Published on 10/15/2007

Filmmakers have caught on to something that readers somehow missed—Cormac McCarthy is perhaps America’s greatest genre author…

“No Country for Old Men” U.S. release: November 21, 2007

John Hillcoat’s work on The Proposition (2005) certainly bodes well for his taking the helm on the upcoming adaptation of The Road. As for Ridley Scott’s version of Blood Meridian, due in 2009, I have my fingers crossed in hopes that what he delivers will be epic but not bloated or self-absorbed. And of course the release of the Coens’ much-acclaimed No Country for Old Men is imminent. So maybe as a result of going to the movies over the next couple of years genre fans will catch on to the fact that, for most of his career, Cormac McCarthy has been writing for them.

Let’s just say it: there don’t seem to be too many critics out there who picked up on the fact that McCarthy’s The Road is not just a masterful work of art, but in setting and subject matter is quite outside the province of mainstream literary fiction. The Chicago Tribune’s Alan Cheuse makes a comparison to Harlan Ellison, and Michael Chabon, in the New York Review of Books, goes one further, claiming that the author is “the rightful heir to the American Gothic tradition of Poe and Lovecraft.” But what about the rest of the literary world? And can it blamed for not knowing an exemplar of horror/dark fantasy when it sees it, given that the habitual readers of such genres are themselves so insular? In short, I’m wondering how a horror novel can win the Pulitzer but, so far, strike out when it comes to the prominent awards in the genre community. One might quibble about where The Road falls on the spectrum but clearly, with its flawless post-apoclayptic world dense with dread and cannibalism, it represents “speculative fiction” in the most compelling sense. This world doesn’t exist yet, but it’s as real as one of those nightmares that leave you endlessly grateful when you bolt awake from it.

Part of what’s behind this incipient rant is the old frustration at the false dichotomy between high and popular culture. I thought I’d let go of that long ago, finally accepting where the boundaries are set, and by whom, but rarely has an example of the razor-wired wall between literature and genre fiction been so stark. Indeed, in the case of The Road, these thoughts have engendered a kind of reader’s shame as I became aware of how I’ve internalized such divisions, thinking them real rather than simply pragmatic.

I hadn’t realized that although McCarthy has been one of my favorite writers for years, I’ve always put his work on a different mental shelf than, say, that of Elmore Leonard or Neil Gaiman. And not because of its content, but rather for the sections in the library or bookstore where it can be found. After finishing The Road, though, it hit me that McCarthy’s probably the most accomplished all-around practitioner of genre fiction I’ve ever read. The temptation here is to make a sweeping statement using judgment words such as “greatest” and qualifiers such as “living” and “American” but I leave it to someone else to make, or shoot down, that argument. The point is that his name typically wouldn’t even come up in such a conversation despite the consistent originality of his work and the incredible versatility that it displays.

In point of fact, No Country for Old Men is the bleakest and yet most real—both in detail and emotion—crime thriller that I’ve ever encountered. One is tempted to call it “hard-boiled” since it’s so cold and unforgiving to its own characters, but McCarthy goes beyond that school, stripping away the tattered romanticism/sentimentality it always clings to just below the surface. Of course McCarthy’s famous “Border Trilogy” represents an important revision of the western itself. But just in case one doesn’t care much for neo-westerns, there’s always the period novel Blood Meridian, whose mix of beautiful prose, brutal action, and historical detail are without parallel. And finally, the harrowing Child of God, with its uncompromisingly depraved point-of-view character, can only be considered a horror or crime novel—take your pick—of the psychological variety.

That these titles are not widely known to genre readers should not be surprising. At heart is the same issue that explains why I get blank stares when I tell people that Toni Morrison’s Beloved is the best written horror novel that I’ve read. After all, the gradual unease that creeps over the reader who slowly realizes what the title signifies is a classic sign of quiet horror. But Nobel laureates don’t produce horror fiction, do they? Or at least they shouldn’t be expected to.

That’s the premise at work in this other passage from the Chicago Tribune’s review of The Road: “As a reader of everything good I can get my hands on, I’m always thrilled when a fine writer of first-class fiction takes up the genre of science fiction and matches its possibilities with his or her own powers…” Such a comment may seem open-minded toward genre fiction, but its condescension—the assumption that “fine writers of first-class fiction” are somehow a different breed—is irksome. Then again, it’s clearly a perception that those who care about and work within genre fiction don’t do much to dispel from their side of the fence.