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♠
Nights dark beyond darknesss and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world.
-- "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy
Monk finished reading a chapter of "Reading Vergil's Aeneid" at around four-thirty, and he was looking forward to spending a long afternoon with "O." However, he realized that the three-day weekend begins tomorrow, and instead of glutting himself on porn, he started "The Road" early.
This one by McCarthy is looking even better than "Blood Meridian," which is a darkly lyrical favorite in its own right. The plot in "The Road" is simpler and more elegant and therefore starker and even more absorbing. The man is a poet-novelist and we are beggar-readers.
I do believe that it spurred a special memory of mother with its brooding and desperate reflection. It occurred when Pop came out to see if Bill was outside to talk to. Since this makes Monk self-conscious about his reading, to be seen openly from outside the window like that, he shuts the blinds for privacy.
This 'shunning' brought to mind the springtime afternoons when mother would similarly impinge on the privacy and comfort of his reading. She would come by the window with water hose in hand to water her hibiscus. And Monk can practically see her there as if it were yesterday, with the kind of clarity that his recollections had in the first months after her death. Monk can see the attentive concern on her face for her dying plant, which is slightly tinged by the comical since her inability to keep her plants thriving had long been a family joke, that black thumb of death.
Monk came close to tears after all these years. That is a testament to the power of McCarthy's narrative of a father and son attempting to negotiate a barren world with more pride than hope.
xXx
Nights dark beyond darknesss and the days more gray each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world.
-- "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy
Monk finished reading a chapter of "Reading Vergil's Aeneid" at around four-thirty, and he was looking forward to spending a long afternoon with "O." However, he realized that the three-day weekend begins tomorrow, and instead of glutting himself on porn, he started "The Road" early.
This one by McCarthy is looking even better than "Blood Meridian," which is a darkly lyrical favorite in its own right. The plot in "The Road" is simpler and more elegant and therefore starker and even more absorbing. The man is a poet-novelist and we are beggar-readers.
I do believe that it spurred a special memory of mother with its brooding and desperate reflection. It occurred when Pop came out to see if Bill was outside to talk to. Since this makes Monk self-conscious about his reading, to be seen openly from outside the window like that, he shuts the blinds for privacy.
This 'shunning' brought to mind the springtime afternoons when mother would similarly impinge on the privacy and comfort of his reading. She would come by the window with water hose in hand to water her hibiscus. And Monk can practically see her there as if it were yesterday, with the kind of clarity that his recollections had in the first months after her death. Monk can see the attentive concern on her face for her dying plant, which is slightly tinged by the comical since her inability to keep her plants thriving had long been a family joke, that black thumb of death.
Monk came close to tears after all these years. That is a testament to the power of McCarthy's narrative of a father and son attempting to negotiate a barren world with more pride than hope.
