Cormac McCarthy's House by Peter Josyph

Author:Peter Josyph [Josyph, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2013-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

I can see you playing White, inasmuch as I can see myself playing Black. I like Black, I sympathize with his position and his argument. He speaks like people I know, although most of them don’t discuss these things as directly—unless prodded. I can see McCarthy playing either or both. But I don’t read McCarthy as being as hopeless as White about the present and future of humanity, nor as confident as Black about the Ways of God and Man. McCarthy is right there in the middle of that discussion. Remember All the Pretty Horses: “Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting” (238). One of the questions The Sunset Limited raises is: which is the wish and which is the thing? For me, it suggests that you need both to make the world.

—M

Martheimer:

Look at you, using the Dueña Alfonsa to bolster an argument—and it’s a line from her storystopper discourse. But I shouldn’t complain about her too much: if she hadn’t existed, I wouldn’t have met Miriam Colon, who plays her in Billy Bob’s film—or what would have been his film if the studios had not deputed his editor, Sally Menke, to cut off a pound of its flesh. Miriam is also in Lone Star, a very bad movie that Rick, inexplicably, adores, and in One Eyed Jacks with Marlon Brando, about whom she spoke to me glowingly. It’s one more favor for which I have to thank McCarthy: being able to sit in Miriam’s New York apartment and talk about Brando, John Grady Cole, Billy Bob Thornton. I loved how, in talking about Alfonsa and John Grady, she voiced what we can call the conscientious ambivalence of a woman in that touchy situation while, at the same time, revealing how the actor cannot be lost in his or her own personal preparation:

When I am doing a scene with Matt, I cannot be thinking of an imaginary person who is an American coming into our territory and suddenly he is giving eyes to my niece. I have to use Matt Damon. And therefore, no matter what you have established here, intellectually, about who this guy is or what he might do, you have to play with the actor you have in front of yourself. And in my observation as the character, you cannot help but say: “My God, he’s very young. He’s very young.” And thoughts crossing: “Could there be cruelty in this young man that comes here to try to make friends with my niece? Is he . . . is he okay? Would he make her sad? Would he betray her? Would he betray us?” But you have to work with that face, that sensitivity, and what he is giving you. And of course he gives so much. He was so right for that role. But many things occur to you, even with all your preparation. Observations. He is so young and . . . he looks okay, but . . . mmm . . .

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