310
I)AI~
T ISAN RE VIEW
with an unhappy and unse ttling core . For every ac ti o n in thi s wo rld is
shadowed by some distant sense ofjustice that looms behind the charac–
ters like the o utline o f blu e mountains; again and aga in , th ere are inti–
mations o f some higher order behind things, some age less system , o r fo r–
gotten wisdom , framed against a universe as cold and distant as the stars.
Men are o ften animals here, o r obj ec ts in a landscape more eloqu ent
than they . (The fac t that th e main charac ter spea ks to his ho rse, and a
wolf, as much as to the people around him tells you a little about how
M cC arthy rega rds animals, and a lo t abo ut how he rega rds men .)
Indeed , if McCa rthy resembl es anyone, in hi s clean , lunar prose, and the
unflinchingness o f his vi sio n, it is Paul Bowles, and the sere landscape
aro und the Mexican border becomes his versio n o f Bowles's Morocco, a
theological blac k hole where young Ameri ca ns come into contac t with
dea th and antiqui ty and the prospect of annihil ati on. His is a spoo ked
land , of bo nes pi cked dry and bad dreams; a prehuman order, w here
things are redu ced to a biblical simplicity : trees and huts and coo l blu e
silences. But where Bowles has o ne foo t in civili za ti o n , and shows the
slow passage towards ali enati o n , M cCa rthy is entirely o ut in th e w ild .
And whe re Bowl es has a sense o f soc ial and emo ti o nal nu ance,
McC arthy starts where society ends. Bowl es, in fac t , is so detached from
hi s universe that he is co ntent merely to reco rd it; McCa rthy, by
contras t, ca nn ot stop trying to pee l the surface o f th e wo rld bac k to
find its metaphysical core.
And ye t, in spite of this, curi o usly eno ugh , McCa rthy is neve r shy
about hi s aspirati o ns; he seems less inn ocent o f literary traditi on th an
almost any writer I kn ow . When young Billy rides o ut over the border
accompani ed by a wo lf and a horse, it does no t take a graduate student
to find images of civili za ti o n and the w ild ; and th e bo rder itself, whi ch
exists mostly in hi s mind , is as linea r and sc hemati c a symbol as any
exege te could wa nt. Mexico is antiquity, M exico is dea th , Mexico is
fa te, we are to ld again and again. Ameri ca is th e pl ace wh ere all pasts
can be hea led , says o ne obliging oracl e met o n th e road ; M exico is the
place where the past is past.
It was thi s kind o f promiscuo us ge nerali zin g th at gave D . H .
Lawrence, in a very different vein , such a bad name. And th ere is an
unsettling sense of ho ll owness behind McCa rthy's cadences, espec ially as
th ey grow more va ti c, in th e wake o f
A ll the Prett y Horses
(th e nove l
that propell ed him, ove rni ght , from dark cult auth o r to run away best–
sell er). Yet the case
to
be made for him is, in an odd way, th e same one
I wo uld make fo r Lawrence: that he is abso lutely committed to hi s
vision and unafraid o f making utterances th at co uld be taken as
