Safe Return Doubtful

American Literature – published 1985

or, The Evening Redness in the West

This is my second reading of this epic book, this time with Richard Poe reading it on audiobook. It’s the way to take it in, occasionally rewinding it by 30 / 60 seconds as you can’t quite believe what you’ve just heard. And Poe is excellent.

For sure, it is one of the most disturbing books I have ever read. At 350 pages plus, it’s long also, and to a certain degree if one reads it in one go, one gets desensitised to the violence. I don’t think that’s the way to get the most out of the book. The audio format, almost 14 hours, taken over a week for example, works better.

The novel begins with the protagonist, a fourteen year old orphan known simply as ‘the kid’ emerging into McCarthy’s vision of purgatory.

The boy soon gets caught up with the Glanton Gang. This is 1849, and the gang were an actual historically documented group of scalp-hunters who operated aroundthe US-Mexico borderlands, led by Joel Glanton, a former Texas Ranger. They were initially hired by Mexican authorities to kill Apache warriors but turned to murdering and scalping Mexican civilians and peaceful Native Americans to maximise their profits.

outside lie dark turned fields with rags of snow and darker woods beyond that harbor yet a few last wolves..

..he can neither read nor write and in him broods already a taste for mindless violence.

McCarthy’s purpose is a wider one than exploring the evils of colonialism though, one of how men will behave, whether they are inherently good or bad, when the devil walks amongst them.
The Kid’s nemesis, if that is the appropriate term, is Judge Holden, known as the Judge, who is also based on an actual character. McCarthy’s description of him is apparently quite accurate..

Though the Kid maybe the protagonist, the novel is about the Judge, by some way the most interesting and charismatic character in the book. Described by many reviewers as Satan, I think his presence is not so simple to explain. At one stage he declares ‘War Is God’, not only expressing a view on humanity desire to kowtow to weaponry and bloodshed, but he also representing the callous and egotistical detachment that innumerable political leaders have shown both before and after. A sad fact is that in 2026 the world is at another point when this novel is timely.

he was bold as a stone and he had no trace of a beard and he had no brows to his eyes nor lashes to them…

..he was close on to seven feet in height.

After endless amounts of bloodshed and terror, in the last pages comes the most memorable of scenes, McCarthy describes the Judge, naked and behemothic, dancing and playing the fiddle in a crowded bar in Fort Griffin. He is ‘a great favourite’, never sleeps, and ‘he says that he will never die’.

Just occasionally there has been a fantastical, almost supernatural element to the novel, one that seems out of place. But now, at the end of the novel, it makes sense. Unlike his creator, or indeed the rest of humanity, it seems completely appropriate that this strange, otherworldly figure will proceed to immortality; that his noxious, pederastic presence will continue to infest mankind forever.

This is a great and essential novel and for me, one of the greatest, if not the greatest, literary achievement.

I guess that one day, someone will try to adapt it as a film or series. It seems John Hillcoat, the Director who made The Road (2009) has recently scrapped the project to film it, that he started. Perhaps it is unfilmable, and perhaps that is for the best..

My GoodReads score 5 / 5