Exploring the American Literary West: International Perspectives ed. by David Rio, et al. (review)

W e s t e r n A m e r ic a n L i t e r a t u r e S p r in g 2 0 0 8 Oprah and several past instances in which he has referred to spiritual concerns indicate he absolutely is not a nihilistic author. Most important, his admittedly ambiguous published writings also reveal a strong sense of the mystical/spiritual , and The Road proves no exception: at its end, we are told that the son prays to his father. The son and father are also “good guys,” in their own parlance, carriers “of the fire,” among the number of Eastern religious concepts in the novel (here, Hindi, and harkening back to numerous other McCarthy writings). The title itself suggests The Tao, or “way,” of Taoism. And the novel’s final paragraph focuses on the trout that no longer inhabit the world; like so many vanished life forms, they “hummed of mystery” (241). This hum resonates with the Hindu Aum or Om, as, it bears noting, does character Black’s frequent use of “Mm hm” and similar ineffable sounds in The Sunset Limited (2006), a play subtitled “A Novel in Dramatic Form” that McCarthy published just after this novel. Finally, in this journey to the Southeast, the fires and blackened landscape sug­ gest Hindi cycling of destruction and renewal. For these and other reasons best left to the reading, The Road thus takes its place as one of the greatest works of faith in literary history. Its faith, all the richer for its Abrahamic uncertainties, is further highlighted by another appar­ ent western reference: the shopping carts pushed along by the father seemingly reference the Mormon pushcarts while the pilgrim pushing them veers in the opposite direction in hopes of some Zion that may in fact no longer exist anywhere. It is another tale full of the raw yet understated sentiment praised by Stephen Tatum in his tribute to The Crossing (1995), another reminder in a long string of great writings that McCarthy should be a Nobel laureate, his world hums so of mystery. Exploring the American Literary West: International Perspectives. Edited by David Rio, Amaia Ibarraran, José Miguel Santamarfa, and M.a Felisa Lopez. Bilbao, Spain: Servicio Editorial de la Universidad del Pais Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitateko Argitalpen Zerbitzua, 2006. 318 pages. €18.00. Reviewed by Robert Murray Davis Professor Emeritus, University of Oklahoma Drawn from a 2005 conference at the University of the Basque Country, the twenty-three papers by scholars from six countries are technically international, since the authors come from Ireland, Germany, Norway, and the United States, as well as Spain, but for the most part the critical approaches, indistinguishable from one another, speak a more or less common language. The essays are uneven. American Maria Herrera-Sobek’s essay “Brown Sleuths” relies on academic jargon borrowed from French theory and is pep­ pered with errors in grammar, usage, and punctuation that would embarrass the B o o k R e v ie w s many contributors writing English as a second language. On the other hand, French critic Marc Chénetier writes lively, indeed super-heated prose, though at times, as in the description of Cormac McCarthy’s “hieratic démultiplication of gestures [which] do not so much demystify as they displace generic values in favor of an aesthetically powerful rerouting of metaphysical preoccupations into a demoralized western mode,” I have difficulty deciding whether he is for or against what he is describing (280). Most of the essays fall between these extremes. Perhaps too many spend more time on theoretical generalizations than on the texts themselves, in an extreme instance a critic mentioning a character’s fate but not telling us what it is. Often they tell more about what the writer is doing than about how it gets done. However, Stephen Matterson’s essay on Washington Irving’s A Tour of the Prairies (1835) puts the book in historical and psychological contexts; David Rio and Monika Mandinabeitia provide useful views of Frank Bergon’s fiction; and Christian Hummelsund Voie’s essay makes me want to read more Annie Proulx. Susan H. Swetnam gives a nuanced...