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But it aint my country.
Mar. 1st, 2008 11:50 pmThat line, toward the end of Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses just about slayed me. Let me start earlier. I've been reading this book all of February.
I didn't like the book. At first. McCarthy's writing style with his odd would-be run-on sentences and repetitions threw me. I found myself re-reading passages several times to make sure I'd gotten it right and even then I was lost at times. Eventually I found the key and got in the door.
His descriptions are breathtaking, haunting even, but I hardly cared about that. It was the dialog and inner life of these characters that hooked me. There was a truth in their philosophical underpinnings that resonated. McCarthy's dialog is sparse, but like Pinter, there are oceans beneath a few simple words.
So when John Grady Cole tells Rawlins that he is leaving and Rawlins tells John he doesn't have to go, that this is still good country and Cole says, "Yeah. I know it is. But it aint my country." I absolutely lost it. A grown man with tears in his eyes reading a book on the bus. Let me tell you why.
The entire time I've been reading this book, I've also been working on an essay for my English class about my near-death experiences. In the course of writing this, I've had to dig through much of my past, remembering times and dates, people, places, events, and most of them tragic or traumatic.
I haven't been able to quite nail my angle on the essay, a theme that will link the stories together. Today, John Grady Cole's words summed it up for me. John Grady Cole had gone through so much, lived so much, been hurt so much, had been so close to death so much that, like all heroes who are given injuries that never heal, he can no longer fit in with the rest of the world. It may be good country still. But it ain't his country.
And I felt, perhaps, perhaps, this is why I've never felt at home anywhere. All the horros I've been through, all the times I've been told I'm lucky to be alive, told I I shouldn't have lived, through all the tragedy and trauma, maybe it all sank in, maybe it all settled in like a wall separating me from the world, like a bump on the head sent Dorothy into an archetypal other-world. Maybe, like Amfortas, I'm carrying that never-healing wound as well. Maybe we all carry our pain, our sins, like scarlet letters - we think we are singled out and exiled but really the letter is invisible to others.
So maybe my so-called hubris, my recklessness which has lead to so many of my near-death experiences, is my subconscious attempt to knock myself out of that other-world and back to this one, desperate attempts to prove I am human, that I am here. I want to be like Amfortas and heal myself. Because I do not want to stay in Oz. I'm not ready to sail off into the Undying Lands. I know it aint my country.
I didn't like the book. At first. McCarthy's writing style with his odd would-be run-on sentences and repetitions threw me. I found myself re-reading passages several times to make sure I'd gotten it right and even then I was lost at times. Eventually I found the key and got in the door.
His descriptions are breathtaking, haunting even, but I hardly cared about that. It was the dialog and inner life of these characters that hooked me. There was a truth in their philosophical underpinnings that resonated. McCarthy's dialog is sparse, but like Pinter, there are oceans beneath a few simple words.
So when John Grady Cole tells Rawlins that he is leaving and Rawlins tells John he doesn't have to go, that this is still good country and Cole says, "Yeah. I know it is. But it aint my country." I absolutely lost it. A grown man with tears in his eyes reading a book on the bus. Let me tell you why.
The entire time I've been reading this book, I've also been working on an essay for my English class about my near-death experiences. In the course of writing this, I've had to dig through much of my past, remembering times and dates, people, places, events, and most of them tragic or traumatic.
I haven't been able to quite nail my angle on the essay, a theme that will link the stories together. Today, John Grady Cole's words summed it up for me. John Grady Cole had gone through so much, lived so much, been hurt so much, had been so close to death so much that, like all heroes who are given injuries that never heal, he can no longer fit in with the rest of the world. It may be good country still. But it ain't his country.
And I felt, perhaps, perhaps, this is why I've never felt at home anywhere. All the horros I've been through, all the times I've been told I'm lucky to be alive, told I I shouldn't have lived, through all the tragedy and trauma, maybe it all sank in, maybe it all settled in like a wall separating me from the world, like a bump on the head sent Dorothy into an archetypal other-world. Maybe, like Amfortas, I'm carrying that never-healing wound as well. Maybe we all carry our pain, our sins, like scarlet letters - we think we are singled out and exiled but really the letter is invisible to others.
So maybe my so-called hubris, my recklessness which has lead to so many of my near-death experiences, is my subconscious attempt to knock myself out of that other-world and back to this one, desperate attempts to prove I am human, that I am here. I want to be like Amfortas and heal myself. Because I do not want to stay in Oz. I'm not ready to sail off into the Undying Lands. I know it aint my country.
