Religion in Cormac McCarthy’s Fiction: Apocryphal Borderlands by Manuel Broncano

Manuel Broncano’s Religion in Cormac McCarthy’s Fiction: Apocryphal Borderlands is a fine scholarly work with a rather misleading title. One naturally expects to find a study of the influences of the major world religions on the works of Cormac McCarthy, with a foray into their heretical and apocryphal counterparts; if one is looking for such a book, this is not it. Broncano does not engage in an in-depth theological study, nor touch on any religion other than Christianity, but he does present his readers with a successful historical, sociopolitical, and heavily postmodern reading, which occasionally draws on Biblical influences—an approach that certainly has its place in the field of McCarthy criticism.

Broncano sets himself a difficult task right at the beginning of his book by declaring McCarthy an agnostic and then puzzlingly proceeding to argue that his novels are deeply rooted in Biblical themes and motifs. In fact, his entire study is structured on that premise that McCarthy’s Western novels are “written against the background of the Bible, composing a peculiar Pentateuch in which Blood Meridian functions as the Book of Genesis (and by extension, the Old Testament), the Border Trilogy functions as the Gospels, and No Country for Old Men as the Book of Revelation. As for The Road, it is the post-apocalyptic sequel or epilogue” (2). It is an original structuring device, but one that surely cannot be reconciled with agnosticism. I am, however, in complete agreement with Broncano’s insistence on reading “the whole cycle as a single text,” (2) for there is much to be gained by studying the Western novels in relation to one another.

The problem is that, by definition, agnostics assert that they do not know what they believe and are uninterested in theological questions, having reconciled themselves to the fact that they cannot know the answers. Agnosticism is a position that refutes specific knowledge of the divine, and yet McCarthy has so much to say on the subject that it seems an unusual label to bestow on a writer so clearly fixated on all aspects of the sacred. But, in another sense, the label of agnosticism is liberating, because it allows Broncano to perambulate freely through McCarthy’s complex and often seemingly contradictory metaphysics without having to resolve them into a coherent worldview. Since Broncano adopts a postmodern approach in his criticism, this lack of resolution will not pose a problem for those who find themselves comfortably ensconced in the fashionable territories of aporia and différance.

The reference to apocrypha in the book’s title evokes the Gnostic Scriptures of the Nag Hammadi Library, yet while Broncano makes passing mentions of the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Philip, he is quick to reject a Gnostic reading of McCarthy’s novels on the grounds that an agnostic cannot, by definition, possess gnosis. In fact, Broncano argues that the Gospel of Thomas is not even a Gnostic text, because he believes that “the core message of Thomas differs radically from the Gnostic conception of this world as hell” (20). (I think Gnostic scholars such as Hans Jonas, Elaine Pagels, and Kurt Rudolph, to name just a few, might raise an eyebrow at this contention). Broncano’s outright rejection of Gnosticism is all the more perplexing because, throughout his study, he frequently arrives at conclusions that could have been culled from some Gnostic tract, for example:

If humankind is to have a real opportunity to get rid of the biblical damnation, it can only happen by destroying the Book wherein that damnation is contained. If humanity is to be liberated from the oppression of an angry and vindictive God, as the Puritans saw Him, a God that even offered his own son as the sacrificial victim of His cruel project, such liberation can be only achieved through the destruction of the Book wherein such a God is contained.

(143)

However, instead of examining the influences of the existing apocryphal works on McCarthy’s novels, as one might have expected, Broncano maintains that McCarthy has constructed his own apocrypha of the American Southwest. He argues that this is not so much a religious apocrypha as a historical and sociopolitical one: “in the southwestern cycle McCarthy confronts the official history imposed by the State with the apocryphal, or intra-, history of those who were victimized by the creed of Manifest Destiny” (47). Indeed, Broncano’s definition of apocryphal is so broad as to include any intentionally or unintentionally subversive text, which is problematic because even canonical texts can be unintentionally subversive if one “reads against the grain,” so to speak. Broncano is well aware of this, arguing that “there is only the ‘apocryphal’ narrative, ‘canonical’ being an untenable concept and an impossible quality of language and hence of literature” (17). Surely once a definition is wide enough to include its own opposite, it has lost its usefulness as a word, which is undoubtedly why Broncano returns to the definition of apocryphal as “subaltern” and canonical as “hegemonic,” a distinction he henceforth maintains throughout his study.

Similar problems arise with Broncano’s use of the word “allegory,” a term he uses to denote anything polysemic, rather than limiting his definition to the traditional one, as authoritatively discussed by C. S. Lewis in Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition. Broncano argues that “allegory opens the gate to multiple interpretations that may or may not have been anticipated by the author” (31). Broncano’s definition of allegory is based on Walter Benjamin’s, who is generally considered authoritative and therefore beyond reproach, but one can’t help feeling that there is a danger that if we allow terms such as allegory or apocrypha to become all-encompassing, then they can theoretically be used to refer to any text and thereby lose their usefulness.

Broncano’s work is most interesting and original when he is dealing with what are often (rather unfairly) considered to be the weakest of McCarthy’s novels, namely, Cities of the Plain and No Country for Old Men. He has a knack for bringing out the frequently unappreciated depth and complexity of these books, particularly because of his extensive knowledge of Spanish and Mexican history and literature, which he draws upon to illuminate little known aspects of McCarthy’s work.

In short, as long as one does not expect an in-depth theological or metaphysical analysis of the religious and spiritual influences on McCarthy as a writer, and accepts the book for what it is, namely, a postmodern examination of the role of language and storytelling where the Bible functions as simply another storybook, then this becomes a well-written and provocative study. It is worth adding that the excellent endnotes and impressive bibliography attest to Broncano’s careful scholarship. This is certainly a book worth adding to one’s collection of McCarthy criticism, provided one accepts the often disjointed ambiguity of the postmodern approach. It would certainly be a useful book for anyone interested in sparking heated discussion in a tutorial group or similar study environment.