Child of God
I buy books on my birthday. For the last five years, on September 8, I will end up at a bookstore at some point. I normally pick up about three books, and this year I had just read an article online stating that James Franco was writing, directing, and acting in Child of God, a Cormac McCarthy novel. I'm one of those people that need to read the book before the movie, if possible. I'm not the asshole that will judge you if you haven't read the books (unless we are talking about Lord of the Rings—come on—the books are amazing). But I am the guy that likes to see where the vision for the movie came from. This will be a difficult one to sit through because of Cormac McCarthy’s ability to write powerfully dark and twisted stories.
It’s a bit like watching American Horror story and getting in a fight with your girlfriend (Yes, it happened) because the show grips you in its is palm and throws you off a cliff. Kate and I will watch the show and become tense because we witness humans doing the most horrific things, yet there is something within the show that keeps us coming back. McCarthy’s power is on another level, he has a similar, but more intense effect, and accomplishes it with words on a page versus images on a screen. This slim book held me by the throat until the very end.
McCarthy’s characters easily remind you that there is evil. Yet, somehow, the evil he reminds us of feels familiar.
But damn him. He will also, after making you look at the devil in the face, make you see the humanity in the devil. The fallen angel that you can relate to in some twisted and obvious way.
The main character, Lester Ballard is the lost son of the world, finding himself in trouble at every turn because of his simple-minded nature and his lack of real-world understanding He looks down on the world with his sick needs and psychopathic tendencies. Ballard lives in the woods because he burned down the house he was squatting in, and only comes into town if it’s absolutely necessary. He intermittently stumbles upon other human “inconveniences,” as he meanders through the woods and quickly ends their lives. He decides their demise as naturally as deciding what to eat for dinner. Ballard carries a gun and falls asleep with corpses.
McCarthy’s rhythmic words make you feel and see every tree and animal. You step over every boulder that Lester avoids with each sentence that McCarthy writes.
I had to pause about fourteen times throughout this book to smoke my American Spirits. It’s a novel that makes you question why the heck you are reading in the first place, but like any good trainwreck of brilliance, you keep going until every car has piled up, one on top of the other, and the burning wreckage illuminates your own dark secrets until they are so real that you have to turn your head away and find solace in the mountains like Ballard did.
Buy this book - but only if you're of sound mind and want to ruin it.
One more thing - James Franco is directing a movie based off the book. Here's a trailer.
