Fate of whole galaxies against their imminent ruin

I finished The Orchard Keeper! I should have posted more quotes, but, um, I lost the sheet of paper that had all the important page numbers on it (which is totally the first time this has happened), so there's only one below. Anyway, this could be good, I don't want to be giving too much away anyway. There isn't much to give away, though. It may even help to know 50% of the plot before delving in (READ THAT BLURB), it will make your understanding miles easier. Plot isn't the big thing in this novel, but language and style is strongly established. Heaps of arcane words, fluid prose stuffed with complex vernacular, italics - McCarthy trademarks!

So, enjoy it for that!

The old man, clutching his cane, holding the dirty little sack between his knees, looked back at the dog still standing there like some atavistic symbol or brute herald of all questions ever pressed upon humanity and beyond understanding, until the dog raised his head to clear the folds above his milky eyes and set out behind them at a staggering trot.

A barren spot, bright in the moonwash, mercurial and luminescent as a sea

I dropped The Orchard Keeper for about 3/4 days and picking up where I left off, I feel like I should be re-reading it completely... it took me about 78 pages in to finally grasp the fact that McCarthy's change of perspectives was inclusive of the animal kingdom... which of course complicates matters further... Oh, it's so confusing. The latter McCarthy books are definitely easier to understand. Just found out that the James Tait Black Prize went to Angela Carter instead of McCarthy... argh well.

Anyhow, here are the quotes I collected from my last read -

From a lightwire overhead, dangling head downward and hollowed to the weight of ashened feathers and fluted bones, a small owl hung in an attitude of forlorn exhortation, its wizened talons locked about the single strand of wire. It stared down from dark and empty sockets, penduluming softly in the bitter wind.

'hollowed to the weight,' 'fluted bowns,' 'forlorn exhortation, 'wizened talons' 'penduluming softly' ... only McCarthy, truly.

A warm wind on the mountain and the sky darkening, the clouds looping black underbellies until a huge ulcer folded out of the mass and a crack like the earth’s core rending rattled panes from Winkle Hollow to Bay’s Mountain. And the wind rising and gone colder until the trees bent as if borne forward on some violent acceleration of the earth’s turning and then that too ceased and with a clatter and hiss out of the still air a plague of ice.

This reminds me of the 'narrowing eye' quote from Cities of the Plains. The quote is an acid incision to the heart.

Inside they struck matches and Warn took a candlestub from a crevice and lit it, the calcined rock taking shape, tonsiled roof and flowing concavity, like something gone partly to liquid and frozen back again misshapen and awry, their shadows curling threatfully up the walls among the dried and mounded bat droppings. They studied the inscriptions etched in the soft and curdcolored stone, hearts and names, archaic dates, crudely erotic hieroglyphs--the bulbed phallus and strange centipedal vulva of small boys' imaginations.

Reading McCarthy definitely boosts my vocabulary by 12%.

Anyhow, I'm off to continue pursuing The Orchard Keeper, goodnight, all.

He was waiting and weathers and seasons were his timepiece now.

 

For some time now the road had been deserted, white and scorching yet, though the sun was already reddening the western sky. He walked along slowly in the dust, stopping from time to time and bobbling on one foot like some squat ungainly bird while he examined the wad of tape coming through his shoe-sole. He turned again. Far down the blazing strip of concrete a small shapeless mass had emerged and was struggling toward him. It loomed steadily, weaving and grotesque like something seen through bad glass, gained briefly the form and solidity of a pickup truck, whipped past and receded into the same liquid shape by which it came.

Only McCarthy could begin a book so spectacularly. Beautiful.

Curled in a low peach limb the old man watched the midmorning sun blinding on the squat metal tank that topped the mountain. He had found some peaches, although the orchard went to ruin twenty years before when the fruit had come so thick and no one to pick it that at night the overborne branches cracking sounded in the valley like distant storms raging. The old man remembered it that way, for he was a lover of storms.

Peach, sun, mountain, storms... nature imagery and its interweaving with fluid, poetic prose, is McCarthy's forte. His writing reminds me of winter, and therefore winter always reminds me of good literature.

He fell asleep to the water and metal sounds of the rain runneling over the tin and sluicing through the gutterpipe, the rapid slash of it in a gust of wind and the fine mist spraying his face through the bellying screen. The oaks stirred restlessly, low admonitions, shhh...

The quote above is so Faulkner-esque (I promise that this will be the last time I draw the familiar, reiterated link between Faulkner and McCarthy), especially reminiscent of the raining scene in As I Lay Dying. I love it when good writers write about the rain. How good is the last sentence in this case? "The oaks stirred restlessly, low admonitions, shhh..."

The Orchard Keeper was a tad difficult to dive into, but now I'm 65 pages in and having a wonderful time.