The Orchard Keeper - a slow start

The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy (Random House: 1965). The story of an out of the way community between the world wars. A bootlegger kills a hitchhiker and later unwittingly befriends his son.

Everyone’s got to start somewhere, right? There are some jerk’s who start with masterpieces. I hate those guys. The naturally talented sort who seem to be able to just spit out perfection at their first shot. The guys who were clearly better at football than everyone else since they were about three years old. The kind that could kick a conversion from the halfway line about two seconds after they learned to walk. The kind that could draw a bowl of fruit that looked better than the real thing whilst the rest of us were still struggling to hold the pencil the right way round.

Cormac McCarthy is not one of those jerks.

This is a guy who has written some amazing stuff. I’ve reviewed The Sunset Limited here before. I was a fan, as I am of a couple of his other books. Enough people love this guy for a handful of his books to have translated into big budget movies. The Road. No Country for Old Men. These things don’t make their way from his laptop in the early hours of a Tuesday morning to the Screen 1 down the Odeon on a Friday night by luck. A lot of people have to be fans, and a lot of people have to spend a lot of their money for it to happen.

No doubt, Cormac McCarthy is very good at writing. But he had to start somewhere. And The Orchard Keeper is it. This is his first published book. So I thought it’d be interesting to find out how he kicked off.

Disappointment doesn’t quite cover it. I opened the first page all eager. I was all set to connect at the roots with one of American literature’s greatest living writers. This came out in 1965, and made enough of a splash to get McCarthy noticed and start an illustrious career.

By about page ten, I knew this wasn’t going to live up to all of that. For starts, the story jumped around like a flea in a jumping around circus in which the fleas are forced to jump around more than fleas naturally jump around.

I’m all for a complex story line. I’m all for strands being laid down, dropped, picked up again. Weave it correctly, and it can make for a rich experience. But that didn’t happen here. All that happened was mass confusion. I honestly couldn’t tell you much about what happened in this story. I’m still not even sure why it’s called The Orchard Keeper. I spent so much time flicking back and forth trying to figure out who was who and what was what that it all ended up being a chore.

Elmore - not a fan of hooptedoodle

For twos, the sections which I decided just to sit and read weren’t that great either. I mean, the writing was good. The guy can create scenery and atmosphere that can knock your socks off. But then I was there, sockless, and it kept going. Elmore Leonard talks about avoiding too much hooptedoodle in writing. Me, I tend to think there’s room for a bit of hooptedoodle when it’s well done and indulged in with moderation. But moderation had left the building here. McCarthy kept going and going and going.

There was just no balance. I love an atmospheric book. I love pages that can take you to complete other places and keep you there for hours. I love writers that create tastes and sounds and smells and light. There doesn’t always need to be huge amounts of plot behind it. But it does need to have some meaning that breaks the surface. There needs to be a structure behind it. Steinbeck does it. McCarthy does it too, just not on his first time out.

So no, didn’t really enjoy this one. There were good bits, a few little anecdotes that worked, scene setting passages that warmed me (until they dragged on).

But when the last page went by, I was pleased to be done with this.

2 GBR

On to the next one. A German novella next week. Think that’s the first time I’ve ever said that sentence.

The Great Gatsby - from blind spot to main attraction

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1926: Charles Scribner’s Sons) A novel set in 1920s Long Island, where the narrator has just moved into a modest house next door to the mysterious, flamboyant host of glamorous parties, Jay Gatsby. Through the narrator’s eyes, we learn more about Gatsby and why he is where he is. And the more we learn, the more tragic a figure he becomes.

This is firmly in the class of book which I felt I should read. I really didn’t know much about it before I picked it up. It’s one of those books that comes up in conversation every now and then, or is referred to on TV, and I just end up blankly smiling and nodding, hoping that no one realises I haven’t got a clue about the reference they’ve just made.

So I picked it up more out of desire to colour in a bit of a blind spot than anything else. After a few pages though, I quickly forgot about the blind spot, and started enjoying it.

It’s a bit of (alright, a lot of) a cliché to say that a book is multi-layered. But I’m not sure how else to say it. So I’m just going to go ahead and commit the cliché. Please try to get past it and believe me when I say...

This book has a lot of layers.

Every time I picked it up, I felt as if something new was happening. There was significance on every page, and I’m certain I didn’t pick up on anywhere near all of the meaning; all of the themes. I’m not saying this is a grand, epic of a book with hidden depth that takes careful reading to unlock. Those books tend to be tiring and taxing to read - this was not. It’s a ruddy good story. It’s fun to read, simply as a tale in its own right. But at the same time, you’re aware as you’re reading it that Fitzgerald is weaving bigger issues into the 192 pages as well.

And that is really an art. I mean, this thing was written in 1926. It’s the best part of 100 years old. It deals with big questions and big emotions. All these things, you would think, would be major barriers to it being an enjoyable read for a man in 2011, skipping through a few pages here and there on the train into work. But none of that gets in the way. If anything, I found myself reading it too quickly. The story kept me glued to the page, fidgeting with the corners until I could turn them over, in a way that I haven’t for a while.

Generally speaking, I’m against reading (or watching) anything more than once. There are millions upon millions of great things to read and watch, and so going over anything twice is simply taking time away from encountering something new. No doubt, masterpieces exist, but do any of them deserve a second look when there’s another masterpiece lurking around the corner. Having said that, there are exceptions. And I think this may be one of them. I think I may actually read this one again. There’s so much packed into these pages that I want to understand better.

So, if I’m going to give this book a second look, I’d certainly recommend that you give it at least a first one (that is, if you haven’t already). Cue the drum roll for the biggest GBR yet...

9 GBR

I know, copping out a little on the 9. If this is a “masterpiece” that I’m deeming worthy of the almost unprecedented step of a second read, why not 10? Well, as I’ve said before, got to leave myself somewhere to go. The day I give a 10 is the day I find a book that makes me need to lie down for a while after I’ve finished it to recover. I’m sure it exists somewhere.

Oh, and for the record, the high GBR score is nothing to do with the fact that this also happens to be my brother-in-law’s all time favourite book. No pandering here. Honest...