Once, when the internet was young, I found out somehow about a web site whose purpose, I think, was simply to collect horrible images - photographs - and display them like curios for anyone who wanted to peer in. It triggered my curiosity. I went to the web site and looked at a couple of frames. The details aren't important, and the whole experience lasted maybe 15 seconds. Two of the images were so horrifying that I will never forget them. I never again conducted such a reckless experiment. The details aren't important. What matters is that those images infected me. They are pasted in my imagination as indelibly as a tattoo. Decades later I can still see them clearly. I wish I hadn't. There are things you can't unsee.
Years later I picked up The Road, the only book of McCarthy's I have read. I feel the same way about The Road as I do about that website. It's not what happened in the story that really got to me, though what happened was memorably disturbing; it was the depth of the despair. The skies, the forests, the campfire, the sailboat on the shore: all now part of my internal landscape. I wish I hadn't read that book, and I occasionally find myself in conversations in which I warn people away from it. It has occurred to me in the years since that it is literally the only book I've ever read that I wish I hadn't. There are some things you can't unread.
I appreciate your commentary on McCarthy's work. It's useful to know that there is some kind of return route from the deep cave into which McCarthy leads his readers. Maybe I will revisit just the last chapter, and look again. Even if I don't, there is something in knowing that there are other people who have visited that place and not returned empty handed.
This is a wonderful piece, Jayson! Very nice work (and great idea for a series on McCarthy).
The Road was my first McCarthy novel as well, and I’m grateful that it opened my eyes to his work.
Coincidentally, I started my Substack just days before his death, so my first post-launch piece was a tribute to that work in honour of his memory.
In particular, the paragraph where McCarthy uses the impossibly obscure term “salitter”--translating roughly to “essence of God”--is one of my favourites in all of prose. “The salitter drying from the earth”... the tonal resonance is perfection!
Once, when the internet was young, I found out somehow about a web site whose purpose, I think, was simply to collect horrible images - photographs - and display them like curios for anyone who wanted to peer in. It triggered my curiosity. I went to the web site and looked at a couple of frames. The details aren't important, and the whole experience lasted maybe 15 seconds. Two of the images were so horrifying that I will never forget them. I never again conducted such a reckless experiment. The details aren't important. What matters is that those images infected me. They are pasted in my imagination as indelibly as a tattoo. Decades later I can still see them clearly. I wish I hadn't. There are things you can't unsee.
Years later I picked up The Road, the only book of McCarthy's I have read. I feel the same way about The Road as I do about that website. It's not what happened in the story that really got to me, though what happened was memorably disturbing; it was the depth of the despair. The skies, the forests, the campfire, the sailboat on the shore: all now part of my internal landscape. I wish I hadn't read that book, and I occasionally find myself in conversations in which I warn people away from it. It has occurred to me in the years since that it is literally the only book I've ever read that I wish I hadn't. There are some things you can't unread.
I appreciate your commentary on McCarthy's work. It's useful to know that there is some kind of return route from the deep cave into which McCarthy leads his readers. Maybe I will revisit just the last chapter, and look again. Even if I don't, there is something in knowing that there are other people who have visited that place and not returned empty handed.
This is a wonderful piece, Jayson! Very nice work (and great idea for a series on McCarthy).
The Road was my first McCarthy novel as well, and I’m grateful that it opened my eyes to his work.
Coincidentally, I started my Substack just days before his death, so my first post-launch piece was a tribute to that work in honour of his memory.
In particular, the paragraph where McCarthy uses the impossibly obscure term “salitter”--translating roughly to “essence of God”--is one of my favourites in all of prose. “The salitter drying from the earth”... the tonal resonance is perfection!
My wife and I had the same reaction to watching this movie: That we needed to give our only child a sibling, so they would not be alone when we died.