff Berkshire Metromix.com

Assuming that reviewer ever sees a worse movie, what would be it’s letter designation?  It already got a Z minus!

“This movie knows exactly what it is: Gonzo silliness about bodies turned into human salsa.” Kyle Smith New York Post

PDJ prefers human gaucamole

A Thanksgiving question from Booking Through Thursday:

It’s Thanksgiving in the U.S.A. today, so I know at least some of you are going to be as busy with turkey and family as I will be, so this week’s question is a simple one:

What books and authors are you particularly thankful for this year?

That’s quite difficult. When I particularly enjoy books and authors I am usually grateful to the person or persons who brought them to my attention. Being thankful for a book implies something slightly different. I’m thankful for books when they are serving some additional purpose beyond entertainment and /or mental exercise. So we’re talking about the books which serve as a distraction, or place of refuge, at moments of stress; or even those which act as guides through difficult times.

I have three. First Cormac McCarthy. I was reading Outer Dark when my husband was in hospital during the summer. Yeah. Things which had seemed a bit grim were a walk in the park in comparison with a McCarthy landscape.

As the OH recuperated at home, and one routine deprived daughter went into meltdown, I was reading Infinite Jest. Which is quite depressing, but not in the perversely cheering way of Cormac McCarthy. In Infinite Jest you find the pitfalls but also the way out.

Finally, I am thankful for Dickens, whom I am currently reading. Escapism of a very high order.

The film version:

Notice, at the very beginning of the clip, the strategic placement of the tree, and Tommy Lee Jones crooking his neck ever so slightly, not blinking, as if his fate is to, as it were, be dangled by the neck from that tree?

And the dream, metaphorically, is that of a lost father, and what the father gave the son, and the son’s subsequent aloneness, as his own death looms upon some future, as yet unknown, ”tree”: My God, why have you forsaken me? The terror of the father’s uncanny absence and presence would somehow both be there, and not be there, at the end.

llegamos al pueblo que le dicen morisco y había allí ídolos rociados con sangre de los nuestros; había dos caras que los salvajes habían desollado y adobado los cueros como de guantes, y las tenían con sus barbas puestas, y ofrecidas en unos de sus altares; había una iglesia de las nuestras y ahí veinte, treinta hombres nuestros, con los cueros cabelludos arrancados, vestidos como mujeres, caían sobre ellos los rayos del sol porque los paganos habían roto los techos de la iglesia; había cuatro cueros de caballos curtidos muy bien aderezados que tenían sus pelos y sus herraduras, colgados y ofrecidos a sus pestilentes ídolos. y en el mármol de una casa había esto escrito con carbones: aquí estuvo preso el sin ventura de alonso ruvalcaba con otros muchos que traía en mi compañía.

* * *

Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday. It’s a day when we celebrate the bounty of what we have, with family and friends, turkey and football. But in the midst of the gluttony and laziness and consumerism (black Friday!) of the weekend, it’s sometimes hard to really see the forest for the trees when it comes to our blessings. It’s hard to really get a perspective on how good we have it.

I have an easy way to fix that problem this Thanksgiving: Go see The Road.

This is a film that reminds you that even in the darkest of times, there is much to be thankful for. It reminds you that we are thankfully NOT living in a post-apocalyptic hell, scavenging for food and avoiding cannibals in a world devoid of sunlight and plant life. It’s a film that will reminds us never to take things like food, water, clothes, or shoes for granted again.

Plus, it’s just a phenomenal movie (even if not “enjoyable” to watch in the strictest sense). I’ve seen the film twice and would love to see it again. I wrote a review for Christianity Today, and also interviewed the director, John Hillcoat.

Take two hours out of your holiday weekend to see this film. You’ll be thankful you did.

Iker Casillas begs to differ.

So Stephanie Zacharek used her review of the film adaptation of The Road to bash the original source material. There’s no accounting for taste, but does Cormac McCarthy really have a “he-man streak”? And even if he does… why is that bad?

I rarely agree with Zacherek’s reviews, though I think she gets unfairly lambasted all of the time, and really don’t appreciate the meanness in the comments directed to her (Salon’s commenters, of which I frequently am one, have a bad reputation for a reason). I just don’t understand the criticism being leveled at McCarthy here, I guess. I still get chills just thinking about his description of the Man who contemplates whether or not anything is living in the sea – giant squid, perhaps. I mean, think about it, a post-apocalyptic wasteland in which a man dreams of squid in the cold, dark sea. I don’t even… That’s terrifying. And brilliant.

And the details of “The Road” — which must be particularly wrenching for people who have children, given that nearly every page stokes a common parental fear — repeatedly ask the same question: Are you man enough to take it?

You know, as a woman who read the book and enjoyed it – although perhaps the word “enjoyed” is wrong here, perhaps “admired” works better – I really didn’t get the sense that McCarthy was asking me if I was “man enough.” He was just telling a story in a hard (no pun intended), unflinching style. I didn’t think there was anything gendered about the way he was treating his readers or his subject matter. Sure, it’s a tale of a man and his son, and the mother is gone and not by accident, so there’s that aspect of it. But the man and his son didn’t make me feel as though I was an outsider at He-Man Thunderdome. If anything, I spent a long time thinking about my brother afterward, wondering if I’d be able to take care of him like that if shit should hit the fan. That’s because the writing is so personal; I think it clearly comes from a place wherein McCarthy himself was contemplating various scenarios, and wondering if he could take it.

[The director of "The Road", John Hillcoat] also knows that sometimes it’s not just healthy to recoil — it’s essential.

Well now. First of all, you can’t deny that these are two different mediums we’re talking about here. Because of the way we interact with the written word, and because of the way that the written word interacts with us, there are images we can conjure up in books that don’t translate well when it comes to film. The gruesome image of an infant roasting on a spit is the one that Zacharek has particular issues with, and she praises Hillcoat for not dwelling on it in the film. I think that’s a little like praising Stanley Kubrick for not attempting to re-enact Nabokov’s image of “a sultan, his face expressing great agony (belied, as it were, by his molding caress), helping a callypygean slave child to climb a column of onyx.” Hells to the yeah! Who cares about Oscars, let’s start giving out Common Sense Awards!

I also think that there is quite a bit of “recoiling” going on in The Road, it’s just done in this very graceful, penetrating (bwahaha – OK, fine, I’m intending all of these puns) manner. Like many of the writers I admire, McCarthy writes beautifully about absolutely horrifying things. That’s not so much a recoil as it is an act of transcendence. And if you can’t avoid stepping in blood or shit, you might as well transcend it – is what I always say.

Anyway, all of this is very depressing. Let’s end this post on a happy note, by objectifying Viggo Mortensen for a second:

He may not have made a particularly excellent King, but he was still the best Strider a dork could hope for. Haters to the left.

]]> http://judylobo.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/movie-review-the-road/ Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:44:43 +0000 judylobo http://judylobo.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/movie-review-the-road/

Movie Review: The Road Alternate Title: No Country for Anyone Story: The Road’s less traveled because there aren’t any people left to travel. Due to an unspecified worldwide cataclysm, we meet a man and his son as they travel south in a post-apocolyptical world. This powerful adaptation of the novel by Cormac McCarthy was directed by John Hillcoat and written by Joe Penhall. The world is devoid of sun, has lost it’s wildlife, it’s forests are denuded and life seems to have been drained. The planet is dying. It is a frightening place where everyone you do meet is most likely a predator, murderer, rapist or cannibal. In this horrific backdrop we find a man devoted to his young son and is trying desperately to keep the flame of hope alive by teaching his son the techniques to survive. Every day is a struggle to find food and shelter. There are unseen dangers everywhere. This strong film deals with enormous subjects such as loss, isolation, fear, death and the very fine line between good and evil. Earth’s color has been desaturated. The only time we see color is in a few flashbacks before the catastrophe. Not your typical holiday fare you say? I am not sure who the audience will be for this film, but if you have the stomach to sit for two hours you will see images that will stick with you for days, terrific acting, fantastic cinematography by Javier Aguirresarobe and pitch perfect production values by Chris Kennedy. Acting: Viggo Mortensen as the Man should be expecting some nominations for Best Actor in his future. His performance has economy and smolders. Kodi Smit-McPhee as the Boy is terrific and believeable. In cameo roles we meet Robert Duvall as the Old Man, Guy Pearce as the Veteran, Molly Parker as the Motherly Woman, Michael Kenneth Williams as the Thief, Garret Dillahunt as a very scary Gang Member and Charlize Theron as the Boy’ Mother. Trivia: Director John Hillcoat directed music videos for Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Einstürzende Neubauten, Siouxsie & the Banshees, Manic Street Preachers, Bush, Placebo, Suede, Atari Teenage Riot, Depeche Mode, HIM, Alec Empire, Muse, AFI and more. At a young age, his paintings were featured in the Art Gallery of Hamilton (Ontario, Canada). Cormac McCarthy’s novel “All the Pretty Horses” won a National Book Award in 1992 and his ovel “The Road” won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2007. Viggo Mortenson speaks fluent English, Spanish, Danish, and French, but he also speaks Swedish and Norwegian reasonably well. Born in NYC he lived in South America from age 2 to age 11. He has been photographing for years, recently debuted with an exhibition at the Robert Mann Gallery in NYC. — American Photo, July/August 2000. He writes poetry in his spare time. and is also a jazz musician – he has released three CDs so far. Predilection: None Critters: A horse, beetle and a dog. Food: Food is scarce. Spam, beans, slop, gruel, crackers and canned fruit cocktail. Sex Spectrum: No sex. There are a few scenes showing Viggo Mortenson in the nude (from the rear). Blatant Product Placement: It is somewhat funny to see which product survived the nightmare. Guess what? You can still drink Coca Cola if you can find it, drink a bottle of Vitamin Water, eat Cheetos, Spam and canned Dole Fruit Cocktail. Soundtrack: At times a bit too sentimental but mostly appropriate by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis; Opening Titles: An opening scene before the cataclysm and then the film’s titles. All other credits are at the end. Visual Art: Shot in Louisiana, Pennsylvania and Mt St, Helens the visuals are a major player in this film. Theater Audience: Pretty crowded for the first show on opening day. Mostly filled with 20 or 30-somethings, a few Goths and me. Weather: If accu-weather still existed the forecast would be the same each day – rain, clouds, lightning, fire and earthquakes. Sappy Factor: 0 Quirky Meter: 0 Squirm Scale: 3 – Some of the images are quite disturbing. Drift Factor: I did not drift at all. Predictability Level: High Tissue Usage: I welled up a bit towards the end. Oscar Worthy: Yes Big Screen or Rental: Absolutely, the big screen Length: Two hours. LOBO HOWLS: 9

]]> http://ironcupshrug.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/cormac-mccarthys-compound-words-3/ Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:41:09 +0000 ironcupshrug http://ironcupshrug.wordpress.com/2009/11/26/cormac-mccarthys-compound-words-3/

Once Suttree escapes to its narrative proper the density of my quarry seems to drop a bit.

(Vintage International, p. 7)

-mudstained

-woodknots

-nailedheads

-cupracers

-photoplates

(p.8)

-keelboats

-underbellies

-mudblack

-windtilted

-forenoon

(p.9)

-bowplanks

-boxcars

-brickcolored

-windowdummy (“he looked like a windowdummy save for his face”)

-lemoncolored

The film adaptation of The Road opens this weekend, perfect timing for post-Thanksgiving guilt and much easier than a long workout. I’ve never quite been able to take McCarthy seriously, which probably has much to do with an overabundance of road trips: the cowboy, sacred steer of middle class radio listeners was a common form of torture employed by my parents, who’d flip immediately to the Prairie Home Companion, or those utterly unfunny Cowboy Poets.

And then there’s McCarthy’s blatant misogyny. In the Road it comes through with the “Woman,” i.e. the bad mother, who kills herself – a sensible decision in this case – but before doing so spends two pages calling herself a whore: “You can think of me as a faithless slut if you like. I’ve taken a new lover. He can give me what you cannot. . Because I am done with my whorish heart and I have been for a long time.”

The Road’s sonorous prose and kiddy pool depth has also been a choice target in the genre wars: bald proof that literary fiction is at a loss for ideas as it rifles through the sci-fi candy bag, scarfing down undeserved critical acclaim. Once you realize there aren’t any actual ideas behind the chest beating, Bunsen burner cannibalism, and miraculous morels, you should rush out to read Canticle for Leibowitz or Parable of the Sower.

Ah, but there are! Maybe.

The popularity of McCarthy’s novel, you see, is not merely another sign that literary taste is a matter of conformity. Forget about climate change, meteor fears, or annihilation via nukes or Oprah, because that’s not what the book is about. It’s not about an archetypal father really either, but rather an archetypal helicopter parent: the “man,” who still finds the time and strength to sensitively minister to his son’s every physical and psychological need, despite starvation, cannibals, and an utter lack of hope. Just look at the guy, slavishly hovering over his child, lovingly scrounging for that Pepsi, and hacking up his lungs in bad weather rather than spending a few extra days in that food-stocked bomb shelter. The son — like two 18-year-old boys I saw being massaged by their mother at the library while they studied (creeped out yet?)  — does nary a lick of work in this bleak landscape.

Then there’s the pop psychology: “What you put in your head is there forever.” McCarthy plops this truism throughout the book, hoping it will magically gain weight, while the father, on top of the physical privation, still manages to shield his child from horror after horror, like some superhuman V-chip, although if he really wanted that kid to survive, he might want to own up to the frakked state of the world.

Leave it to those as naïve and jittery as a helicopter parents, who live in gated communities free from the terrors of working poor to believe it. Only those who trust the mantras of test scores and college resumes, who think that a prestigious degree means that one is “educated” would find depth in this misplaced nugget of therapy culture.

It all falls apart when one confronts the pesky reality outside the book, wherein millions of children in less cushy areas of the world live under not quite as awful conditions, but pretty damn close. Those children do not enjoy the luxury of such assiduous parenting in the form of covered eyes and stories about “carrying the fire.”  Much like kids in those generations muckraked by Dickens, they live and toil away in hellish conditions, without the luxury of someone worrying about what they put into their precious psyches.

There forever? I doubt it. And if so, so what? I much prefer a line from faux suburbanite Donald Draper — once again, TV trumps literary fiction: “It will amaze you how much it didn’t happen.”

I guess it’s not surprising that scads of terrified parents who’ve chosen to battle rather than to engage with their communities would find The Road appealing. The trials of The Road’s starved, embattled superdad provide the perfect ennobling reflection of their own daily squabbles with teachers, principals, and admissions officers, the piecemealing of academic resumes for their infantilized progeny. For as bleak as it gets, the book nevertheless  provides the delusion that even in such horrifying conditions, they might still micromanage our children’s lives, while in the real world protecting  them from the glaringly obvious fact that our progress on social and economic equality, not to mention that pesky climate, are in dire need of a reality check.

McCarthy’s book certainly isn’t one, but it’s popularity is just a sign that many have already given up trying. When I hear the term helicopter parent, the words overprotective and assertive rarely come to mind. Remember that helicopters after all, are a privileged means of escape.

Just watch any pre-Road apocalypse film. You’ll see.

In a garden-variety review about the movie adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, Ann Hornaday takes some swipes at the novel as a “thin, hopelessly mannered story” that offers “thoroughly undeserving source material” for director John Hillcoat’s film. “Mannered” for me isn’t necessarily a flaw, as it implies some kind of imaginative excess and go-for-broke risk-taking, but for Hornaday it’s a pejorative dismissal—though I wonder if she’d apply the same adjective to a play by Samuel Beckett, whose looming presence haunts The Road. That McCarthy’s story is “thin” seems a dubious judgment, if we imagine a novel more to Hornaday’s liking. Would we really want an involved backstory explaining The Road’s mysterious apocalypse and the chaotic years that followed? Wouldn’t a fuller and less stark story simply involve us in needless complications and narrative digressions?

McCarthy has been awash in plaudits and accolades for some time, but not everyone has hopped on the bus. If they aren’t repulsed by the violence in the novels, McCarthy’s detractors have homed in on his prose style, regarding it as an elaborately wrought sheath around a hollow core. Once he could be faulted for aiming to be a latter-day Faulkner and coming up merely as a derivative follower (I’d take the view that, with Toni Morrison, he’s one of the few American writers to have fully absorbed Faulkner’s style and taken it somewhere new); with No Country for Old Men and now The Road, he’s been criticized for dressing up genre material in pompously literary garb.

Such a distinction depends on a separation of genre and literary fiction, but is such a strict split even tenable anymore? Genre writers seem more literary than they once did, and “literary” writers, whatever that even means, tend to value genre writers and take what they can from them. For those who remain unimpressed with McCarthy, he is at once too literary—all those biblical cadences and occasional obscure words—and, in his use of genre, not literary enough. But perhaps his sense of the literary is simply more expansive, and more contemporary, than those of his critics.

This looks promising. Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Road (2006), has been turned into a film, and a review in Salon suggests that the movie is actually better, on balance, than the book. That doesn’t happen every day. Here’s what Salon’s reviewer says:

John Hillcoat’s “The Road” is an honorable adaptation of a piece of pulp fiction disguised as high art; it has more directness and more integrity than its source material, the 2006 novel by Cormac McCarthy. . . . Hillcoat’s movie takes the core idea of McCarthy’s novel — What does it mean to hang onto our humanity? — and boils it down to its essence.

If you’re a philosophically minded person, this seems like one of those ”must see” films. But I’m not feeling much from the trailer, so I don’t know. I think it’s the musical score that is leaving me skeptical. The proper response to an apocalypse is silence, or the sounds of trees rustling in the wind, or ocean waves. The gravity of the event isn’t properly gauged to the music in the trailer. I’m thinking of one of Woody Allen’s 1970s films, Interiors, in which he was dealing with existentially heavy themes without humor, and so absented all music, even in the opening and closing credits, to produce an emotionally powerful effect. I wonder if the effect of this trailer would be different for me absent the music:

Oops. It doesn’t embed. Watch at YouTube here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbLgszfXTAY

Okay, I just tried watching the trailer with the music muted, and something else jumps out at me: the flashing jump shots, from one camara angle to another, take away from the gravity of the film’s content. The trailer, obviously, is trying to build up raw “rollercoaster ride” excitement, competing with 2012  for the attention challenged, apocalyptic moviegoer crowd. Hopefully, the director chose a more subdued tone in the progress of the film itself. Silence and stillness can themselves be forms of horror more in keeping with a Cormac McCarthy novel (as the film version of No Country for Old Men, in it’s concluding scene, attests). As I recall, the film ended in silence.

Quello che sto vivendo è un periodo pieno di cose belle, brutte e mediamente fastidiose. Ho fatto acquisti libreschi, McCarthy e Centi su tutti, conosciuto gente interessante, dato esami dei quali aspetto ancora i risultati e non vedo l’ora di mettere le mani su questo, in uscita domani. Sono curioso di sapere se ne è valsa la pena e il modo in cui la Rizzoli si è presa la briga di curare l’iniziativa. Alla fine tra i commenti dovreste trovare anche il mio (o i miei, non è ancora chiaro), e la cosa ha senz’altro un peso non indifferente sulla scelta di comprarlo o lasciarlo sullo scaffale, anche solo per un piacevole ricordo e per il fatto che, qualità a parte, l’intero devoluto andrà in beneficenza.
Provo comunque molto fastidio per i giudizi negativi a priori che iniziano a fioccare, probabilmente da gente il cui unico fine è rosicare in un modo tanto plateale da cadere nel ridicolo, soprattutto perché il libro non è ancora in commercio e quindi ogni critica, positiva o negativa che sia, non ha luogo d’esistere.
Per il resto non saprei che dire. Sto attraversando una fase in cui apatia e voglia di fare si scontrano senza che nessuna delle due esca vincitrice, con la sola nota positiva del Laboratorio di Composizione in Lingua italiana a cui sono stato ammesso. Sono strano, lo so, ma meno male che tra dieci giorni parto per Londra e vaffanbagno, nella capitale britannica mi ci voglio perdere in ogni senso.
Ah, ho anche iniziato a scribacchiare un nuovo racconto. E’ confuso, diverso da qualsiasi altra cosa abbia mai scritto e si agita nella mia mente senza capo né coda come se non ne volesse sapere di manifestarsi in forme più consone. E’ capriccioso, volubile e per il momento non mi ha detto altro che il suo nome: Quando s’alza il vento.

“Dust stanched the wet and naked heads of the scalped who with the fringe of hair below their wounds and tonsured to the bone now lay like maimed and naked monks in the bloodslaked dust and everywhere the dying groaned and gibbered and horses lay screaming.”

— Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West, by Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy is a ridiculously talented writer and Blood Meridian is considered by many to be his defining work (thus far). Having finished it a few weeks ago, and still being unable to get it out of my head ever since putting it down, I don’t think the book’s praise is just hyperbole.

Blood Meridian is set in the mid 1800s on the American-Mexican borderlands and follows a fourteen year-old protagonist, known only as the kid, as he falls in with the Glanton gang, a group of roving scalp hunters, literally forging their American dream through the murder of countless Native Americans men, women and children. McCarthy’s minimalist prose is at its most effective here, the utilitarian descriptions of chilling scenes working to create a feeling of blase inhumanity and desolation that dwarfs even his latest novel, The Road.

The most memorable character is that of Judge Holden, the Captain Ahab to Blood Meridian’s Moby Dick but McCarthy writes his capitalist monster as something much more immoral than the obsessive whaler, regularly detailing the gang’s key member as a ruthless killer, remorseless pedophile and cunning, cold-blooded intellectual. The kid and the judge emerge as opposing characters but, as McCarthy echoes Melville, it becomes more and more obvious that there is no fitting defeat in sight for Blood Meridian’s depiction of evil and that even the “moral compass” of the story is so warped by his experiences that the only conclusion possible for him is to sink further into the abyss.

If readers fail to look at the larger goal of the novel it’s easy to wonder at the purpose of slogging through so much (seemingly aimless) violence and overwhelming horror. The above quote is one of the tamer conclusions to the text’s frequent scenes of massacre and its easy to get lost in the macabre that McCarthy employs so effectively. Those who are unable to make it through some of the more vicious sequences will miss out on the intended effect of the work however and lose out on experiencing one of the most nuanced and expertly crafted books of the 20th century.

Blood Meridian is a difficult book in many senses, demanding the reader’s ability to tolerate its frequent, stomach-churning violence and often aimless plot pacing, but its ultimate result makes the effort worth it. Cormac McCarthy is one of the few writers working today that will be discussed for generations to come and Blood Meridian earns a place as an American classic that will find ongoing critical company alongside heavyweights like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick.

There’s a lot to say about the work but these 500 odd words will have to suffice for now. Although it’s not for everyone, Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West is, if nothing else, one of the landmark novels of our generation.

— Reid

Suttree:

(Vintage International, p.4)

-moonshaped

-cratewood

-fruitrinds

-lightbulbs

-skullcolored

-mooneyed

-rainflattened

-riverloam (“riverloam gardens of of upcountry landkeepers”)

-landkeepers (!)

-bonedust

-someway (“dreams dispersed in the water someway”)

-woodcutters

-everyland

(p. 5)

-deadcart

-suchwise

-countercat (“over the raindark streets to vanish cat and countercat”)

-fourfooted