Disgust in the Early Works of Cormac McCarthy

Although critics quickly recognized that Cormac McCarthy was a writer who dealt with grotesque and violent material in an uncommonly forthright manner, many saw this aspect of his work as an indication of his lack of maturity as a writer. Walter Sullivan, for example, who called McCarthy “certainly the most talented novelist of his generation” and “the only writer to emerge since World War II who can bear comparison to Faulkner,” nevertheless rebuked him for his “limited use of an enormous talent.” “In his almost exclusive concern with the grotesque McCarthy offers a distorted view of creation, fragmented and debauched though that creation now may be,” Sullivan stated. What he and others missed, however, was the degree to which these elements of the grotesque, the violent, and the disgusting were fundamental to McCarthy’s artistic and philosophical vision. Sullivan offered this comment when reviewing McCarthy’s fourth novel, Suttree, and in the 25 years since McCarthy has continued to use the trope of disgust as a major part of his work. What has become clear through his subsequent writings is that McCarthy’s view is far from “distorted,” as Sullivan felt. As McCarthy has moved toward his major image of the “matrix,” considered in ecological, philosophical, and even spiritual terms, his apparent indulgence with the appalling and transgressive in the early works must now be seen in this larger context. And as our own cultural fascination with disgust has grown, our ability to appreciate the inclusiveness of McCarthy’s view of creation must also expand. This study examines McCarthy’s early explorations in the awful and repulsive, and it attempts to show that these first works foreshadow the more complex and complete vision found in the later works, especially “The Border Trilogy.” grotesque, Faulkner, creation, distorted, vision, disgust, fascination.