Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy died two days ago, on June 13, 2023. He was widely recognized as one of the greatest living novelists, and his accolades support that recognition. The man’s laurels include the Pulitzer Prize (The Road) and the National Book Award for Fiction (All the Pretty Horses). Literary critic Harold Bloom named him one of the four major American novelists of his time.
His writing style was lean and muscular. Some have called it “masculine.” His genre is that of stark realism. His themes include morality, the human condition, and the problem of evil. Many of his stories are violent.
Why read or watch violent stories? What’s the value?
Here’s my short answer: many violent stories are better avoided, particularly those of gratuitous bloodshed. It is generally unwise to invite gratuitous violence into your mind. However, some narratives are such that the violence is justified. The mature reader can benefit from a careful reading/watching of such fiction. As Schopeanhauer put it:
"If you wish to get a clear and profound insight—and it is very needful—into the true but melancholy elements of which most men are made, you will find it a very instructive thing to take the way they behave in the pages of literature as a commentary to their doings in practical life, and vice versa. The experience thus gained will be very useful in avoiding wrong ideas, whether about yourself or about others. But if you come across any special trait of meanness or stupidity—in life or in literature —you must be careful not to let it annoy or distress you, but to look upon it merely as an addition to your knowledge--a new fact to be considered in studying the character of humanity. Your attitude towards it will be that of the mineralogist who stumbles upon a very characteristic specimen of a mineral." (Counsels and Maxims, Our Relation to Others, Section 29)
You see, as I have noted elsewhere, human life is a combination of goods and evils. The latter category is quite real, although it is possible to live without facing up to the horror of its members. The human experience is, in some ways, wretched indeed. We need good writers to recognize this fact, study it, and communicate the results to the public in appropriate ways. Why? For the sake of knowledge. For the sake of Aristotelian catharsis. I could provide additional reasons.
In short, a life ignorant of evil, lived as if the world is all flowers and rainbows, is an unexamined life. You know what Socrates said about that.
Here is a good reflection on McCarthy’s legacy.