McCarthy, a brave writer with an incredible constitution

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	• Child of God Cormac McCarthy Vintage, 1993 - 208 pages average customer review:based on 54 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

McCarthy, a brave writer with an incredible constitution

I was initiated into the world of Cormac McCarthy with this novel in Southern Lit class. My professor was the vice president of the Cormac McCarthy Appreciation Society and considers McCarthy one the most talented novelists of the twentieth century, as do I. This work is very much a product of an evolved understanding of Faulkner. It incorporates all of the typical faulknarian literary elements and subject matter, but stretches and evolves them to an unusually intense point. There is a message about decay, especially of the south in the diction, especially where the flood and the degeneration of Lester Ballard are concerned. There is Old South v. New South and the post reconstuction circumstances of the south with the disposession of Ballard. There is also lust here, something that Faulkner tackeled in a more subtle manner than McCarthy in the Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying. However, McCarthy's story of lust is intense and grotesque and is described without sentiment in an amazing display of the gift of total candor. McCarthy is nothing short of stoic in his descriptions and must posess an amazing constitution, as he has the ability to write what would make most of us vomit just thinking about. The ability to reduce a human character to the lowest common denomimnator, performing unspeakable acts of depravity and at the same time remaining a valid character whose presence still carries a literary message and a human one as well, is the most unique of gifts. This novel may be hard to take for the faint of heart, but it is well worth the read. It is haunting to the reader, not for its perverse subject matter, but for its understated messages, masterfully placed in the character of Lester Ballard, a disposessed and depraved madman, holding the dark secrets of what humanity can be driven to.

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Necromaniacs Rejoice!

Ever hear of Ed Gein? If not this book will be a suprise to you. I was recommended Child of God by a friend. What is at first a simple story about an awful, troll-like man living in a shack becomes a story about an awful, troll-like man who loses his shack and goes to live in a cave, which soon becomes a kind of harem where he keeps the corpses of his dead lovers. You guessed it, necrophilia. With Mccarthy's typically poetic verse, the story is made all the more unsettling with great dashes of prentension thrown in. It's not his best, and suffers from the same problems I typically find in Mccarthy's work. It's a bit boring at times. The above noted pretension is laid on pretty thick - so many incomplete sentences. Certainly not a book for everyone, but certainly one worth a look if you're a Mccarthy fan or someone just into reading about dispicable necromaniacs. Hey, whatever floats your boat.

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Like an episode of Hee-Haw on crack...

This is one of McCarthy's older novels but the major themes of his later work are all present: violence, lust, crime, law, the role of the outcast, the indifference of the cosmos ((and of God, if you will)), and, throbbing beneath it all, the great heart of darkness that keeps it all alive.

In spare, poetic language, McCarthy tells an equally spare and poetic story about the life of a man who is quite literally a human monster--and all-too-human monster at that. And therein lies the "poetry." *Child of God* can be read as a literary gothic horror novel and indeed it contains elements of the horror genre from Frankenstein to Psycho to Silence of the Lambs to Saw. *Child of God* and the character of Lester Ballard may ultimately be more terrifying than any of them, however, inasmuch as McCarthy tempts us to do the most dangerous thing of all: sympathize with the 'monster' and the 'monstrous.'

In brief chapters, McCarthy builds this gruesome story scene by scene like someone constructing a gallows. There are nature descriptions of breathtaking beauty. Episodes of harrowing action and viscerally shocking perversion. Candid `interviews' with the hicks, hillbillies, and good ole boys remembering Lester Ballard from way back when that'll have you laughing out loud. McCarthy hits all the notes in this short symphony of what is not so much an illustration of the `banality of human evil' as it is the absurdity of human evil.

As realistic as an axe blade, and as disturbing as finding blood and human hair on that axe blade, *Child of God* is a horror novel in the most absolute and artistic sense...a masterpiece that lays bare the "horror" at the heart of human nature.

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You want the necrophiliac to escape?

McCarthy's writing and portrayal of Lester Ballard, a necrophiliac, is so well done that when the townfolk are after him you want him to escape. And then you have to wonder...why am I siding with a necrophiliac of all people? The writing is up to the high standards expected of McCarthy, and as usual he plumbs darker side of the human psyche. The book has an interesting twist to the plot - Ballard is falsely accused of rape, his house is auctioned off and he's left as a social outcast, an animal. He is removed of all his ties to humanity and so becomes the animal. If you like books that deal with the darker side of life then give this a read.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, page 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

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recommendations

Beyond Cormac McCarthy and David Sedaris
Modernist to Neo-Traditional Literature
Well Informed Minds Congregate Here
Writers of the Deep South
McCarthy Books~

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