On thwarted McCarthy
Weeks after Donald Trump's re-election guaranteed four more years of library antagonism (book bans are a decidedly rightward trend), book-lovers got even worse news: Cormac McCarthy had been somewhat of a pedophile, and the details had been delivered by an oaf.
There is bad writing and then there is repellant writing. The Vanity Fair exposé revealing McCarthy's prolonged romance with a 16-year-old "muse" when he was 42 was both, and readers largely ignored the article's explosive reporting in favor of splashing themselves in the public bathhouse of its bog-water prose.
The question of "How to engage with the pedophile's work?" is weirdly common (one guy's figured it out), but it assumes people engage with work at all, and I have a sad theory I want to share: The public have chosen only two approaches to art and one of them sucks fat ass.
- People engage with art as a way to process their lives.
- People tolerate art as a way to escape their lives.
Escapees will watch "Casablanca" and deride any mention of "politics," sing along to Rage Against the Machine and become police officers, read William Gibson's neo-dystopian warnings and admire Elon Musk, perhaps even seethe at American protest held on the fields of our most American sport. In other words, "The world is a dark and scary place, and all entertainment serves only to sever me from it."
There are no learnings, there are no themes, there is no growth, there is no magic.
This may land like an AI-assisted drone strike (you are blameless and yet the people cheer), but I offer the theory in comfort. First, comfort in knowing that art doesn't change the lives of people who insist it can't, and, second—from that—knowing that there is no "gotcha" for people who've chosen their trap.
Voters upset last year by grocery prices will not be turned by today's record-high egg prices. Immigrants who asked for mass deportations will hold fast as their loved ones are kidnapped. The Anti-Defamation League will defend a Nazi salute.
How is any of this supposed to bring comfort? Well, you know where not to spend energy. You cannot convince a death cultist the value of life, so stop trying.
Just like you cannot convince me that Cormac McCarthy wasn't a fucking creep, what the fuck was the deal there, sixteen and forty-two, "No Country for Old Men," yeah, I fucking bet that sounded like a real nightmare for your ancient ass, didn't it?
However! However (oh no), he's dead, and I believe—infuriatingly enough—that there's a certain Economic Loophole to dead, problematic artists: You may engage with their work if you don't financially support them. That could mean borrowing the book, torrenting it, or checking it out from your local library, which I already tried to do with McCarthy's "The Passenger," but someone had gotten to it that morning, based on the expected return date, so I'm now reading Katie Kitamura's "Intimacies," which deserves its own newsletter.
Until next time.