I can't get enough of McCarthy's writing. I was looking back at some places I marked in the book. I'll share them:
In those first years the roads were peopled with refugess shrouded up in their clothing ... Their eyes bright in their skulls. Creedless shells of men tottering down the causeways like migrants in a feverland. The frailty of everything revealed at last. Old and troubling issues resolved into nothingness and night. The last instance of a thing takes the class with it. Turns out the light and is gone. Look around you. Ever is a long time. But the boy knew what he knew. That ever is no time at all.
And:
No list of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. So, he whispered to the sleeping boy. I have you.
This is my child, he said. I wash a dead man's brains out of his hair. That is my job.
And while he's preparing the boy's sleeping area that night (punching indentations in the sand for his little hips and shoulders!):
All of this like some ancient anointing. So be it. Evoke the forms. Where you've nothing else construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.
Oh, there are a few more, but I have to go to work now! Did any passages in the book especially move you?
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2 comments:
I also loved the "this is my child" part.
And I marked this section:
He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.
Agggghhhh, Erin! That was next on my list. I love "the intestate earth." It's perfect for this story. And the use of "sorrow" as a verb. I think he uses that a couple of times. It's very poignant.
And seeing this "absolute truth of the world," he keeps on going. He says something a little later to the effect that they have to keep trying, because that's what the Good People do, they keep trying. (I'm at work and don't have the book with me, but I'll look it up later).
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