Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy

A woman bears her brother's child, a boy; he leaves the baby in the woods and tells her he died of natural causes. Discovering her brother's lie, she sets forth alone to find her son. Both brother and sister wander separately through a countryside being scourged by three terrifying and elusive strangers, headlong toward an eerie, apocalyptic resolution.

Why I Picked It Up

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I’m gradually working my way through Cormac McCarthy, and there’s plenty I love and plenty of his signature that I view as a crutch. He’s an every-so-often read when a library hold comes in.

All the Pretty Horses is my favorite; Blood Meridian is violent, but impressive. As I frequently say: the man loves a run-on sentence, light and shadow imagery (we have this in common), judge symbolism, and a desolate landscape. I was between this and The Sunset Limited, but Outer Dark came in first.

Apparently, McCarthy started it in Asheville so the setting is presumed to be a dystopian version of the Appalachian region. Not quite Southern Gothic in my definition, but with some similarities or echoes—fear of change while it’s unfolding, inverted nature, generational sin and suffering. So I had to pick it up.

I also had to laugh at myself being a total cliché: I read this after doing chores on the tractor in the morning and finished it with an Old Fashioned in hand in the evening, and the entire aesthetic felt performatively girl-channeling-masculine, which fits my “McCarthy is catnip for men” schtik. How annoying of me.

Voice & Style

The book overall was a strange length, to be honest. It was short, and so I raced through it. But I almost think it should have been compressed into a short story (which would have been evocative), or needed more layers to justify the novel length. At the beginning, it was a bit tricky to pick up exactly what was happening until we got to the wandering phase of the novel — the brother and the sister having diverged.

She’s hunting the newborn baby child who’s been wrested from her. He’s sort of looking for her (?) but mostly looking for work, and perpetually complicated by a trio of men who keep showing up and getting him in trouble. He’s continually escaping death, and in reading an analysis afterwards, the Greek influence of the Fates teasing his lifeline is much more obvious.

Outer Dark is one of McCarthy’s earliest works, and the bones of his later triumphs are obvious. So you see how a thread of this one might turn into a detail in The Road, or a question in Blood Meridian.

“Night fell upon them dark and starblown and the wagon grew swollen near mute with dew. On their chairs in such black immobility these travelers could have been stone figures quarried from the architecture of an older time.”

Of course, like many prolific authors, McCarthy has a usual grab bag of tricks, so you can start to notice where he’s repetitive in describing whirls of dirt under horses’ hooves, or shadows congealing in trees. Familiar, dark, drenched imagery—that’s beautiful, of course, but blurs together, dreamlike.

In Outer Dark more than others, paragraphs of his felt extremely purple and practically nonsensical, with less anchoring than in other books of his. I talk a lot about this when we read classics, but a lot of whether you adore the language will depend on the generosity with which you read.

It’s easy to be like “I should decide to love this because Cormac McCarthy is considered a Great American Writer” and perhaps more difficult to hold him to the standards of freshness and originality you demand from other authors churning out similar works. I’m normally the first to accept the metaphor of prose that veers purple, but there were several paragraphs that were honestly just word salad. I’ll admit this one might not be his strongest—but is good.

Tonally, it feels darker than his others. While he can ultimately get bleak in his other books, there are glimmers of—if not hope—potential for redemption or the contrast of antiheroes that makes it clear what someone’s lost on the run.

Symbolism, etc.

Outer Dark isn’t so much about choice or redemption or change in contrast but rather that the characters are doomed from the beginning and you’re witnessing an inevitable punishment with no way out. Even nihilism in his others is predicated by struggle and questioning. (Re: the Fates imagery—I've been fascinated by the hero's journey, cycles of return, etc. so the Greek influence is especially striking in that sense.)

The ending is awful, not in quality but in a haunting finale that made me convinced I would have nightmares after finishing it in the evening. A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with blog readers that was essentially “what was the most terrifying book you read as a kid and why was it Flowers in the Attic?” and this is a lot like that book, for many reasons.

Dystopia-wise, it reminded me some of The Call by Peadar O’Guilin, with a dash of Wither by Lauren DeStefano—with its sibling connection and eerie, poignant language. It’s a solid showing, with some weaknesses and crutches that make it clear McCarthy was finding his footing in terms of his rhythmic, musical voice. Very characteristic overall, even if I found the scope to be a little strange.

Ultimately, the book disturbed me greatly, more so than any of his other works, which means it did its job.

“The more I study a thing the more I get it backards. Study long and ye study wrong. That’s what a old rifleshooter told me oncet beat me out of half a beef in a rifleshoot. I know things I ain’t never studied. I know things I ain’t never even thought of.”

For fans of

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis; Wither by Lauren DeStefano; The Call by Paedar O'Guilin; The Road by Cormac McCarthy; Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews.