What do you think?
Rate this book
Outer Dark
Sometime around the turn of the last century, a woman in Appalachia bears her brother’s child, a boy. The brother leaves the baby in the woods and tells his sister the child died of natural causes. Discovering her brother’s lie, she sets forth alone to find her son. Both brother and sister wander separately through a countryside being scourged by three terrifying and elusive strangers, headlong toward an eerie apocalyptic resolution.
242 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1968
1011 people are currently reading
25193 people want to read
About the author
Cormac McCarthy
68 books27.9k followersCormac McCarthy was a highly acclaimed American novelist and screenwriter celebrated for his distinctive literary style, philosophical depth, and exploration of violence, morality, and the human condition. His writing, often characterized by sparse punctuation and lyrical, biblical language, delved into the primal forces that shape human behavior, set against the haunting landscapes of the American South and Southwest.
McCarthy’s early novels, including The Orchard Keeper and Outer Dark, established him as a powerful voice in Southern Gothic literature, while Blood Meridian (1985) is frequently cited as his magnum opus—a brutal, visionary epic about violence and manifest destiny in the American West. In the 1990s, his "Border Trilogy"—All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain—garnered widespread popularity and critical acclaim, blending coming-of-age themes with philosophical introspection and tragic realism.
His 2005 novel No Country for Old Men was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film by the Coen brothers, and his harrowing post-apocalyptic tale The Road (2006) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was also made into a major motion picture. Both works brought him mainstream recognition and a broader readership later in his career.
Despite his fame, McCarthy remained famously private and rarely gave interviews, preferring to let his work speak for itself. His legacy endures through his powerful, often unsettling portrayals of humanity’s struggle with fate, violence, and redemption, making him one of the most influential and original voices in modern American literature.
McCarthy’s early novels, including The Orchard Keeper and Outer Dark, established him as a powerful voice in Southern Gothic literature, while Blood Meridian (1985) is frequently cited as his magnum opus—a brutal, visionary epic about violence and manifest destiny in the American West. In the 1990s, his "Border Trilogy"—All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain—garnered widespread popularity and critical acclaim, blending coming-of-age themes with philosophical introspection and tragic realism.
His 2005 novel No Country for Old Men was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film by the Coen brothers, and his harrowing post-apocalyptic tale The Road (2006) won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was also made into a major motion picture. Both works brought him mainstream recognition and a broader readership later in his career.
Despite his fame, McCarthy remained famously private and rarely gave interviews, preferring to let his work speak for itself. His legacy endures through his powerful, often unsettling portrayals of humanity’s struggle with fate, violence, and redemption, making him one of the most influential and original voices in modern American literature.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,319 reviews
May 31, 2021
4.5 stars
“Voices were being raised against him. He was caught up in the crowd and the stink of their rags filled his nostrils. They grew seething and more mutinous and he tried to hide among them but they knew him even in that pit of hopeless dark and fell upon him with howls of outrage.”
I’m certain I just spent the past few days in purgatory. Or maybe I was sent directly to Hell. Whatever you want to call it, I was immersed in something dark, violent, and deeply disturbing. It’s the stuff of nightmares. I loved every minute of it. I’m also absolutely sure this book deserves to be reread again in the future. A Bible would be a handy companion to this novel – or some prior knowledge of the stories contained within. There were loads of biblical allegories scattered throughout. That’s as far as my Bible know-how goes, however – the awareness is there but by no means am I well-versed in it. No matter, in the hands of a skilled writer like Cormac McCarthy, I was completely possessed.
“Dark little birds kept crossing the fields to the west like heralds of some coming dread.”
This is the story of two people on a journey. A sister in search of something lost and a brother in search of the sister. Sin holds fast to their ragged clothing and tattered boots. Judgment pursues and lurks around each corner. Along the way each sibling meets a number of grotesque figures. McCarthy is so remarkably proficient at drawing every single one of these and so sharp when it comes to writing dialogue, that they very well could have been sitting right in front of me. As luck would have it, they were not! I thought I had come across the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse at one point, minus a rider. On second glance, I believe they were simply agents of the devil, meting out the most horrific justice to anyone who veered from the straight and narrow. Whoever they were, these three will be forever imprinted in both my slumbering and conscious mind.
“They wore the same clothes, sat in the same attitudes, endowed with a dream’s redundancy. Like revenants that reoccur in lands laid waste with fever: spectral, palpable as stone.”
I’m not going to tell you to read this; it’s wholly up to you to make that choice. This is bleak, grisly, unsettling and hopeless. It’s a troubling fable wrapped in wonderfully expressive language. You might have more questions than answers after finishing, but it sure is energizing to keep on thinking about this long after closing the book! McCarthy is a genius and I would grab another right away if I didn’t have some other promising stories waiting in the wings.
“Hard people makes hard times. I’ve seen the meanness of humans till I don’t know why God ain’t put out the sun and gone away.”
“Voices were being raised against him. He was caught up in the crowd and the stink of their rags filled his nostrils. They grew seething and more mutinous and he tried to hide among them but they knew him even in that pit of hopeless dark and fell upon him with howls of outrage.”
I’m certain I just spent the past few days in purgatory. Or maybe I was sent directly to Hell. Whatever you want to call it, I was immersed in something dark, violent, and deeply disturbing. It’s the stuff of nightmares. I loved every minute of it. I’m also absolutely sure this book deserves to be reread again in the future. A Bible would be a handy companion to this novel – or some prior knowledge of the stories contained within. There were loads of biblical allegories scattered throughout. That’s as far as my Bible know-how goes, however – the awareness is there but by no means am I well-versed in it. No matter, in the hands of a skilled writer like Cormac McCarthy, I was completely possessed.
“Dark little birds kept crossing the fields to the west like heralds of some coming dread.”
This is the story of two people on a journey. A sister in search of something lost and a brother in search of the sister. Sin holds fast to their ragged clothing and tattered boots. Judgment pursues and lurks around each corner. Along the way each sibling meets a number of grotesque figures. McCarthy is so remarkably proficient at drawing every single one of these and so sharp when it comes to writing dialogue, that they very well could have been sitting right in front of me. As luck would have it, they were not! I thought I had come across the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse at one point, minus a rider. On second glance, I believe they were simply agents of the devil, meting out the most horrific justice to anyone who veered from the straight and narrow. Whoever they were, these three will be forever imprinted in both my slumbering and conscious mind.
“They wore the same clothes, sat in the same attitudes, endowed with a dream’s redundancy. Like revenants that reoccur in lands laid waste with fever: spectral, palpable as stone.”
I’m not going to tell you to read this; it’s wholly up to you to make that choice. This is bleak, grisly, unsettling and hopeless. It’s a troubling fable wrapped in wonderfully expressive language. You might have more questions than answers after finishing, but it sure is energizing to keep on thinking about this long after closing the book! McCarthy is a genius and I would grab another right away if I didn’t have some other promising stories waiting in the wings.
“Hard people makes hard times. I’ve seen the meanness of humans till I don’t know why God ain’t put out the sun and gone away.”
November 9, 2019
This is my third Cormac McCarthy book. First one was The Road, which is without a doubt one of the best books I ever read, it had a great impact on me. Second was No country for old men, after seeing the movie and discovering this story was also written by McCarthy I felt the need to read the story too to fully grasp its meanings. McCarthy writes dark, incredible, fascinating stories, Outer Dark is no exception. I find his writing and style very powerful, very expressive, beautiful, clear sentences, language and descriptions and the stories are so fascinating and always food for thought, I am a big fan of Cormac McCarthy now. This book leaves you thinking... what does this all mean, and it stays in your mind. I'm sure I will want to keep rereading his books. This man is a great writer. So glad I discovered his talents last year with The Road. Next McCarthy book is on my list to read, but after a break and some other books. This book has to sink in first and first I need some lighter reads before starting the next one. However, looking forward to it already.
February 5, 2023
It is really pretty peculiar and I don’t have that with any other writer, but when I start to read another Cormac McCarthy novel I am just stunned all over again what a fabulous writer he is. I cannot explain why I seem to have to be convinced of that notion with every novel of his once again, since I have read plenty of his novels by now.
Well, this was another stunning novel of McCarthy. His second novel, published in 1968. It actually reminded me in tone of voice and level of desperation of Blood Meridian (1985), although ‘Outer Dark’ is set in Appalachia and I assume in the early 20th century, but perhaps a bit earlier. The two main characters, brother and sister, are wretchedly poor, always at the edge of starvation and cannot even write their own name. They are actually unaware of the world beyond their area, but are forced to enter that world on a search that both undertake separately in their own way. A heartbreaking tale, written in McCarthy’s aluring sentences which flow from him so naturally, evoking those woods and rivers, roads, good people and evil people. Another very impressive novel of the grand master!
Well, this was another stunning novel of McCarthy. His second novel, published in 1968. It actually reminded me in tone of voice and level of desperation of Blood Meridian (1985), although ‘Outer Dark’ is set in Appalachia and I assume in the early 20th century, but perhaps a bit earlier. The two main characters, brother and sister, are wretchedly poor, always at the edge of starvation and cannot even write their own name. They are actually unaware of the world beyond their area, but are forced to enter that world on a search that both undertake separately in their own way. A heartbreaking tale, written in McCarthy’s aluring sentences which flow from him so naturally, evoking those woods and rivers, roads, good people and evil people. Another very impressive novel of the grand master!
November 19, 2020
VANGELO NERO
Il suo secondo romanzo - invece per me probabilmente il quarto o quinto che ho letto, ho iniziato la mia conoscenza di McCarthy dalla insuperabile bellissima trilogia della frontiera.
Per McCarthy si usa spesso il termine ‘apocalittico’, qui addirittura apposto nel sottotitolo, “fiaba apocalittica”: credo che The Road – La strada sia esempio chiaro a tutti in questo senso.
A me viene più immediata l’associazione con il vecchio testamento, mi viene più immediato l’uso dell’aggettivo biblico.
Per il tono e il senso di colpa, che ha qualcosa di primordiale, che ricorda il peccato originale.
Davanti a lui si estendeva una radura spettrale di cui si scorgevano solo gli alberi nudi, in atteggiamento di agonia vagamente umana, come figure in un paesaggio di dannati. Un giardino su cui ristagnava il fumo dei morti, che scompariva verso la curva dell'orizzonte…Un vento putrido soffiava da questa desolazione e le canne palustri e le felci nere tra i quali si infilava dolcemente, ondeggiavano come schiere incatenate.
Il paesaggio diventa sempre elemento che marcia in parallelo agli umori dei personaggi: è sempre tetro, tenebroso, senza speranza, la natura è cattiva, fa paura.
L’uomo non è da meno, e se non è cattivo, la paura ce l’ha comunque dentro, cammina con lui.
La terra e i suoi abitanti, coloro che la percorrono e calpestano, sono forze del Caos: sono come forze primarie di un cosmo votato alla distruzione, alla dissoluzione, alla degenerazione.
Culla e sua sorella Rinthy sono giovani, sono ragazzi, ma hanno già commesso una colpa insieme: hanno generato un figlio, è una colpa si chiama incesto.
Che il padre fratello della madre si sbarazzi del neonato è gesto tardivo: la colpa è commessa, il buio è fuori, ma prima di tutto dentro.
Vanno in giro per il mondo (il luogo e il tempo dell’azione rimangono indefiniti, ma viene da credere che si tratti degli Appalachi probabilmente a cavallo del Novecento), lei alla ricerca del bimbo, lui alla ricerca di lei.
Si muovono incontrando persone che sembrano spettri infernali: incluso il trio (trinità?) che va in giro a uccidere chiunque incontri (vendicatori o giustizieri, o solo assassini?).
Il mondo non reagisce bene alla presenza di Culla, lo percepisce portatore di tempeste.
Sembra andare meglio a sua sorella Rinthy: ma anche per lei il mondo offre poco più della sopravvivenza.
Indimenticabile la scena dello sterminato branco di maiali che si comportano come lemuri, lungo la gola, fino al burrone, trascinando il loro mandriano.
È la gente dura che rende i tempi duri. Ho visto tanta cattiveria tra gli uomini che non so perché Dio non ha ancora spento il sole e non se n’è andato.
Il suo secondo romanzo - invece per me probabilmente il quarto o quinto che ho letto, ho iniziato la mia conoscenza di McCarthy dalla insuperabile bellissima trilogia della frontiera.
Per McCarthy si usa spesso il termine ‘apocalittico’, qui addirittura apposto nel sottotitolo, “fiaba apocalittica”: credo che The Road – La strada sia esempio chiaro a tutti in questo senso.
A me viene più immediata l’associazione con il vecchio testamento, mi viene più immediato l’uso dell’aggettivo biblico.
Per il tono e il senso di colpa, che ha qualcosa di primordiale, che ricorda il peccato originale.
Davanti a lui si estendeva una radura spettrale di cui si scorgevano solo gli alberi nudi, in atteggiamento di agonia vagamente umana, come figure in un paesaggio di dannati. Un giardino su cui ristagnava il fumo dei morti, che scompariva verso la curva dell'orizzonte…Un vento putrido soffiava da questa desolazione e le canne palustri e le felci nere tra i quali si infilava dolcemente, ondeggiavano come schiere incatenate.
Il paesaggio diventa sempre elemento che marcia in parallelo agli umori dei personaggi: è sempre tetro, tenebroso, senza speranza, la natura è cattiva, fa paura.
L’uomo non è da meno, e se non è cattivo, la paura ce l’ha comunque dentro, cammina con lui.
La terra e i suoi abitanti, coloro che la percorrono e calpestano, sono forze del Caos: sono come forze primarie di un cosmo votato alla distruzione, alla dissoluzione, alla degenerazione.
Culla e sua sorella Rinthy sono giovani, sono ragazzi, ma hanno già commesso una colpa insieme: hanno generato un figlio, è una colpa si chiama incesto.
Che il padre fratello della madre si sbarazzi del neonato è gesto tardivo: la colpa è commessa, il buio è fuori, ma prima di tutto dentro.
Vanno in giro per il mondo (il luogo e il tempo dell’azione rimangono indefiniti, ma viene da credere che si tratti degli Appalachi probabilmente a cavallo del Novecento), lei alla ricerca del bimbo, lui alla ricerca di lei.
Si muovono incontrando persone che sembrano spettri infernali: incluso il trio (trinità?) che va in giro a uccidere chiunque incontri (vendicatori o giustizieri, o solo assassini?).
Il mondo non reagisce bene alla presenza di Culla, lo percepisce portatore di tempeste.
Sembra andare meglio a sua sorella Rinthy: ma anche per lei il mondo offre poco più della sopravvivenza.
Indimenticabile la scena dello sterminato branco di maiali che si comportano come lemuri, lungo la gola, fino al burrone, trascinando il loro mandriano.
È la gente dura che rende i tempi duri. Ho visto tanta cattiveria tra gli uomini che non so perché Dio non ha ancora spento il sole e non se n’è andato.
July 5, 2025
In this story, the author shows us that two people who have been able to get closer to being separate follow parallel paths—finally, a lesson in ordinary life, inscribed in an unknown setting.
Through the play of symbols, the story's rhythm, and episodes of discovery, we, as characters, seek to know the rest, the end of the journey in this universe entirely of dishonesty and disappointment.
That's a very modern and lovely novel.
Through the play of symbols, the story's rhythm, and episodes of discovery, we, as characters, seek to know the rest, the end of the journey in this universe entirely of dishonesty and disappointment.
That's a very modern and lovely novel.
July 1, 2014
Having given 5* to The Road (my review here http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...), I was surprised and disappointed at how much I disliked this.
Like The Road, it is dark and sparse, and involves destitute people travelling on foot, looking for food, shelter and hope, but that is where the similarity ends.
This is set much longer ago (before cars) and tells several parallel and occasionally intersecting stories: a woman searching for her missing baby; her brother searching for her; a tinker travelling between towns, and a gang.
Although they all rely on, and often receive kindness from strangers, the book is suffused with brooding menace: "a sky heavy and starless... and laden with the false warmth of impending storm" and "the tracks of commerce lay fossilised in dried mud" and "a hushed blue world of the dead".
Like The Road, the language is bleak and McCarthy doesn't scatter the pages with punctuation, though he uses far more than in The Road: the main omission is quotation marks. Whereas I think that extreme sparseness worked in The Road, the middle path adopted in this book is neither one thing nor the other.
I never found the story really engaging, but my real problem with it is the gruesomeness. There is a vicious, motiveless murder, done with a smile. Nasty, but in context, it fits with the story. However, near the end there is something much worse that I wish I hadn't read.
Not for the faint-hearted.
Like The Road, it is dark and sparse, and involves destitute people travelling on foot, looking for food, shelter and hope, but that is where the similarity ends.
This is set much longer ago (before cars) and tells several parallel and occasionally intersecting stories: a woman searching for her missing baby; her brother searching for her; a tinker travelling between towns, and a gang.
Although they all rely on, and often receive kindness from strangers, the book is suffused with brooding menace: "a sky heavy and starless... and laden with the false warmth of impending storm" and "the tracks of commerce lay fossilised in dried mud" and "a hushed blue world of the dead".
Like The Road, the language is bleak and McCarthy doesn't scatter the pages with punctuation, though he uses far more than in The Road: the main omission is quotation marks. Whereas I think that extreme sparseness worked in The Road, the middle path adopted in this book is neither one thing nor the other.
I never found the story really engaging, but my real problem with it is the gruesomeness. There is a vicious, motiveless murder, done with a smile. Nasty, but in context, it fits with the story. However, near the end there is something much worse that I wish I hadn't read.
Not for the faint-hearted.
March 29, 2012
Outer Dark: Cormac McCarthy's Novel of Judgment and Responsibility
And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Matthew 25:30, KJV
If there were ever a more unprofitable servant to appear in literature, it would be difficult to find one less so than Culla Holme. Brother to Rinthy, he has perpetrated the social taboo of incest. He fears his sin will be found out. When Rinthy's water breaks, he allows her to suffer through labor, refusing to even summon a midwife. She bears a son, whom Culla never allows her to hold or nurse. Rather, he abandons his child in the woods and tells his sister the child has died.
A travelling tinker finds the child and saves it. To hide his abandonment of the child, Culla prepares a grave, a deception Rinthy sees through, digging up the grave herself to find that no body is there.
Culla leaves their home and seeks work from town to town. Rinthy also leaves home to find her child, her "Chap," as she calls him.
Each of Culla's efforts to find work and become a profitable servant fail. He is pursued by three violent men, perhaps symbols of an angry God, who leave a path of death and destruction in their wake. I wondered that there were not four horsemen. But I remembered that McCarthy was the fourth, driving each of the three on and on. The targets of their violence are those with whom Culla has come into contact.
The simple honesty of Rinthy brings her into contact with individuals of a kinder and gentler nature than those with whom Culla deals and deceives. That Culla ultimately is confronted by the vengeful trio is inevitable. I leave the outcome of Culla's judgment to the readerm just as must also leave the outcome of Rinthy's search for her Chap.
McCarthy's second novel descends into darkness of a degree much greater than seen in his debut novel, The Orchard Keeper. "Outer Dark" is a work intentionally marked with the grim, grotesque, and gothic. With this novel, the reader sees McCarthy's escalating violence that is vivid in its ability to shock and appall.
This is a tale that might have been ripped from the pages of the Brothers Grimm and ramped up to a degree that is sufficiently shocking for a society that has become more jaded and unable to wince at the vilest acts of men. It will not easily be forgotten, once read. Nor is it a tale one will easily pick up again.
And cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Matthew 25:30, KJV
If there were ever a more unprofitable servant to appear in literature, it would be difficult to find one less so than Culla Holme. Brother to Rinthy, he has perpetrated the social taboo of incest. He fears his sin will be found out. When Rinthy's water breaks, he allows her to suffer through labor, refusing to even summon a midwife. She bears a son, whom Culla never allows her to hold or nurse. Rather, he abandons his child in the woods and tells his sister the child has died.
A travelling tinker finds the child and saves it. To hide his abandonment of the child, Culla prepares a grave, a deception Rinthy sees through, digging up the grave herself to find that no body is there.
Culla leaves their home and seeks work from town to town. Rinthy also leaves home to find her child, her "Chap," as she calls him.
Each of Culla's efforts to find work and become a profitable servant fail. He is pursued by three violent men, perhaps symbols of an angry God, who leave a path of death and destruction in their wake. I wondered that there were not four horsemen. But I remembered that McCarthy was the fourth, driving each of the three on and on. The targets of their violence are those with whom Culla has come into contact.
The simple honesty of Rinthy brings her into contact with individuals of a kinder and gentler nature than those with whom Culla deals and deceives. That Culla ultimately is confronted by the vengeful trio is inevitable. I leave the outcome of Culla's judgment to the readerm just as must also leave the outcome of Rinthy's search for her Chap.
McCarthy's second novel descends into darkness of a degree much greater than seen in his debut novel, The Orchard Keeper. "Outer Dark" is a work intentionally marked with the grim, grotesque, and gothic. With this novel, the reader sees McCarthy's escalating violence that is vivid in its ability to shock and appall.
This is a tale that might have been ripped from the pages of the Brothers Grimm and ramped up to a degree that is sufficiently shocking for a society that has become more jaded and unable to wince at the vilest acts of men. It will not easily be forgotten, once read. Nor is it a tale one will easily pick up again.
June 6, 2021
As far as I’m concerned there’s no other author quite like Cormac McCarthy. I’ve heard some comparisons to William Faulkner but as I’m yet to read anything by him, for now I’ll stick to my statement about McCarthy’s unique and powerful writing style.
It’s not like I can say that he’s among my favourite writers because from all of the novels I’ve read by him so far, only The Road can be found among my favourites. But The Road is in a category of its own anyway so that doesn’t mean or explain much about the way I feel about this one or McCarthy’s masterful use of language in general.
Dialogue; this is where it becomes completely obvious how good McCarthy is. Excellent and flawless dialogue. Exquisitely done to the point where one can even distinguish the accent in the characters voices as they speak. No, no, no, I’m not exaggerating at all. I swear to you that every single voice in this story is now embedded in my brain like the ones of people I’ve known all my life.
And my whole lifetime isn’t going to be long enough to get this nightmare out from under my skin. Literally. Every single element of this story shook me in a way that no other book ever has. I hated every single thing about the two main characters as much as I cared about them. All along, and for every single step they took, I could feel my heart being squeezed by an invisible hand that never lost its grip from the beginning to the... ahem... end?
There’s an almost palpable evil thread running though these pages; an eerie feeling of hopelessness and a complete violent and nihilistic view of life.
Did I love it? Good question.
Am I ever going to forget it? Never.
Am I going to pick up McCarthy again? Oh yes... Definitely.
It’s not like I can say that he’s among my favourite writers because from all of the novels I’ve read by him so far, only The Road can be found among my favourites. But The Road is in a category of its own anyway so that doesn’t mean or explain much about the way I feel about this one or McCarthy’s masterful use of language in general.
Dialogue; this is where it becomes completely obvious how good McCarthy is. Excellent and flawless dialogue. Exquisitely done to the point where one can even distinguish the accent in the characters voices as they speak. No, no, no, I’m not exaggerating at all. I swear to you that every single voice in this story is now embedded in my brain like the ones of people I’ve known all my life.
And my whole lifetime isn’t going to be long enough to get this nightmare out from under my skin. Literally. Every single element of this story shook me in a way that no other book ever has. I hated every single thing about the two main characters as much as I cared about them. All along, and for every single step they took, I could feel my heart being squeezed by an invisible hand that never lost its grip from the beginning to the... ahem... end?
There’s an almost palpable evil thread running though these pages; an eerie feeling of hopelessness and a complete violent and nihilistic view of life.
Did I love it? Good question.
Am I ever going to forget it? Never.
Am I going to pick up McCarthy again? Oh yes... Definitely.
July 5, 2017
I wasn't sure about this book. I read "All the Pretty Horses" many years ago and didn't care for it. I tried "Suttree" and put it down after a couple of chapters. I liked "The Orchard Keeper", but it wasn't his typical dark, dark themes.
But maybe this one came along at just the right time in my evolution as a reader. Despite the violence and sadness, despite the intentionally evil actions of some and the wrong actions of others that were committed in innocence, this book became for me an allegory of our journey through life.
"Times is hard."
"Hard people makes hard times. I've seen the meanness of humans til I don't know why God ain't put out the sun and gone away."
To say Cormac McCarthy has a way with words is an understatement. His writing is on a different plane of consciousness and transports me to that plane as I am reading. And his mastery of dialogue is pure genius. He leaves a lot of decisions about his characters up to the reader, which I appreciate. I like it when an author thinks I'm intelligent enough to figure it out.
There is a scene near the end of this book where Holme, one of the main characters, meets up with a group of men driving a herd of hogs to market. It is a comic masterpiece, placed in exactly the right spot to make the horror in the next chapter even more awful. McCarthy doesn't like one to get too comfortable.
So, to surprise a lot of people, myself most of all, I am now a full-fledged McCarthy fan. I may give "All the Pretty Horses" another try, but first I need to read "The Road". After an interval, of course. His words are too powerful, and need to be rationed out.
But maybe this one came along at just the right time in my evolution as a reader. Despite the violence and sadness, despite the intentionally evil actions of some and the wrong actions of others that were committed in innocence, this book became for me an allegory of our journey through life.
"Times is hard."
"Hard people makes hard times. I've seen the meanness of humans til I don't know why God ain't put out the sun and gone away."
To say Cormac McCarthy has a way with words is an understatement. His writing is on a different plane of consciousness and transports me to that plane as I am reading. And his mastery of dialogue is pure genius. He leaves a lot of decisions about his characters up to the reader, which I appreciate. I like it when an author thinks I'm intelligent enough to figure it out.
There is a scene near the end of this book where Holme, one of the main characters, meets up with a group of men driving a herd of hogs to market. It is a comic masterpiece, placed in exactly the right spot to make the horror in the next chapter even more awful. McCarthy doesn't like one to get too comfortable.
So, to surprise a lot of people, myself most of all, I am now a full-fledged McCarthy fan. I may give "All the Pretty Horses" another try, but first I need to read "The Road". After an interval, of course. His words are too powerful, and need to be rationed out.
October 16, 2014
An air of ruin permeates this bleak tale of abandonment, desperation, and want. 'Hard people makes hard times.' Culla and Rinthy Holme, brother and sister, were brought up hard. They ain't never had nuthin'.
Look for a man who bares 'his orangecolored teeth in a grimace of lecherous idiocy.' Regard the 'dead gray serpentine of the river' as it flows. See the old crone with the elfin face in the woods. She won't abide a hound dog on the place, but has no qualms with a pig rooting around and sleeping inside her shack.
For readers who dig on desolate, unforgiving plots, this one's for you. I thought it was outstanding.
Look for a man who bares 'his orangecolored teeth in a grimace of lecherous idiocy.' Regard the 'dead gray serpentine of the river' as it flows. See the old crone with the elfin face in the woods. She won't abide a hound dog on the place, but has no qualms with a pig rooting around and sleeping inside her shack.
For readers who dig on desolate, unforgiving plots, this one's for you. I thought it was outstanding.
August 30, 2021
I don't think I've ever read a book I kept wanting to DNF even as I compulsively turned the pages, wanting more. On one hand, I was bored. On the other, I was enthralled.
This book is dark and sinister and grisly. It's also mundane. And yet..... and yet I could not get enough of it. I think it must take some special kind of genius to do this to a reader. I think I'll remember this book for some time to come.
This book is dark and sinister and grisly. It's also mundane. And yet..... and yet I could not get enough of it. I think it must take some special kind of genius to do this to a reader. I think I'll remember this book for some time to come.
May 12, 2025
4,25⭐
Okropna, okrutna, straszna książka.
No i świetna.
Film o Cormacu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb-eJ...
Okropna, okrutna, straszna książka.
No i świetna.
Film o Cormacu: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb-eJ...
March 26, 2019
Definitionally Southern Gothic
This novel should top the list in any Google search for, or be featured in any dictionary's definition of, "Southern gothic fiction." What we have here, friends, is two odysseys through a few circles like Dante's, full of nihilistic brutality, edentulous elderly, incest, cannibalism, grim reapers and angels of death, liquor, piety, grotesquery, apocalyptic ambiguities, and Biblical allegories.
You'd best wear boots when you start to readin' cuz yore fixin' to enter a world of sh*t.
This novel should top the list in any Google search for, or be featured in any dictionary's definition of, "Southern gothic fiction." What we have here, friends, is two odysseys through a few circles like Dante's, full of nihilistic brutality, edentulous elderly, incest, cannibalism, grim reapers and angels of death, liquor, piety, grotesquery, apocalyptic ambiguities, and Biblical allegories.
You'd best wear boots when you start to readin' cuz yore fixin' to enter a world of sh*t.
July 20, 2024
audiobook
story is circa mid to late 1800s
What an exceptional book. I’m surprised I’ve hardly heard anything about it. Usually it’s The Road or Blood Meridian or No Country. But this volume contains some of Cormac’s finest writing.
A child is born who the brother (maybe he’s the father maybe not) takes out into the woods and leaves to die of exposure. He returns to the cabin and tells his sister the infant is dead. She doesn’t quite believe him so goes out into the forest to the spot he describes to her (which is the actual location). But there is no child, there is no body. There is no child because a traveling tinker found it and kept it with him and kept it alive.
So a four stranded tale begins. The mother tracks the track of the tinker’s cart. The brother sets off after his sister. The tinker keeps moving on. As always with Cormac, there is a roving band of ne’er do wells on the road, sociopaths who shed blood and commit gruesome murders wherever they go. They comprise the fourth strand.
It seemed to me like a version of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress or Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Sister and brother and tinker meet all kinds of people on the trail, some decent, some not, all knotted and knobbly and colorful. It was a wonderful progressive reading experience. The only thing I had trouble with was the blood and slaughter of the ending.
And in case you think I have trouble because of the overt violence, I don’t. I’ve read Blood Meridian, for instance, and found McMurtry’s Comanche Moon much harder to take. Triggers for me are violence towards children and animals and I know Cormac will be Cormac but I didn’t think this ending was necessary. However I’m grateful the brother escaped an unjust lynching and the false piety of a false pastor. I also found the final pages with a blind man to be profound and an exceptional metaphor for the book and life. If I were teaching McCarthy this would be the first book of his I’d assign. The writing is so good.
I’ve read essays by Cormac and various quotes and I’ve now absorbed six of his books so I know he has a fairly negative view of humanity and life on this earth. I accept that he is going to exhibit that philosophy in his novels. Despite that element in Outer Dark I still consider this to be among his top three works.
“I seen the meanness in humans till I wonder why God ain’t put out the sun and gone away.”
- The Tinker
story is circa mid to late 1800s
What an exceptional book. I’m surprised I’ve hardly heard anything about it. Usually it’s The Road or Blood Meridian or No Country. But this volume contains some of Cormac’s finest writing.
A child is born who the brother (maybe he’s the father maybe not) takes out into the woods and leaves to die of exposure. He returns to the cabin and tells his sister the infant is dead. She doesn’t quite believe him so goes out into the forest to the spot he describes to her (which is the actual location). But there is no child, there is no body. There is no child because a traveling tinker found it and kept it with him and kept it alive.
So a four stranded tale begins. The mother tracks the track of the tinker’s cart. The brother sets off after his sister. The tinker keeps moving on. As always with Cormac, there is a roving band of ne’er do wells on the road, sociopaths who shed blood and commit gruesome murders wherever they go. They comprise the fourth strand.
It seemed to me like a version of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress or Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Sister and brother and tinker meet all kinds of people on the trail, some decent, some not, all knotted and knobbly and colorful. It was a wonderful progressive reading experience. The only thing I had trouble with was the blood and slaughter of the ending.
And in case you think I have trouble because of the overt violence, I don’t. I’ve read Blood Meridian, for instance, and found McMurtry’s Comanche Moon much harder to take. Triggers for me are violence towards children and animals and I know Cormac will be Cormac but I didn’t think this ending was necessary. However I’m grateful the brother escaped an unjust lynching and the false piety of a false pastor. I also found the final pages with a blind man to be profound and an exceptional metaphor for the book and life. If I were teaching McCarthy this would be the first book of his I’d assign. The writing is so good.
I’ve read essays by Cormac and various quotes and I’ve now absorbed six of his books so I know he has a fairly negative view of humanity and life on this earth. I accept that he is going to exhibit that philosophy in his novels. Despite that element in Outer Dark I still consider this to be among his top three works.
“I seen the meanness in humans till I wonder why God ain’t put out the sun and gone away.”
- The Tinker
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 6, 2016
“Ive seen the meanness of humans till I dont know why God aint put out the sun and gone away.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Outer Dark
I keep reading Cormac McCarthy to find a single crack of light in his dark, grotesque lyricism. 'Outer Dark' was unconventional and amazing. The story was allegorical without being stiff, it was regional without being provincial. Like most of McCarthy's work it is Biblical in its power and intensity.
In 'Outer Dark', McCarthy is throwing chert boulders at the dark center of the Universe. He isn't interested in little themes. Even in his small books he is taking on ideas as large and slippery as fate, guilt, agency, and God. Structurally, Outer Dark was drum-tight. The prose and the vernacular/archaic dialogue were both crisp and amazing. 'Outer Dark' is prose art at a high-level and it scared the literary Hell out of me.
― Cormac McCarthy, Outer Dark
I keep reading Cormac McCarthy to find a single crack of light in his dark, grotesque lyricism. 'Outer Dark' was unconventional and amazing. The story was allegorical without being stiff, it was regional without being provincial. Like most of McCarthy's work it is Biblical in its power and intensity.
In 'Outer Dark', McCarthy is throwing chert boulders at the dark center of the Universe. He isn't interested in little themes. Even in his small books he is taking on ideas as large and slippery as fate, guilt, agency, and God. Structurally, Outer Dark was drum-tight. The prose and the vernacular/archaic dialogue were both crisp and amazing. 'Outer Dark' is prose art at a high-level and it scared the literary Hell out of me.
December 7, 2022
McCarthy's second novel already contains his classic themes, and it's BLEAK: Set in Appalachia at the turn of the century, we meet a young woman who has her brother's child (and we're talking consensual incest). The brother leaves the child to die in the woods and sets out on a journey to find work and to atone for his sins. Meanwhile, the sister searches for her child...
Sure, this is a book with deep religious undertones, but it's rather un-Catholic in a sense that it also celebrates nihilism: Life will punish the sinners and the virtuous alike. In various, often enigmatic and always moody episodes, the siblings live through minor unsettling adventures that lead to a gruesome finale that would make the devil-priest in Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West dance. The mythical evocations, biblical sound and archaic images concoct McCarthy's classic brew, and I guess that's what annoyed me a little: As I'm not reading his work in chronological order, I feel like he did way more with it in other texts - but these were of course texts that he still had to write at that point.
I was hoping that "Outer Dark" relates more to The Passenger and Stella Maris (because of the incest motif), but, alas, the connection is not all that deep. It's more of a starting ramp for later masterpieces.
Sure, this is a book with deep religious undertones, but it's rather un-Catholic in a sense that it also celebrates nihilism: Life will punish the sinners and the virtuous alike. In various, often enigmatic and always moody episodes, the siblings live through minor unsettling adventures that lead to a gruesome finale that would make the devil-priest in Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West dance. The mythical evocations, biblical sound and archaic images concoct McCarthy's classic brew, and I guess that's what annoyed me a little: As I'm not reading his work in chronological order, I feel like he did way more with it in other texts - but these were of course texts that he still had to write at that point.
I was hoping that "Outer Dark" relates more to The Passenger and Stella Maris (because of the incest motif), but, alas, the connection is not all that deep. It's more of a starting ramp for later masterpieces.
May 17, 2018
From his earliest literary forays like 'The Orchard Keeper' and 'Suttree', it was clear that the American Novel had found its heir to Faulkner. His prose contained the same lyrical beauty and biblical gravity of his artistic predecessor, but with a harsh, often brutal clarity that was all his own.
With 'Outer Dark', he transcended the labels and comparisons, defining himself as the greatest prose stylist of his generation, framing the rough structure for his dark personal vision of America... populated by the all-too-human horrors and nightmares that haunted the frontier, leaving their bloody fingerprints across the pages of American history.
As American as this novel is, McCarthy mines deeper veins, working mythological ores seamlessly into the alloy. The baby left exposed on a hillside due to deformity or weakness, or as in this case, incest, is drawn from the Bronze Age traditions of ancient Greece, wherein the gods decide the child's fate. The terrifying and brilliant presence of the three deadly strangers stalking the siblings' trail are the Erinyes, The Furies, agents of divine retribution tasked with hounding and destroying those who spill the blood of their own family.
The allusions continue, and a knowledge of Greek myth is certainly helpful in fully appreciating the depth of the novel, but isn't necessary. McCarthy draws upon archetypal resonance to give 'Outer Dark' a weight that transcends the particulars of time and place without in any way negating them. It's not his greatest novel, but it was his first true masterpiece.
With 'Outer Dark', he transcended the labels and comparisons, defining himself as the greatest prose stylist of his generation, framing the rough structure for his dark personal vision of America... populated by the all-too-human horrors and nightmares that haunted the frontier, leaving their bloody fingerprints across the pages of American history.
As American as this novel is, McCarthy mines deeper veins, working mythological ores seamlessly into the alloy. The baby left exposed on a hillside due to deformity or weakness, or as in this case, incest, is drawn from the Bronze Age traditions of ancient Greece, wherein the gods decide the child's fate. The terrifying and brilliant presence of the three deadly strangers stalking the siblings' trail are the Erinyes, The Furies, agents of divine retribution tasked with hounding and destroying those who spill the blood of their own family.
The allusions continue, and a knowledge of Greek myth is certainly helpful in fully appreciating the depth of the novel, but isn't necessary. McCarthy draws upon archetypal resonance to give 'Outer Dark' a weight that transcends the particulars of time and place without in any way negating them. It's not his greatest novel, but it was his first true masterpiece.
June 2, 2021
“Sono tempi duri.
È la gente dura che rende duri i tempi. Ho visto tanta cattiveria fra gli uomini che non so perché Dio non ha ancora spento il sole e non se n'è andato.”
E’ il 1968 quando Cormac McCarthy pubblica questo suo secondo romanzo.
Altamente metaforico e di grande potenza narrativa, “Il buio fuori” esige un lettore vigile non solo ai repentini cambi di scena ma anche ad un registro linguistico accurato e cesellato che reclama un’attenzione particolare.
In poche parole: non è un libro che si concilia con una lettura frettolosa e superficiale.
****
Culla e Rinthy Holme sono fratello e sorella e vivono assieme in un luogo remoto:
isolati come due parìa.
Nessun parente, nessuno al mondo.
” Non far entrare degli sconosciuti mentre sono via.
Lei sospirò a fondo.
Non c'è un'anima al mondo che non sia sconosciuta, per me, rispose.”
Devono bastare a se stessi, fino al giorno in cui si separano intraprendendo due viaggi differenti nel mondo al di fuori dell’antro che si erano costruiti.
Fin dall’incipit, accanto alla storia dei due giovani (che, per l’appunto, poi si sdoppia) si profila la misteriosa e inquietante comparsa di tre uomini spietati che vengono colti in gesti di estrema violenza fino ad un finale macabro che riproduce le atmosfere di una tregenda.
Lo sdoppiamento del viaggio dei due fratelli parla anche di destini differenti.
Entrambi intraprendono una ricerca che, tuttavia, cammino facendo appare sempre più vana.
Brutalità, solitudine: nessuna speranza per un futuro positivo.
Guardando davanti a sé, là fuori soltanto oscurità, il buio…
Un capolavoro dell’esistenzialismo statunitense.
” La donna lo scosse e lui si ritrovò sveglio nell'oscurità silenziosa. Zitto, disse lei. Smettila di gridare. L'uomo si mise a sedere. Cosa? disse. Cosa? Lo aveva scosso facendolo emergere dal buio al buio, fuori da una calca vociante sotto un sole nero, e adesso era sveglio in una notte ancora più dolorosa, seduto, e imprecava sottovoce nel letto che divideva con la donna e con il peso senza nome che lei portava nel ventre.”
È la gente dura che rende duri i tempi. Ho visto tanta cattiveria fra gli uomini che non so perché Dio non ha ancora spento il sole e non se n'è andato.”
E’ il 1968 quando Cormac McCarthy pubblica questo suo secondo romanzo.
Altamente metaforico e di grande potenza narrativa, “Il buio fuori” esige un lettore vigile non solo ai repentini cambi di scena ma anche ad un registro linguistico accurato e cesellato che reclama un’attenzione particolare.
In poche parole: non è un libro che si concilia con una lettura frettolosa e superficiale.
****
Culla e Rinthy Holme sono fratello e sorella e vivono assieme in un luogo remoto:
isolati come due parìa.
Nessun parente, nessuno al mondo.
” Non far entrare degli sconosciuti mentre sono via.
Lei sospirò a fondo.
Non c'è un'anima al mondo che non sia sconosciuta, per me, rispose.”
Devono bastare a se stessi, fino al giorno in cui si separano intraprendendo due viaggi differenti nel mondo al di fuori dell’antro che si erano costruiti.
Fin dall’incipit, accanto alla storia dei due giovani (che, per l’appunto, poi si sdoppia) si profila la misteriosa e inquietante comparsa di tre uomini spietati che vengono colti in gesti di estrema violenza fino ad un finale macabro che riproduce le atmosfere di una tregenda.
Lo sdoppiamento del viaggio dei due fratelli parla anche di destini differenti.
Entrambi intraprendono una ricerca che, tuttavia, cammino facendo appare sempre più vana.
Brutalità, solitudine: nessuna speranza per un futuro positivo.
Guardando davanti a sé, là fuori soltanto oscurità, il buio…
Un capolavoro dell’esistenzialismo statunitense.
” La donna lo scosse e lui si ritrovò sveglio nell'oscurità silenziosa. Zitto, disse lei. Smettila di gridare. L'uomo si mise a sedere. Cosa? disse. Cosa? Lo aveva scosso facendolo emergere dal buio al buio, fuori da una calca vociante sotto un sole nero, e adesso era sveglio in una notte ancora più dolorosa, seduto, e imprecava sottovoce nel letto che divideva con la donna e con il peso senza nome che lei portava nel ventre.”
July 4, 2024
“Sorry ways and sorry people and heavensent grief and heartache to make you pine for your death.”
One of Cormac McCarthy’s darkest novels, this retributive story follows wretched siblings, Culla and Rinthy Holme, who, after a series of sinful deeds, set off separately and alone into a bleak world, where any given tree that one comes upon might have men hanging in it “like gross chimes.”
“They ain’t a soul in this world but what is a stranger to me, she said.”
“I’ve seen the meanness of humans till I don’t know why God ain’t put out the sun and gone away.”
As they go their ways, the sister hunting a tinker (a traveling salesman), her brother hunting a day’s work and lodging, a dreadful sense of suspense builds. It is intensified by Culla’s run-ins with vigilantees and with the law, and by ominous events involving a trio of depraved outlaws, the devilish leader of which is reminiscent of, and as evil as, Judge Holden in Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West.
“The fist rose in an eruption of severed viscera until the blade sized in the junction of his breastbone and he stood disemboweled.”
It is not news that McCarthy writes well. The prose in this novel is outstanding. You can smell the filth and feel the depravity, as you read. There are so many passages that I highlighted that it is had to choose one to be illustrative. This one is fairly representative:
“Now the entire herd had begun to wheel wider and faster along the bluff and the outermost ranks swung centrifugally over the escarpment row on row wailing and squealing and above this the howls and curses of the drovers that now up-reared in the moil of flesh they tended and swept with dust had begun to assume satanic looks with their staves and wild eyes as if they were no true swineherds but disciples of darkness got among these charges to herd them to their doom.”
Other Memorable Quotes:
“It’s a scared thing, a family. A sacred obligation. Afore God.”
“It ain’t no crime to be poor … That’s right. But shiftlessness is a sin, I would judge.”
“The more I study a thing the more I get it backards. Study long and ye study wrong.”
“A feller never knows what day’ll be his last in this vale of tears.”
One of Cormac McCarthy’s darkest novels, this retributive story follows wretched siblings, Culla and Rinthy Holme, who, after a series of sinful deeds, set off separately and alone into a bleak world, where any given tree that one comes upon might have men hanging in it “like gross chimes.”
“They ain’t a soul in this world but what is a stranger to me, she said.”
“I’ve seen the meanness of humans till I don’t know why God ain’t put out the sun and gone away.”
As they go their ways, the sister hunting a tinker (a traveling salesman), her brother hunting a day’s work and lodging, a dreadful sense of suspense builds. It is intensified by Culla’s run-ins with vigilantees and with the law, and by ominous events involving a trio of depraved outlaws, the devilish leader of which is reminiscent of, and as evil as, Judge Holden in Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West.
“The fist rose in an eruption of severed viscera until the blade sized in the junction of his breastbone and he stood disemboweled.”
It is not news that McCarthy writes well. The prose in this novel is outstanding. You can smell the filth and feel the depravity, as you read. There are so many passages that I highlighted that it is had to choose one to be illustrative. This one is fairly representative:
“Now the entire herd had begun to wheel wider and faster along the bluff and the outermost ranks swung centrifugally over the escarpment row on row wailing and squealing and above this the howls and curses of the drovers that now up-reared in the moil of flesh they tended and swept with dust had begun to assume satanic looks with their staves and wild eyes as if they were no true swineherds but disciples of darkness got among these charges to herd them to their doom.”
Other Memorable Quotes:
“It’s a scared thing, a family. A sacred obligation. Afore God.”
“It ain’t no crime to be poor … That’s right. But shiftlessness is a sin, I would judge.”
“The more I study a thing the more I get it backards. Study long and ye study wrong.”
“A feller never knows what day’ll be his last in this vale of tears.”
September 22, 2020
A brother and sister make a baby together and both end up on separate life journeys soon after the birth.
This was a weird story. I know it runs a lot deeper than my brain is wanting to go. I spent a lot of time backreading to determine if I had missed something written, only to discover that what I had missed was something indirect. I did consider bringing my review down to two stars because of this, but the author has a unique writing style that kept me engaged. What impressed me the most was his ability to tell a complex story in a just few words. I am a reader that can appreciate the talent behind the work, even if the work is not something I enjoyed.
The characters were something that stuck with me but not in the normal way. It goes back to how the author writes and it does fascinate me. He does not give up much about them in the normal sense, such as describing in detail their main features and personality quirks. What he does give is information about what is going on around them and their placement in those situations. For example, he would describe the condition of the sister’s dress or the brother’s boots and you would get a sense of the person in those items. Which for some crazy reason, told me more about them than a detailed description would.
Three stars to a book that made me think about writing far more than the actual story itself.
This was a weird story. I know it runs a lot deeper than my brain is wanting to go. I spent a lot of time backreading to determine if I had missed something written, only to discover that what I had missed was something indirect. I did consider bringing my review down to two stars because of this, but the author has a unique writing style that kept me engaged. What impressed me the most was his ability to tell a complex story in a just few words. I am a reader that can appreciate the talent behind the work, even if the work is not something I enjoyed.
The characters were something that stuck with me but not in the normal way. It goes back to how the author writes and it does fascinate me. He does not give up much about them in the normal sense, such as describing in detail their main features and personality quirks. What he does give is information about what is going on around them and their placement in those situations. For example, he would describe the condition of the sister’s dress or the brother’s boots and you would get a sense of the person in those items. Which for some crazy reason, told me more about them than a detailed description would.
Three stars to a book that made me think about writing far more than the actual story itself.
May 13, 2016
Color rating: Crimson
Here, in this forested glade lorded over by Moloch, I could remain evermore. I place Outer Dark in one of the medaled positions of McCarthy’s entire body of work—it’s that extraordinary. There is an ephemeral otherness to the whole affair that renders it an uncommon jewel of a novel (and a bit of an outlier in comparison to his other books): you’re required to do a lot of the heavy-lifting and connect some dots yourself. As I don’t mind working for my keep, that’s more than fine by me.
Listen: when you start a book with consensual incest, you’re getting off to whipsmart start in my opinion (all apologies to survivors of consensual incest, survivors of Flowers in the Attic, &c). Although that’s the more salacious aspect to Dark, it’s not really where my interest or loyalties lie. I speak, of course, of The Bearded One, Harmon, and he-with-no-name. These avenging angeldemons are a creation of pure genius; a category-defying motley of Recompense and Reckoning that blur the line between God and Devil to its properly indistinguishable blood smudge. They are the Three Horseman of the Apocalypse; the New Riders of the Crimson Sage.
The framing that McCarthy uses for their unrelenting progress is some of the finest, most purely worddrunk prose-song of his career:
What discordant vespers do the tinker’s goods chime through the long twilight and over the brindled forest road, him stooped and hounded through the windy recrements of day like those old exiles who divorced of corporeality and enjoined ingress of heaven or hell wander forever the middle warrens spoorless increate and anathema. Hounded by grief, by guilt, or like this cheerless vendor clamored at heel through wood and fen by his own querulous and inconsolable wares in perennial tin malediction.
Outer Dark reads like some expurgated book of the Old Testament, where allegory and metaphor replace overt action. Though just as insidiously concerned with the evils of the Fallen as ever, McCarthy’s bloodiness here isn’t grandiose. It is thick-clotted at the jugular, and when it breaks free it devastates with grotesque beauty. Let us make Moloch this sacrifice and remain cool in the shade of the selfsame.
Here, in this forested glade lorded over by Moloch, I could remain evermore. I place Outer Dark in one of the medaled positions of McCarthy’s entire body of work—it’s that extraordinary. There is an ephemeral otherness to the whole affair that renders it an uncommon jewel of a novel (and a bit of an outlier in comparison to his other books): you’re required to do a lot of the heavy-lifting and connect some dots yourself. As I don’t mind working for my keep, that’s more than fine by me.
Listen: when you start a book with consensual incest, you’re getting off to whipsmart start in my opinion (all apologies to survivors of consensual incest, survivors of Flowers in the Attic, &c). Although that’s the more salacious aspect to Dark, it’s not really where my interest or loyalties lie. I speak, of course, of The Bearded One, Harmon, and he-with-no-name. These avenging angeldemons are a creation of pure genius; a category-defying motley of Recompense and Reckoning that blur the line between God and Devil to its properly indistinguishable blood smudge. They are the Three Horseman of the Apocalypse; the New Riders of the Crimson Sage.
The framing that McCarthy uses for their unrelenting progress is some of the finest, most purely worddrunk prose-song of his career:
What discordant vespers do the tinker’s goods chime through the long twilight and over the brindled forest road, him stooped and hounded through the windy recrements of day like those old exiles who divorced of corporeality and enjoined ingress of heaven or hell wander forever the middle warrens spoorless increate and anathema. Hounded by grief, by guilt, or like this cheerless vendor clamored at heel through wood and fen by his own querulous and inconsolable wares in perennial tin malediction.
Outer Dark reads like some expurgated book of the Old Testament, where allegory and metaphor replace overt action. Though just as insidiously concerned with the evils of the Fallen as ever, McCarthy’s bloodiness here isn’t grandiose. It is thick-clotted at the jugular, and when it breaks free it devastates with grotesque beauty. Let us make Moloch this sacrifice and remain cool in the shade of the selfsame.
August 19, 2023
Torno dalle parti del Texas in compagnia di un autore molto particolare. Erano anni che non leggevo un suo libro, ma lo stile è sempre inconfondibile. Frasi spezzettate, come se volesse esprimere la storia non solo con le parole, ma anche con impianto lessicale, la punteggiatura, tutto, per esternare una storia quasi come se singhiozzasse alle brutture umane.
Siamo nel Sud più profondo degli Stati Uniti, agli inizi del secolo scorso. Due fratelli rimasti soli e isolati praticamente dal mondo esterno, covano un segreto inconfessabile. Così vedremo il dipanarsi del mistero con gli occhi dell'uno e dell'altra, immersi nella natura più selvaggia e primitiva, quale era quelle di più di un secolo fa e con una carrellata di personaggi, uno più grottesco ed oscuro dell'altro.
L'elemento che mi ha colpito maggiormente è stato come l'autore ha svolto le varie disavventure dei due poveri fratelli, così alieni al mondo esterno e dove la speranza è una flebile fiammella pronta a spegnersi da un momento all'altro.
Storia a tratti grottesca e quasi ironica, per poi passare a passaggi tragici e sanguinolenti ed altri al limite dell'onirico, fino a momenti di pura riflessione interiore e di rapporto con la natura più aspra.
E' la gente dura che rende duri i tempi. Ho visto tanta cattiveria fra gli uomini che non so perchè Dio non ha ancora spento il sole e se n'è andato.
Siamo davvero sicuri che il buio fuori, quello che tanto ci inquieta, almeno che (forse) inquietava di più nel periodo ante-elettricità, sia più nero rispetto al buio dentro di noi?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnXUP...
Siamo nel Sud più profondo degli Stati Uniti, agli inizi del secolo scorso. Due fratelli rimasti soli e isolati praticamente dal mondo esterno, covano un segreto inconfessabile. Così vedremo il dipanarsi del mistero con gli occhi dell'uno e dell'altra, immersi nella natura più selvaggia e primitiva, quale era quelle di più di un secolo fa e con una carrellata di personaggi, uno più grottesco ed oscuro dell'altro.
L'elemento che mi ha colpito maggiormente è stato come l'autore ha svolto le varie disavventure dei due poveri fratelli, così alieni al mondo esterno e dove la speranza è una flebile fiammella pronta a spegnersi da un momento all'altro.
Storia a tratti grottesca e quasi ironica, per poi passare a passaggi tragici e sanguinolenti ed altri al limite dell'onirico, fino a momenti di pura riflessione interiore e di rapporto con la natura più aspra.
E' la gente dura che rende duri i tempi. Ho visto tanta cattiveria fra gli uomini che non so perchè Dio non ha ancora spento il sole e se n'è andato.
Siamo davvero sicuri che il buio fuori, quello che tanto ci inquieta, almeno che (forse) inquietava di più nel periodo ante-elettricità, sia più nero rispetto al buio dentro di noi?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnXUP...
October 29, 2020
Appalachia, at the turn of the century (19th to 20th one). Rinthy Holme, 19, bears a son to her brother, Culla, who leaves the baby in the woods, telling her he died. A tinker has just passed their home; as she guesses the truth about the baby, she goes searching for him, and the tinker who she believes has taken him; her brother goes wandering, looking for work - through a countryside where three mysterious strangers walk, causing terror...
This is the author's second novel (1968), and the atmosphere of the old West lingers in this book... I also took notice of the language used, and some surprising Biblical things ones might find here. At first this book didn't feel like much, but then it got going, and more intense.
Culla's journey is a lot more dark than his sister's - he seems to be a trouble magnet, even without doing anything more than being present when certain situations happen. He meets some interesting people, works but doesn't earn, gets suspected of doing things that he certainly didn't do. He's illiterate and poorly taught in faith, but no way lazy and tries to avoid conflict. But the trouble magnet he is, he attracts also the strange group of three, and here is guessed something wild: And another thing is, whenever Culla meets them, he's just been dragged along in a river, for different reasons.
The scene with the herd of pigs is like the herd of such in the Bible that get possesed by demons and die like here, though one of the herders seems to get dragged to his death during the chaos here. The ferry scene during another moment was also powerful, how everything goes wrong but all you hear are sounds and movements, it feels like night to the reader, too.
Rinthy's journey is less dangerous, perhaps because of her gender, but her hurts are more on mental level, of wanting to find her child, of dealing with her still-leaking milk. Eventually she .
The book ends kind of open for both siblings' fates, but both no doubt keep wandering, before perhaps settling somewhere, who knows? I wonder where the strange three men will go, what will they cause, what will they be. So, although the story seems a bit plain, by the end you might feel there was some strange powers going on, and might wonder what it will feel like when you perhaps read it again, whenever that is. Great mood, great imagery, strange good story.
This is the author's second novel (1968), and the atmosphere of the old West lingers in this book... I also took notice of the language used, and some surprising Biblical things ones might find here. At first this book didn't feel like much, but then it got going, and more intense.
Culla's journey is a lot more dark than his sister's - he seems to be a trouble magnet, even without doing anything more than being present when certain situations happen. He meets some interesting people, works but doesn't earn, gets suspected of doing things that he certainly didn't do. He's illiterate and poorly taught in faith, but no way lazy and tries to avoid conflict. But the trouble magnet he is, he attracts also the strange group of three, and here is guessed something wild: And another thing is, whenever Culla meets them, he's just been dragged along in a river, for different reasons.
The scene with the herd of pigs is like the herd of such in the Bible that get possesed by demons and die like here, though one of the herders seems to get dragged to his death during the chaos here. The ferry scene during another moment was also powerful, how everything goes wrong but all you hear are sounds and movements, it feels like night to the reader, too.
Rinthy's journey is less dangerous, perhaps because of her gender, but her hurts are more on mental level, of wanting to find her child, of dealing with her still-leaking milk. Eventually she .
The book ends kind of open for both siblings' fates, but both no doubt keep wandering, before perhaps settling somewhere, who knows? I wonder where the strange three men will go, what will they cause, what will they be. So, although the story seems a bit plain, by the end you might feel there was some strange powers going on, and might wonder what it will feel like when you perhaps read it again, whenever that is. Great mood, great imagery, strange good story.
December 2, 2014
3.5/5
I believe I would've liked it more if the themes had tended less towards the biblical parsings of Original Sin and more towards what it really means for a country to instill an overwhelming desire in all its citizens to go out alone and make as violent and crazed a living as is necessary for their "independence". Or maybe it was McCarthy's insistence on fleshing out the prolicidal male of the incestuous couple when the author's strengths lie neither in empathy nor in resonance but in fearful archetype of what we worship and cower amongst. Ah well. I'm banking on Suttree to go better than this one did, so here's hoping that pops up at a sale in the coming weeks.
The ancestors had called Europeans “the orphan people” and had noted that as with orphans taken in by selfish or coldhearted clanspeople, few Europeans had remained whole. They failed to recognize the earth was their mother. Europeans were like their first parents, Adam and Eve, wandering aimlessly because the insane God who had sired them had abandoned them.I will always be a fan of McCarthy because of his treatment of the "Western" tradition. However, my rating is part comparison to his previously read works, part comparison to previously read as a whole, due to my growing intolerance for gore porn. Chances are good that, had I not read Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West previous to this, the rating would have been higher. This not being the case, coupled with the climatic overload of having been hit upon recently in a much stronger fashion by God's Bits of Wood, renders the stars as shown.
-Leslie Marmon Silko, Almanac of the Dead
And as he lay there a far crack of lightning went bluely down the sky and bequeathed him in an embryonic bird's first fissured vision of the world and transpiring instant and outrageous from dark to dark a final view of the grotto and the shapeless white plasm struggling upon the rich and incunabular moss like a lank swamp hare.Another reason for the not quite 'really liked it' is my quota of McCarthytasmagoric prose remaining unfulfilled by the end of the book. This is his first or thereabouts, if I remember correctly, which may explain the beginning of the text flashing out in cthulu glory only to die down and save for a couple brief surges never regaining its sermon of pungent damnation. Few can match the prose of an everlasting stumbling out of the utter darkness into a world of inexorable senses, so if you're looking for a McCarthy intro less inundated by public praise, this would be a good place to start. As you maybe can tell from my own five-dollar word ramblings, his writing style is an infectious breed.
I believe I would've liked it more if the themes had tended less towards the biblical parsings of Original Sin and more towards what it really means for a country to instill an overwhelming desire in all its citizens to go out alone and make as violent and crazed a living as is necessary for their "independence". Or maybe it was McCarthy's insistence on fleshing out the prolicidal male of the incestuous couple when the author's strengths lie neither in empathy nor in resonance but in fearful archetype of what we worship and cower amongst. Ah well. I'm banking on Suttree to go better than this one did, so here's hoping that pops up at a sale in the coming weeks.
Read
April 7, 2023Video review: https://youtu.be/-t-pMoiWjUM
January 4, 2009
All of the other reviews are too slavering, too worshipful, too fucking nerdy and self-referential to suggest that their authors actually read this book. I read about 15 of them, and not once did I see a comment, suggestion, reflection that added anything to my understanding of the text. Spare me the book reports. If you don't have anything to say, find a forum in which your lack of authority is expected: I suggest the rest of your life. Funny that I didn't see a single mention of its place in the canon of wander tales, or of aimlessness, or of narrative freedom, or of the painfully intentional disappointment of expectation, or of the absence of time or space.
What's Outer Dark about? Given that all the heroes in McCarthy's books are killers, and all the killers embody nothingness, and that everything else is muffheaded stylistic flourish, I'd say that it's probably about nothingness. And what's nothingness about?
"Uh, I'm some douchey guy on the internet. Please allow me to give you a handjob McCarthy. This book is about 'Southern Noir' and violence and incest and taboo and a bunch of other horseshit that makes me uncomfortable and I'm so grateful for your suffocating malletfisted talent and for your allowing me to learn the names of trees and how to violate grammar and syntax artfully."
Meh.
Shut up.
5 out of 5.
What's Outer Dark about? Given that all the heroes in McCarthy's books are killers, and all the killers embody nothingness, and that everything else is muffheaded stylistic flourish, I'd say that it's probably about nothingness. And what's nothingness about?
"Uh, I'm some douchey guy on the internet. Please allow me to give you a handjob McCarthy. This book is about 'Southern Noir' and violence and incest and taboo and a bunch of other horseshit that makes me uncomfortable and I'm so grateful for your suffocating malletfisted talent and for your allowing me to learn the names of trees and how to violate grammar and syntax artfully."
Meh.
Shut up.
5 out of 5.
May 21, 2016
Of course, I loved it. To my great surprise, I discovered that I had not read this one while leafing through my paperbacks. Knowing this author, it foreshadows much of his later work, especially with the biblical themes of original sin, banishment from the garden, and the journey that our actions take us on. That journey is dangerous, often humorous, but always tinged with the innate cruelty residing in the heart of man. The two characters seem oblivious to their original error (incest), though McCarthy cleverly never reveals that in explicit terms. The brother and sister are innocents, spat upon this earth by unfortunate accidents, and their child is abandoned by the lad out of sheer confusion and no doubt an instinct for self preservation. It is an error that sets them both on journeys through Appalachia with nary a rag on their backs, one searching for the other and the mother for her child. A gnome-like misanthrope becomes an unwitting enabler and suffers like many at the hands of a triad of monsters who roam the wild periphery of the embryonic civilizations of this place and time in turn of the century America (but who knows, the towns, times and often the people are irrelevant in the ancient form of fables. The people, animals and land are exquisitely drawn in fine intricacy. McCarthy has talent for defining the physical landscape of life and its movement. Most notably, the dialects and unmarked (he uses no quotations) dialogue are raw, authentic and real. It is an act of wizardry the way this author captures the idiom and words of this time and place. That’s what makes this author so appealing to me, by creating in the reader the belief that it is genuine, and the story will be unfolded in a way that is unpredictable and seemingly random. There is no moralistic tone nor manipulation of the reader, though in the end it is very much a clever parable that instructs morally.
This was written well before Deliverance, so the wild Appalachian monster was well molded by the time Dickey put his popular story out. Outer dark is the story of blindness, the play of light on nature, and an allegory for how humans are sucked into their mire, even in the shrieking light of day, and cannot escape the one road that drives them, head down and wary, inexorably toward a fearful fate. It is horrific in many ways, as will be revealed in McCarthy’s later work. The child at the end is a damaged, battered, injured victim that the reader fervently hopes will be spared. The mother searching for her “little chap” is a true innocent, searching unrelenting for that purity of her nature and the reader can’t but hope upon hope. But, of course, this is McCarthy and he is not going to often give us relief. Many will find this deeply disturbing. For me it is the cautionary tale that I need to hear time and again, so I can avoid my own fate, or at least face it with honor and seek the goodness of God in its pursuit.
I found the book easy to read compared to other McCarthy. He bends language like poetry, creating new words and exploding punctuation for effect (think Miles Davis’ acceptance of particular sour or imperfect notes above an otherwise gorgeous chord). Even though fabulous, this story’s direct link to our familiar world, and the never changed turnings of the minds and hearts of mankind, give it the ordinary ring of truth. The novel is lively and traces the movements of each innocent and the terrible cadre of monsters that lurk at the edges, un-abated by the civilized world. In some respects, this is a dark version of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, with the escapades of grave robbery, lynchings and generalized racism that runs throughout.
Any sentence in this tale is noteworthy, here’s but a couple:
p. 109: “…an aged face and erupting from beneath some kind of hat lank hair all hung with clots like a sheep’s scut, stumbling along in huge brogans and overalls. She stopped at the sight of this apparition. The road went in deep woods and constant damp and the house was grown with a rich velour of moss and lichen and brooded in a palpable miasma of rot. Chickens had so scratched the soil from the yard that knobs and knees of treeroots stood everywhere in grotesque configuration up out of the earch like some gathering of the mad laid suddenly bare in all their writhen attitudes of pain.”
Here’s a cruel, uncaring midget, venting his own diseased spleen on p. 192: “The tinker jerked his arm away. He leaned his face toward her. Give, he said. I give a lifetime wanderin in a country where I was despised. Can you give that? I give forty years strapped in front of a cart like a mule till I couldn’t stand straight to be hanged. I’ve not got soul one in this world save a old halfcrazy sister that nobody never would have like they never would me. I been rocked and shot at and whipped and kicked and dogbit from one end of this state to the other and you cain’t pay that back. You ain’t got nothing to pay it with. Them accounts is in blood and they ain’t nothing in this world to pay em out with”.
This was written well before Deliverance, so the wild Appalachian monster was well molded by the time Dickey put his popular story out. Outer dark is the story of blindness, the play of light on nature, and an allegory for how humans are sucked into their mire, even in the shrieking light of day, and cannot escape the one road that drives them, head down and wary, inexorably toward a fearful fate. It is horrific in many ways, as will be revealed in McCarthy’s later work. The child at the end is a damaged, battered, injured victim that the reader fervently hopes will be spared. The mother searching for her “little chap” is a true innocent, searching unrelenting for that purity of her nature and the reader can’t but hope upon hope. But, of course, this is McCarthy and he is not going to often give us relief. Many will find this deeply disturbing. For me it is the cautionary tale that I need to hear time and again, so I can avoid my own fate, or at least face it with honor and seek the goodness of God in its pursuit.
I found the book easy to read compared to other McCarthy. He bends language like poetry, creating new words and exploding punctuation for effect (think Miles Davis’ acceptance of particular sour or imperfect notes above an otherwise gorgeous chord). Even though fabulous, this story’s direct link to our familiar world, and the never changed turnings of the minds and hearts of mankind, give it the ordinary ring of truth. The novel is lively and traces the movements of each innocent and the terrible cadre of monsters that lurk at the edges, un-abated by the civilized world. In some respects, this is a dark version of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, with the escapades of grave robbery, lynchings and generalized racism that runs throughout.
Any sentence in this tale is noteworthy, here’s but a couple:
p. 109: “…an aged face and erupting from beneath some kind of hat lank hair all hung with clots like a sheep’s scut, stumbling along in huge brogans and overalls. She stopped at the sight of this apparition. The road went in deep woods and constant damp and the house was grown with a rich velour of moss and lichen and brooded in a palpable miasma of rot. Chickens had so scratched the soil from the yard that knobs and knees of treeroots stood everywhere in grotesque configuration up out of the earch like some gathering of the mad laid suddenly bare in all their writhen attitudes of pain.”
Here’s a cruel, uncaring midget, venting his own diseased spleen on p. 192: “The tinker jerked his arm away. He leaned his face toward her. Give, he said. I give a lifetime wanderin in a country where I was despised. Can you give that? I give forty years strapped in front of a cart like a mule till I couldn’t stand straight to be hanged. I’ve not got soul one in this world save a old halfcrazy sister that nobody never would have like they never would me. I been rocked and shot at and whipped and kicked and dogbit from one end of this state to the other and you cain’t pay that back. You ain’t got nothing to pay it with. Them accounts is in blood and they ain’t nothing in this world to pay em out with”.
January 25, 2013
I'm not a fan of nonsense lyrical language nor am I a fan of incest cannibalist nihilism or lack of punctuation so this book is probably not the book for me.
March 15, 2024
O Cormac, you depressing bastard, I miss you...
Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,319 reviews