Stop Calling McCarthy “Bleak”—He’s Often Funny

McCarthy's novels contain many jokes but the jokes rarely make anyone laugh

The writings of CMC contain many grim and even disgusting scenes. For example who can forget in Blood Meridian the Judge bashing babies together to kill them? Or in Outer Dark, the scene towards the end of the book with the three men roasting a baby over a fire and one man beginning to eat it? I nearly barfed when I read this the first time.

When I first read McCarthy, especially Blood Meridian, I interpreted the grotesque violence as sort of being like a Dark Bible or a Third Testament. In the New Testament and in many western Christian churches, there is a tradition of interpreting the material in a positive light -- how can we have God's spirit and influence in our lives? What can we do to live with God again some day?

With Blood Meridian the violence seemed to be a reset or a correction to the tendency in much literature to make an interpretation towards something good or hopeful. I largely viewed the scenes as CMC reminding us that nature and the world and fate don't have preferences for any particular people or life forms or outcomes. In other words, McCarthy's inclusion of ultra violent scenes weren't meant to be negative or even neutral but rather to be the natural outcome of humans and beasts let loose upon the world. CMC's violence was a sort of objective reality or even "truth" that he put into the world to counterbalance other narratives which are viewed subjectively as "positive" (hope, love, etc. but which in reality do not contain truth and are not based upon facts.

Over the years I wondered more if the author had a sense of humor and liked to include these scenes as a way to correct sentimentality in a reader, like a wake-up call. Or if not, the inclusion of the material was a mechanism by which the reader was required to focus on the words of the text instead of getting ahead of the words or around the words towards what the reader "wanted" to see happen.

I suppose the problem with this view that CMC intentionally used violence as humor is that the violence isn't particularly funny. I suppose I can find some humor in the violence to the extent that the violence is inevitable. For example in No Country, Llewelyn Moss takes the drug money and as the reader I'm rooting for him to get away with the money and survive. At every twist and turn I'm hoping he gets away and I'm disappointed with each setback. I think it's fair to say that the joke is on me for wanting those outcomes -- what did I think was going to happen to a person who took money from drug dealers?

The same is true in the third border trilogy book, Cities of the Plain, where I find myself rooting for John Grady to end up happily married to the prostitute. Again and again I am disappointed! What did I think was going to happen? The joke's on me!

As a poll or comment question, I would ask each reader here to comment on a moment when she/he encountered something in a CMC novel that was at first stunningly violent or grotesque but where upon further thought you found the moment to contain some type of lesson or humor.