Brilliant as expected, but read his other books first

books:


	• The Gardener's Son Cormac Mccarthy The Ecco Press, 1996 - 93 pages average customer review:based on 4 reviews view larger image
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An Appetizer

I agree with the other reviewer who says that you should read McCarthy's books first; that's a must. I found this screenplay interesting, but a bit disappointing in places. Where I detected McCarthy's voice most was in the stage directions and monologues, and a few bits of the dialogue. The power the sysnopses mention was a bit lost on me; I actually found this work quite cryptic, and was puzzled by the flap copy's assertion that the accident was "rumored to have been caused by James Gregg"--I couldn't find even a hint of that. Maybe I missed it?

In any case, a good little snippet. Now I have to go back to the novels...

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melancholy

I agree that Cormac McCarthy is America's greatest living author. I have now read all of his works, The Gardener's Son being the last one read. It didn't disappoint me either as none of his books have. He is truely a literary genius and I would love to know him personally.

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Brilliant as expected, but read his other books first

Having read everything else by Cormac McCarthy, I turned to _The Gardener's Son_ and was not disappointed. It has often been said but bears repeating that McCarthy is America's greatest living author, and I recommend his novels to anyone who enjoys beautiful writing. But I wouldn't suggest this screenplay unless, like me, you're already addicted to McCarthy and are looking for another "fix". It's a short work, fairly expensive for its brief length, and the plot is so sparse that you really have to be a fan of his style to feel as though you've benefitted from reading it. I hesitate to give less than five stars to anything by Cormac McCarthy, but this screenplay is essentially too little of a great thing to merit the unqualified recommendation that I give to all his other books.

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In the Spring of 1975 the film director Richard Pearce approached Cormac McCarthy with the idea of writing a screenplay. Though already a widely acclaimed novelist, the author of such modern classics as The Orchard Keeper and Child of God, McCarthy had never before written a screenplay. Using nothing more than a few photographs in the footnotes to a 1928 biography of a famous pre-Civil War industrialist as inspiration, the author and Pearce together roamed the mill towns of the South researching their subject. One year later McCarthy finished The Gardener's Son,a taut, riveting drama of impotence, rage, and ultimately violence spanning two generations of mill owners and workers, fathers and sons, during the rise and fall of one of America's most bizarre utopian industrial experiments. Produced as a two-hour film and broadcast on PBS in 1976, The Gardener's Son recieved two Emmy Award nominations and was shown at the Berlin and Edinburgh Film Festivals. This is the first appearance of the film script in book form.

Set in Graniteville, South Carolina, The Gardener's Son is the tale of two families: the Greggs, a wealthy family that owns and operates the local cotton mill, and the McEvoys, a family of mill workers beset by misfortune. The action opens as Robert McEvoy, a young mill worker, is having his leg amputated -- the limb mangled in an accident rumored to have been caused by James Gregg, son of the mill's founder. McEvoy, crippled and isolated, grows into a man with a "troubled heart"; consumed by bitterness and anger, he deserts both his job and his family.

Returning two years later at the news of his mother's terminal illness, Robert McEvoy arrives only to confront the grave diggers preparing her final resting place. His father, the mill's gardener, is now working on the factory line, the gardens forgotten. These proceedings stoke the slow burning rage McEvoy carries within him, a fury that ultimately consumes both the McEvoys and the Greggs.

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