DeAnander complains that “The Road” caused horror and she therefore won’t read it as she doesn’t want to encounter such horror. What a curious statement she makes. Ignore it and maybe it will go away? Don’t worry, be happy?

“The Road” moved me toward being more outspoken on the path of America, encouraged me to get more active in discussing politics with friends, made me rethink what are America’s values as a culture.

This is a bad thing?

I’m baffled.

I find John Steppling’s comments quite wise and even-handed. Can’t quite say the same for DeAnander’s short-tempered rebukes against Steppling. I think it would be better for DeAnander to acknowledge preferring to ignore certain forms of artistic expression, instead of feebly criticizing someone who appreciates that art.

As to Proyect’s posts, I find the obsessive insistence that an artist state his/her politics to completely undermine any critical merit Proyect may have. Trying to blame Cormac McCarthy for America not being Marxist is a stretch — even when it’s suggested by an unapologetic Marxist like Proyect. Somehow, I find Proyect’s sentiments in this thread to resemble the work of a disinformation specialist.

^^^^
Philosophers have _interpreted_ the world in a number of ways; the thing is to change it.

^^^^
Notice that the debate over the didactic function of art is not confined to a left reductionist reflex advocating instruction. The main essay refers to Dr. Johnson ( The British literary critic Dr. Samuel (?)Johnson from , I don’t know, 1700 or so) had a standard of “to instruct and delight” for art. Dr. Johnson is not usually considered to be “on the left”.

^^^

Charles: Ditto

“If you don’t be quiet, I’m gonna take you in the back and screw ya.”

Wow. Heavy. So original.

Obviously both film and book offended you deeply by not being a) Marxist propaganda and/or b) feminist propaganda. In that case, why not stick to material written by people who share your views?

MODERATOR: Very sly how you imply that critique using marxist, feminist, et al, insights is automatically censorial and-or propagandizing, while anything that reflects, repeats, reinforces capitalism, patriarchy, white supremacy, industrialism, etc etc, is morally neutral. It is only when one speaks from the POV of the underdogs that one shifts from real art criticism to polemic it seems.

What a crock! And he claims to be a writer!

Women are human beings. They are human beings who can give life. McCarthy’s men kill women and rape their corpses, they hang babies, they blow up women, they torture them, they rape them, they beat them, and they engage in every other kind of bestial derangement. They do this is a moral vacuum. For some reason, we are expected to see this as literature. We are expected to find this illuminating. We are expected to find this edifying.

It has been his obsession for more than a few decades. Why has he not gotten psychiatric help? Clearly, his obsession with the most revolting elements of masculinity is complete. Remember, this comes from a protected, and in his own word, lucky white man who has had every kind of help with his chosen path in life. Such obsession with male ugliness, and of the portrayal of the lot of women, must be pathological. He needs a mental health professional.

He has said that “the notion that the species can be improved in some way … is a really dangerous idea”. What an arrogant fool of a man! Note the word “species”. He says he does not understand women and yet, says that the species cannot be improved. What an eliding of the truth. It is men that cannot be improved, for Gods’ sake. That is what he is saying. He does not understand women and therefore cannot have anything to say about their part in the “species”. His women, in fact, are too tortured to have a chance in the “species” because of all those psychopathic men.

And yet the lie stands because men cannot handle the truth.

Say it like it is, CorMac. Say it true and loud and clear. You know many men are ugly beyond belief. You make no excuses for them. They are beasts. For no apparent reason. Maybe it’s biological. Maybe it’s not. Who knows? Certainly not you. Yet, you have compassion for them, and no understanding for women. How can that be? How can that possibly be?

I’ll tell you. It cannot be. If you are a writer in the twenty first, it cannot be. There is too much information available for you to have no understanding. How dare you write!

This is not literature. It is fundamentalism. He makes no effort to understand or illuminate his vile men. He makes no effort to understand women. Why? In this day and age, after so much knowledge on the making of masculinity, after half a century of writing by both feminist men and feminist women on the subject, it defies belief that a supposedly erudite man could write such fundamentalist tripe. Perhaps, if he’d written in the nineteenth century, he could have claimed an excuse. But now, after such complex and erudite analysis of the male condition by a great number of both men and women, CorMac has no excuse.

He is simply lazy. Bone lazy. Utterly bone wearyingly lazy.

As are most men, post feminism, who can’t bear to look. They will not look. They will not read. They will not see.

They can’t handle the truth.

The few men who can – they are heroes. The rest are just bone lazy bastards. The vast bulk who hide under the disgraceful excuses of “men can’t understand women” or some such equivalent (and there are legion of equivalents) are bone lazy, arrogant, fundamentalist liars. They do know what their gender is doing to women. Their gender has done it for millenia. Murder, rape, genocide, gendercide, holocaust, name it what you will. There is no word for the sheer ugliness of it.

How can they face it? They cannot. They can’t handle the truth. They deny it, or, as is the current rage, pass it off as high art. Is the killing of Jews high art? Is the killing of the maimed, the disabled, the old, the feeble, the dispossessed, high art? No, it is not. Never could be. But it’s different when women are the raped, the tortured, the murdered. Then, a man can say, see? How artfully he portrayed that rape, how well he described that sexual dismemberment, how artistically he depicted that necrophilia. Replace “woman” with “Jew” and see how you react.

Ugghh!

Why is the portrayal of vile crimes against women high art? I cannot comprehend it. To glamorise this thing is the refuge of the ethically moronic. In NCFOM, the hipocracy is total. See how they judge how far they can go. Those Cohen brothers did not show that psychopath blowing up the woman at the end.

Ask yourself why not. And really listen to the answer. With some emotional intelligence, for God’s sake. Because it would have blown the whole film and shown it for what it was. An attempt to glamorise the inhuman masculine. Never mind the silly homily tacked on the end.

McCarthy has made necrophilia, and every other form of bestial male violence more sympathetic. That is the end result of his work, his indecent work of never examining his own reasons for depicting this vileness. If he had bothered to examine his reasons, he would have found a sneeking, dirty thing that has ego written on it – male white writer’s ego – how can I outdo Hemingway? – oh yes, show a bit of necro, a bit of absolute male filth.

Go where no literary man has gone before. That’ll get me noticed. if he had looked, he might have seen that it would cause more harm than good. The despicable has no analysis in his work. Very convenient. He can say to Oprah, with smug delight, oh I don’t understand women. He could add to that, I don’t really understand anything. But of course, he would not say that. He would never say that.

All those poor men and boys, turning to evil for no apparent reason. That is the real evil in his work. There is no attempt at understanding at all. Why do men do such things? Why in such numbers? Are they helped along the path by every book, film, etc, that gives no explanation? Why don’t these male writers read a decent analysis of these filthy deeds held by both feminist men and feminist women? Why don’t they see the utter logic of that analysis?

Why do they take refuge in that excuse of the infirm idiot – men don’t understand women and the species can’t be improved? It’s not the species, CorMac. Half the species would be OK if they were not being raped unto death. Women are not doing the unspeakable in vast numbers. Women are not raping, killing and torturing en masse. Women are not raping male corpses, festooning bushes with mutilated babies, blowing up men all over, and killing and killing and killing, ad nuaseum all over the planet. Have a look at the stats. Even a cursory look. Even after millenia of male violence against women, women in numbers, are not doing these thing. Men are.

Is there something in this mystery worth exploring? Not to CorMac and any number of other male writers of male violence. No surree!

Perhaps a time will come when women will be forced to defend themselves against this increasing male hatred of the feminine, to keep the species going, the very species CorMac is so keen to save from any form of improvement. Heaven forbid that he examine male violence against women in the light of species survival. Might be a big job. While writing about the endless bloodletting of southern males is easy – and, oh so popular!

Men like CorMac do understand. Only too well. And remain utterly defended against the reality of their appalling male world. Their only excuse is to call it literature, or something equally unrealistic.

Like so many men who make no effort to understand half the human race – the half that gave them birth – this man, McCarthy, writes of necrophilia, rape, torture, all involving specific atrocity against women, and then has the gaul, at age seventy something, to write smugly of the man as the protector of the child, and of the mother in sheerly negative terms. Give me a break!

What a crock, old man.
What a crock.
Get help.
And a cut rate for the Cohen Brothers.