Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy 

The book is Outer Dark by Cormac McCarthy. It was originally published in 1968 by Random House. I read the 1993 Vintage International Trade Paperback edition. I read it in July of 2023.  

The title is fitting because this book is very dark. It’s dark in tone and in setting. The characters are very dark and dangerous. It’s not pleasant. Just even the way McCarthy describes a horse walking in the woods is very dark and foreboding.  

I read this because McCarthy is one of my favorite authors. I want to read every book by him and this was the next one in his bibliography. I’m reading his books chronologically.  

McCarthy’s writing often points to the chaos and uncertainty of the human story. Sometimes bad things happen to us and we don’t know why. Same with the good.  

The content of the story is so awful. I’m not sure what to take away from it. I keep thinking about what should’ve happened. What should have the characters done and what should’ve happened to them. It’s about an extremely poor brother and sister who have a baby together. The baby is born and the brother abandons it in a river but an old tinkerer finds and the rest of the book is the sister wandering around looking for the baby, and the brother looking for the sister. How could this situation have been turned to good? The siblings raise the baby? It’s not even clear that the brother raped the sister so should they be put in jail or hanged?  

There was an emphasis on names. They never name the baby. Later on in the story, the main character Holme may or may not have eaten the baby, given to him cooked by the devil. This book gets super dark.  

The book never says what time period it takes place but it’s obviously old times like maybe late 1800s. There’s no mention of cars but it’s not clear if that’s because of time period or poverty.  

This book made me think of trust. Throughout the story the brother and sister stay with random people. They’re drifters and they get hired for a day or two at different homes and farms. There is a lot of mistrust in drifters.  

The imagery really blew my hair back. It’s so evil and dark. It’s hard to read at times. It’s so hopeless. There’s nothing and no one to root for. But it’s written so well.  

McCarthy’s writing style is sparce. Some authors spoon-feed the reader in what they’re showing or what message they’re trying to convey. Some authors challenge the reader a little more with minimal descriptions or exposition. In this regard, McCarthy doesn’t give a shit about the reader. He doesn’t give you anything. You have to be paying close attention the entire time or you will be lost. It’s almost like you’re following a long his stream of consciousness. He doesn’t use quotations in dialogue. His use of punctuation is almost non-existent. He doesn’t bother with it. His vocabulary is off the charts.  

I felt impressed and disturbed at the same time. McCarthy can write so beautifully about such vile content. The tone is very dark and unsettling. McCarthy can write about the most violent things I’ve ever read, in such beautiful prose.  

There were absolutely no heroes to emulate. I would avoid every character in this story.  

I’d recommend this to serious readers. The plot is paper thin. Fans of popular “page-turners” will not like this book. You have to really appreciate good writing to make through this book. You have to be able to look past the deeply disturbing content to see the greatness of the writing. But there’s also much to sift through in the content as well. Definitely not for everyone.  

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Notable Quotables 

Half a mile downriver he came to a creek, a stream of amber swampwater that the river sucked from high grass banks into a brief immiscible stain of dark clarity…He spat. His saliva bloomed palely on the water and wheeled and slid inexplicably upstream, back the way he had come. He turned and watched it in disbelief. (p15-17) 

Emaciate and blinking and with the wind among her rags she looked like something replevied by grim miracle from the ground and sent with tattered windings and halt corporeality into the agony of sunlight. Butterflies attended her and birds dusting in the road did not fly up when she passed. She hummed to herself as she went some child’s song from an old dead time. (p97-98) 

THE TWO HOUNDS rose howling from the porch with boar’s hackles and walled eyes and descended into the outer dark. (p128) 

The river was dark and oily and it tended away into nothing, no shoreline, the sky grading into a black wash little lighter than the water about them So that they seemed to hang in some great depth of darkness like spiders in a well. (p164) 

In the upslant of light his beard shone and his mouth was red, and his eyes were shadowed lunettes with nothing there at all. (p171) 

That’n ain’t got a name, he said. He wanted me to give him one but I wouldn’t do it. He don’t need nary. You ever see a man with no name afore? No. 

No, the man said. Not likely. Holme looked at the one with the rifle. Everthing don’t need a name, does it? the man said. I don’t know. I don’t reckon. guess you’d like to know mine, wouldn’t ye? I don’t care, Holme said. 

I said I guess you’d like to know mine wouldn’t ye? 

Yes, Holme said. 

The man’s teeth appeared and went away again as if he had smiled. Yes, he said. I expect they’s lots would like to know that. (p174-175) 

Now these here old boots of mine, the man said, is plumb wore out. 

Holme looked at the boots. They were cracked and weatherblackened and one was cleft from tongue to toe like hoof. He looked at Harmon and he looked at the fire, chewing. (p176) 

I wouldn’t name him because if you cain’t name somethin you cain’t claim it. You cain’t talk about it even. You cain’t say what it is. (p177) 

Holme looked at the man. The fire had died some and he could see him better, sitting beyond it and the scene compressed into kind of depthlessness so that the black woods beyond them hung across his eyes oppressively and the man seemed to be seated in the fire itself, cradling the flames to his body as if there were something there beyond all warming. (p179) 

Where was you headin sure enough? 

Nowheres, Holme said. 

Nowheres. 

No. 

You may get there yet, the man said. (p181) 

She came slowly to the center of the room and stood in the fading patch of light like one seeking warmth of it or grace. (p188) 

Hard people makes hard times. I’ve seen the meanness of humans till I don’t know why God ain’t put out the sun and gone away. (p192) 

And she waited again at the front door with it open, poised between the maw of the dead and loveless house and the outer dark like a frail thief. It was damp and cool and she could hear roosters beginning. She closed the door and went down the path to the gate and into the road, shivering in the cold starlight, under vega and the waterserpent. (p211) 

She crouched in the bushes and watched it, a huge horse emerging seared and whole from the sun’s eye and passing like a wrecked caravel gauntribbed and black and mad with tattered saddle and dangling stirrups and hoofs clopping softly in the dust and passing enormous and emaciate and inflamed and the sound of it dying down the road to a distant echo of applause in a hall forever empty. (p212) 

They’s been more than one feller brought to the love of Jesus over the paths of affliction. And what better way than blind? In a world darksome as this’n I believe a blind man ort to be better sighted than most. I believe it’s got a good deal to recommend it. The grace of God don’t rest easy on a man. It can blind him easy as not. It can bend him and make him crooked. And who did Jesus love, friends? The lame the halt and the blind, that’s who. Them is the ones scarred with God’s mercy. Stricken with his love. Ever legless fool and old blind mess like you is a flower in the garden of God. Amen. I told him that. (p226) 

They say people in hell ain’t got names. But they had to be called somethin to get sent there. Didn’t they. 

That tinker might of named him. 

It wasn’t his to name. Besides names dies with the namers. A dead man’s dog ain’t got a name. He reached and drew from his boot a slender knife. 

Holme seemed to be speaking to something in the night beyond them all. My sister would take him, he said. That chap. We could find her and she’d take him. 

Yes, the man said. 

I been huntin her. (p236)