Child of God

Wahey! Dierenmishandeling, moord, verkrachting en necrofilie! Van tijd tot tijd eens literatuur, dat is goed voor een mens, ‘t schijnt.

Lester Ballard is een eenzaat ergens in de jaren 1960 in een gat in Tenessee. Zijn ouders sterven, hij verliest zijn huis, en in de loop van het boek lijkt het alsof hij (letterlijk en figuurlijk) alsmaar minder mens wordt.

Drie delen: de mensen van Sevierville die het hebben over Lester, en dan het verhaal van Lester zelf, met dialogen zonder aanhalingstekens waar het niet altijd even evident is om te weten wie precies aan het woord is. En Lester die van toevallige necrofiel tot seriemoordenaar evolueert.

Ik heb het normaal niet voor dingen die ik –bij gebrek aan betere omschrijving– ‘gimmicky' noem, maar hier stoorde het geen moment: ‘t is bijzonder goed geschreven, met de onmenselijkheid van Ballard aan de ene kant en de banaliteit anderzijds, en daartussen de bijna-poëzie van Cormac McCarthy.

While beautifully and powerfully written, the subject matter is so dark I am struggling to stick with it. I'm reading Child of God for a book group, so it wasn't a personal selection.Try as I might I couldn't finish this book. I went to the discussion, but the more I heard the better I felt about not having completed Child of God.

Yet another work of fiction that's inspired me with a craving for more from the author, McCarthy creates an almost unrelenting gauntlet of hopelessness, humanity (for better and worse), and tale. Londonian in spirit and transgressive in style, this work tells a beautifully constructed narrative that was unapologetically regressive but simultaneously characteristically revolutionary thanks to McCarthy's intimately bleak attention to character and experience. Although, the story seemed to revel in moments of metaphor or simile (those otherwise beautiful Londonian passages) almost superfluously, bringing it just a hair short of perfection.

Despite its only three-hour run-time, McCarthy doesn't waste a page telling this transgressive gem. Suffice to say, I'll be reading more McCarthy.

I can't rate this book, because by enjoyment it's like a negative two out of 10. It's the mathematical opposite of enjoyment. Unenjoyment.

But I also can't give a book one star that does exactly what it sets out to do and is written very well. McCarthy wanted to explore the absolute depths of depravity humanity is capable of and make the reader uncomfortable and he did that. So 100%, Cormac. You completed the assignment. I'm never reading this again.

The book suffers from sentences used for shock value and the transvestite/trans-phobic trope of a lusty cross-dressing killer. It's two to three sentences staggered through the book, but it still creates a line of thought that cross-dressing is aligned with ill mind. Cormac later writes with what I remember to be a trans-positive character in The Passenger, but I read that in haste and while working nights and it warrants a re-read.

I think there's elements of isolation, human condition, social standards, cultural changes, and colonization criticism, but I wouldn't argue that any are “strong” other than Isolation and human condition. The human condition being creatures of equal creation who have changed little since their inception/evolution and suffer the same frailty of social development that some, like Lester, are deprived of. Isolation being obvious. The lack of development being Lester's family members had abandoned him or were killed (by themselves or otherwise) and he had “white hood” family relations. Mostly raised ambiguously alone on the fringe of society.

I do not doubt that some people find kinship in Lester. Aside from the murder/desecration of dead bodies and his lust that defies age boundaries, he's a lonely rural person. Still, one hopes that, when finding oneself engaged in conversation over this book, that the other individual(s) find Lester to be
an un-empathetic case.