This is for me one of the finest books I have read, even if it was a play.

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	• The Sunset Limited Cormac McCarthy Vintage, 2006 - 160 pages average customer review:based on 17 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Another trophy for McCarthy

The man never ceases to amaze me. In this short play with two characters [Black and White] and in just one room McCarthy exposes us to a vain attempt by an uneducated black with a love of the bible and a heart as big as Texas to save an educated white professoer full of useless, or wasted, education on his way to death. Ending tragically, as most McCarthy books do, it none-the less shows the power of determination: one in himself and the task at hand and the other in a belief in a higher power and a hope for His ability to intervene.

Florida to California

I really enjoyed this play. McCarthy's prose is incisive, witty, sympathetic, and more than occasionally laugh-out-loud funny. While there are moments where the dialogue stalls a little, even feeling slightly pedantic, the momentum of the work as whole carries the reader forward uninterrupted.

The questions addressed are fundamental. Even critical. Don't leave home without them.

My major question is why did McCarthy choose the "Sunset Limited"? It runs from Florida to California and would never be in a subway station. What gives?

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Straight To the Point

In his brilliant book Existential Psychotherapy, the psychiatrist Irvin Yalom devotes an entire section to meaninglessness. As life has no objective meaning, we are left to construct our own. Yalom starts the section out hauntingly, with an actual suicide note of someone now dead from his own hand. In the note, the man describes a group of morons whose only purpose is to move bricks from one side of a yard to another, back and forth, without any reflection as to why. One day, one moron does so reflect and, from that day forward, is never as content to move the bricks as he was before. The author of the note states that he is that one moron.

That person, whose identity is unknown, could well be the character White, one of only two characters in this play by Cormac McCarthy. On the outside, he would seem to have things going for him. He is well educated, articulate and displays the mannerisms of someone comfortable in social class. Yet inside is an emptiness so profound that jumping in front of the Sunset Limited, a train, is seen as the only option. Indeed, White's outlook is so bleak that he does not view this as pessimistic, but rather as realistic and even something to embrace.

White's polar opposite is, not surprisingly, Black. He is the opposite of White in two ways. Externally, he is dirt poor, has a violent and misguided history and a life few would envy. More profoundly, however, is the polarity of what is inside. Black has a faith in the Bible, in Jesus, that infuses his life with a meaning totally lacking in White. Despite his hard circumstances, he sees a reason to live and to try to help White see such a reason as well.

The conversation between the two is simple yet profound. White's education and worldliness have left him with a powerful intellect but no guide to use it for personal fulfillment. Every attempt by Black to show White a path towards some light can easily be rationalized away. But this rationalization always leads back to the hard end of the Sunset Limited.

SUNSET LIMITED is very stripped down. It has one act, only two characters and even these characters are nameless except for their opposite descriptors. This allows for the dialogue and ideas to take center stage. As the conversation is about life, death and meaning, this is a good call by McCarthy. The starkness of the set-up is also a clue that McCarthy views the morality at issue to be absolute. SUNSET LIMITED is a short yet powerful read.

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This is for me one of the finest books I have read, even if it was a play.

Although very brief, Mccarthy's play took me twice the time it should have because I had to stop and savor the dialogue. I was loving the comments of "Black." I found them profound, witty, gentle and loving, and often very moving. "White", too, had terrific witty lines.This play reminded me of an Edward Albee type of verbal exchange--one that was so rich and brilliantly composed that I was genually thrilled to be reading it.
However, I felt that the final few pages jumped ship. Suddenly The characters were worn out, not able to keep going. I could imagine Black saying and doing so much more. He, earlier, vowed to go home with White, yet inexplicably he gave up. The character built by McCarthy would not have suddenly folded. That part did not seem to fit. I wish I knew what McCarthy was feeling at that point.
I have read most of McCarthy's works, and found this and The Road to be my favorates. We are blessed to have a writer as fine as McCarthy. The only other living author I treasure as much is Haruki Murakami.

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