Cormac McCarthy’s Road to Nowhere

Cormac McCarthy’s The Road is composed of the bare necessities. Like the filthy shopping cart pushed along the deserted road in this post-apocalyptic America, McCarthy’s novel is filled with only those things which are absolutely necessary. Father and son, dressed in rags, pale and hungry, move slowly through a blackened landscape – land and sky obscured by black ash. Most of America has burned away. What’s left needs no identification of color or scent or even sound to describe it. Sleeping in the shadows of rocks, highway overpasses, and what remains of the trees, McCarthy’s main characters – a man with a chronic cough and only one bullet left in his pistol and his young son - avoid with good reason what little human contact remains. Anyone could be one of the “bad guys.” They may steal their meager food supply (ancient canned fruit and vegetables, pork and beans) or, even worse, kill and eat them.

There is very little left in America as described in The Road. And very little left of McCarthy’s description of it. Descriptions of the world along the road are reduced to short, efficient, but painfully poetic sentences. Dialogue between the man and the boy (McCarthy gives them no names) is reduced, more often than not, to one, two, or three word utterances. The boy often speaks volumes by saying only okay.

Dialogue is devoid of quotation marks. Very little needs to be said and what is said is easy enough to identify with who said it. The quotation marks would be extraneous. There’s no room for them in the cart. Apostrophes are also missing. Can’t has become cant, couldn’t, couldnt. You know what they are anyway. Apostrophes appear only where they are necessary to identify the meaning. Its versus it’s, for example.

What is overwhelmingly represented is courage and determination – what one might refer to as pluck. Certainly conscious that life – for them and for the planet – will soon end, the man and his son keep moving, hunting for food, for shelter from the rain storms and the cold, hiding from the bad guys.

In a dark, colorless, and mostly lifeless world, these two survivors continue to carry the light until there is absolutely no fuel left to make light. They are heros with no one left to worship them.

Which Came First — The “Poem” or the Poem?

            The title alone was enough to pique my interest. Why call it simply “Poem,” Mr. Williams?  I looked up poem in the New Collegiate Dictionary (because it was handy) and was presented with a couple of interesting notions: 1) a poem is “characterized by the use of condensed language chosen for its sound and suggestive power” and 2) a poem is a “creation, an object, or an experience having beauty suggestive of poetry.” Neither were earth-shattering notions, of course; I’ve wandered through the realm of poetry before. But, they were eerily suggestive with “Poem” on the page of William Carlos Williams’ Selected Poems lying open in front of me.

            The movement of the cat, an experience often observed as graceful, efficient, powerful, poetry in motion even, seems an obvious choice to illustrate the idea of poem. Here is a simple, but beautiful, example of a something suggestive of poetry using condensed language to sound out the message, or the meaning, or the whatever. Each short line suggests the slow, deliberate, evenly paced steps of a cat, perfectly balanced, showing no sign of effort. The strides “over the top of the jamcloset” are represented in much the same way as the descent “into the pit of the empty flowerpot.” Does the cat accept success and failure with equal attention, taking it all in stride? Perhaps the cat has its eyes on a prize beyond these present obstacles.

            Is this experience a poem because it is labeled as a poem or is it labeled as a poem because it is a poem? Which comes first — the poem or the “Poem?”     

On -ists and -isms

       

            I think I’ve always taken a rather defensive stance in response to literary criticism. My experience in the past  with literary criticism and theory has not been an intellectual environment in which I’ve felt comfortable. More often than not, it seems, the critics or theorists that I read have attempted to instruct me on what a story, or a character, or a setting means, represents, or communicates to the reader (me), but I often see something else entirely. I guess I’m tired of being told how I should read something by another reader who has formulated generalizations based on his or her own biased perspective. I’m not, usually, convinced by evidence carefully chosen (cherry-picked, to borrow a currently fashionable political cliché) to support a Marxist, feminist, or whatever-ist agenda.

            I’ve learned a number of things from my defensive position. Since my instruction in English Studies has occurred at a time which seems to have been dominated by voices categorizing themselves as one –ism or another (sometimes a combination), I have observed that critics and theorists sift carefully through the literature they study to find proofs of their theory within the text. From what I’ve read, these proofs are rarely iron-clad. From this I’ve learned that contradictory evidence may be conveniently ignored and, if one looks hard enough, any platform, any agenda, can be supported by virtually any text if one is clever enough with discovery.

            The idea that literature is a cipher that contains messages in secret code to be decoded by a clever –ist who knows how to correctly decode the messages has always seemed like bullshit to me, not to mention a bit like elitism. Am I to understand that authors hide clues within their works with the intention of handing that work over to the critics who then explain it to us readers?

I’ve never been comfortable with this chain of evidence.

I think meaning (whatever meaning means) is sometimes far less important within a text than an –ist may want to admit and sometimes these meanings or messages, if they exist, are so complicated, so convoluted, that they leave a lot up for grabs. And, the –ists rush in and grab what they’re looking for.

I am not trying to say that –ists are always completely off base, but I think that they are often overzealous in their pursuit of literary meanings, or truths, or proofs. They are too often too desirous of claiming an era, author, or text as the property of their –ism. I am wary of the generalizations within an –ist argument created (because they are more often created than found) in an effort to justify an –ist perspective.

        Therefore, I was pleasantly surprised to find that there is at least one theorist who empathizes with my stance. By the time I got to the end of Erin O’Connor’s essay “Preface for a Post-Postcolonial Criticism,” I wanted to stand and applaud. I would love to see more of a criticism that does not equate “knowing with containing, classifying, and controlling” but honors “the sheer complexity of literature, of history, and of the uncertain, shifting relationship between the two.” Like O’Connor, I think we, as readers and critics of literature, should follow the lead of the material and not a map provided by an –ism. That would “be genuine scholarship rather than clever partisanship, honest inquiry rather than advocacy masquerading as inquiry.”

Amen.

Dialect Literature

I believe, as others do, that one of the most important functions of literature is the expansion of the reader’s life experience. I believe literature has the power to help readers transcend their own existence by allowing them to live the realities of people outside their own immediate culture. Additionally, literature is a means of cultural definition. It offers readers an opportunity to learn about and affirm their own identities – their own specific place in a wider cultural identity.

Literature offers the teacher opportunities to recognize that which is too often marginalized or excluded altogether. Students can (and should) be introduced to texts that reflect not only their own lives, cultural environments, and realities, but also those of others in the diverse culture of the world. Students can do little but benefit from active participation in analyses of literature – engaging with, reflecting, questioning, and criticizing texts using their own backgrounds and experiences as a position for comparison.

            The language of American literature has changed over time. Humorists of the 1830s and 1840s expressed a more “American” alternative to the dominant British style of writing. Dialect use in literature began to appear in parts of Georgia, the Carolinas, Mississippi, and Arkansas as “Old Southwestern” humor. After the Civil War, use of the vernacular became very popular in American literature. All dialects, however, were not met with acceptance. Mass immigration and increasing urbanization in America at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries brought together diverse populations and a lot of linguistic variation in confined spaces. Language was increasingly regarded as the foundation of national identity and a barometer of cultural health. People began to claim that language policies should be implemented to protect the English (the American) language from linguistic contamination. Evidently, modern scholars, much like the alarmists of the turn of the century, express a tendency to ignore literary representations of what are called “ethnic dialects.” Put off by the possibility that such literature creates prejudice and supports stereotypes, critics often avoid close readings of these works, particularly if the works are written by writers perceived as “outside” of the dialect group (Mark Twain’s use of dialect in Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has been much maligned). Critics assume, unfairly, I think, that use of dialect as a literary device implies derogatory if not racist intentions.

            Use of dialect – stylized versions of ethnic speech – in literature does carry with it a stigma of inferiority, coarseness, even vulgarity since it has been used in the past and present with humorous (not necessarily good-natured) intentions. Humor, particularly anything considered ethnic humor, is often seen as an act of aggression, so dialect humor is often seen as a reflection of the author’s disdain for what he sees as crude, inferior speakers of a crude, inferior dialect. And, since it is common outside of literary criticism to consider deviant forms of English to be inferior, the users of those forms are considered inferior. But, as Charles Abbott said over one hundred years ago, “crudity of diction is not always indicative of crudity of thought.” Linguists have insisted for a long time that speech varieties are not better or worse than each other, just different.

As I Lay Dying, William Faulkner

        Whether or not it was Faulkner’s intention, his experimental narrative style depicts a family that is as disconnected as the narrative. The Bundren family suffers as a result of a number of circumstances – poverty, lack of education or intelligence of the world around them, a harsh climate – beyond their immediate control, but their own inability to connect with each other, to communicate, to be sensitive to the struggles of one another individually and thus as a family unit seems to be the worst circumstance of all and one which cannot be blamed on anything outside of themselves. In fact, if they had, sometime along the way, been sensitive to one another’s troubles, dreams, weaknesses, fears, maybe they would not have become such victims of the environment in which they barely survive.        

        All of the Bundrens, except Darl, are far too wrapped up in their own suffering to concern themselves with the others. They seem to be tenants living under the same delapidated roof, uninterested in the happiness of those with whom they share space on this farm. They do not function as a family unit and suffer together as a result. Suffering seems to be the only thing they share. 

        The only familial bonding apparent in the narrative are attempts by Darl to understand his siblings. I got the impression that he may have tried to connect emotionally with his brothers and sister, but was rebuffed, considered strange by them. Considering how self-involved the rest of the family members, it’s no surprise to read their impressions of their brother. His sensitivity is to them a weakness, a flaw, even evidence of insanity. Darl knows about the others’ suffering, they see it in his eyes, and they are frightened by his knowing. Ultimately, Darl’s sensitivity and the actions he takes to possibly ease his family’s suffering, result in them shipping him off to a mental institution where he degenerates into what they think he is, allowing them to return home and pick up where they left off – before they were so inconvenienced by Addie’s death and her desire to be buried with her original family. No doubt Addie knew this family was a lost cause and did not want to spend eternity with them.

If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It

I wrote this letter last year, but since this blog is a portfolio of writing samples, I’m including it here…

Dave Cooper, National Conservation Area Manager

Bureau of Land Management

Winnemucca Field Office

5100 East Winnemucca Boulevard

Winnemucca, NV 89445-2921

  

Dear Mr. Cooper,

        I admit that I sometimes find it difficult to understand the wrestling matches between agencies and bureaus and other such organizations of authority, but the present difficulties surrounding the issues of policing and safety at Black Rock City during Burning Man appear, clearly, unnecessary. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” would be a quite fitting (not to mention wise) axiom with respect to your decision on these matters.

        My wife and I have attended Burning Man four of the last five years and have been both impressed by and thankful for the organization of the event, the preparedness of the people involved, and the peacefulness of the proceedings. The cooperation of the entire community (paying participants, volunteers, and paid workers) has produced, each year, a bustling and beautiful city with the criminal reputation of a Sunday school picnic (certainly compared to cities and events of comparable size).

Requiring Burning Man to pay for local law enforcement and staff, giving said law enforcement unfettered eviction authority in Black Rock City, and establishing a population cap are not only unfair but unnecessary. The efforts to keep Black Rock City safe have yet to show themselves broken, Mr. Cooper. There’s nothing to fix.

  

Sincerely,

Keith Jenkins

A Short Review of The Amber Spyglass

Gorgeous, sad, inspiritional, lush, emotive,… Phillip Pullman’s novel – the third and final installment of the His Dark Materials series – is the best book I’ve read in a year. It’s an entertaining story and an inspiring novel. Pullman’s imagination (except the stuff he pirated from Stephen King’s Dark Tower series) and literary craftsmanship restored my faith in contemporary fantasy fiction.

Throughout, I kept wondering who he intended his audience to be, and the fact that I couldn’t pin one down galvanized my opinion that The Amber Spyglass is an excellent novel worthy of the attention of more than just escapism-loving fans of fantasy and reactionary protectors of Christian morality.

Pullman’s clever characters and imaginative plot breathe fresh air into the lungs of those debating the details of human belief systems. Who (or what) is God? Why are we here? What is good and what is evil? What does it mean to love? What is worth fighting for? Is anything worth dying for?

Pullman’s characters, seen through his Amber Spyglass, are smart, brave, and beautiful. What more could a reader ask for?