Child of God

Many years before the horrifying, realistic violence of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2005) and the grim post-apocalyptic THE ROAD (2006), Cormac McCarthy wrote his third novel, CHILD OF GOD (1973), providing readers a pen-light beam on a path through a very dark landscape indicating what was to come. CHILD OF GOD contains many of the characteristics readers now identify with the Pulitzer Prize winner who, arguably, ranks among America’s finest living novelists.Set in the backwoods of East Tennessee and allegedly based partially on a series of true-life murders outside Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1963, CHILD OF GOD is simply terrifying. It tells the story of twenty-seven-year-old Lester Ballard who people say “never was right after his daddy killed himself” when Lester “was about nine or ten.” As an adult, Lester is a loner. He is unliked, distrusted, and all but shunned by others. When his childhood home, such as it is, is auctioned off against his will, Lester finds himself without shelter, totally alone, and his devolution as a human being begins and it rapidly escalates.McCarthy’s attributes as a writer as seen in the novel are numerous. Readers quickly get accustomed to and accept the author’s minimal, concise, and quirky style of writing (he never uses quotation marks for dialogue) because the author’s prose is consistently at a very high level and so carefully considered. The author convincingly recreates the culture, speech, and way of life of the rural, isolated mountain folk of Sevier County. Regardless of the events which take place, McCarthy chronicles them in a stoic, objective fashion. There is clearly no intent to titillate or inflate the proceedings which occupy the plot of the story and turn it into a horror novel. There is also no effort to make them less shocking than they are or to protect the reader from truly dreadful occurrences. Throughout, McCarthy proves himself a master of imagery and metaphor (the continued return to and emergence from caves is a perfect example).Lester Ballard becomes a scavenger, struggling to survive without benefit of man-made shelter or companionship. In spite of being almost child-like at times and seeming mentally deficient to most, Lester possesses an incredible amount of willpower and skill in the wild. Less readers begin to find too much sympathy for the character, McCarthy, when least expected, has Lester commit one vile offense after another, each one worse than the last. If his actions are motivated by a sense of want or need, revenge against those who did him wrong or even life in general, one would have a better understanding of him. However, Lester goes from a would-be survivor to a marauding, one-man force of evil, seemingly totally amoral, and capable of extraordinary, self-serving deviance with no remorse, even entering the realms of necrophilia and the real-life horror, Ed Gein. In spite of McCarthy’s ironic title of the book, it is virtually impossible to see Lester as a “child of god” compared to other human beings. However, as it becomes clear to others a crime spree is taking place within their community and Lester is responsible, those who hunt him do so with more than a dedication to justice, but with ruthlessness and deadly intent. In their pursuit to end Lester’s deviant, immoral behavior, they begin to sink to his level. Hence, it is possible to read into McCarthy’s novel a statement about the extremes which can be found in both human nature as well as the very complexion of any possible divinity.Although CHILD OF GOD is thirty-eight years old at this time, it is, unfortunately, a story of our current times. All of the needless violence, the lack of remorse, the hate, the selfishness, the lack of concern for others, the vigilantism and disregard for proper justice in the novel has existed throughout our history and like a tide, rises and falls and rises again. As McCarthy writes: “You could say that he’s [Lester] sustained by his fellow men, like you. Has peopled the shore with them calling to him. A race that gives suck to the maimed and the crazed, that wants their wrong blood in its history and will have it.”The conclusion of CHILD OF GOD is as traumatizing and coolly presented as the earlier events in the novel. The visual images it leaves readers with is staggering, gruesome, tragic, and unforgettable. Complete with flashes of dark humor and vivid, carefully chosen language, CHILD OF GOD is not a comfortable read, but McCarthy’s proficiencies as a great writer are unquestionable. [NOTE: CHILD OF GOD was filmed in 2013. The film was directed by James Franco from a screenplay written by himself and Vince Jolivette. Scott Haze stars as Lester Ballard.]

Lester Ballard is 27. He lives in the hills of Tennessee, outside Sevierville. When he was nine, his mother ran away and his father hanged himself. His farm is seized by the county and auctioned off, and he is forcibly evicted. He takes up living in an abandoned cabin up in the mountains; when that burns down, he goes underground, living in a series of caves and caverns. There have been many loonies and psychopaths among the mountain folk of eastern Tennessee, but none had "a patch on Lester Ballard for crazy." "Were there darker provinces of night he would have found them." He gives an idiot boy a robin as a "playpretty"; the idiot proceeds to eat the legs off the living bird; when the boy's sister (or mother?) expresses her dismay, Lester explains that the boy simply "wanted it to where it couldn't run off". On another visit, he kills the sister (mother?), burns down her cabin with the idiot boy trapped inside, and hauls away her corpse to add to his collection of female cadavers. He dresses them in new clothes and uses them for necrophilia. He later wears their panties and dons a fright wig fashioned out of one of their scalps.According to Cormac McCarthy, Lester Ballard "is a child of God much like yourself perhaps". CHILD OF GOD was McCarthy's third novel, published in 1973 (it is set in the early 1960s). It is an especially sordid view of humanity.Lester Ballard may be the most primeval, but he has lots of company. One of the few people he socializes with is Reubel, who oversees a dump of junk and garbage. "The dumpkeeper had spawned nine daughters and named them out of an old medical dictionary gleaned from the rubbish he picked. These gangling progeny with black hair hanging from their armpits now sat idle and wide-eyed day after day in chairs and crates about the little yard cleared out of the tips while their harried dam called them one by one to help with chores and one by one they shrugged or blinked their sluggard lids. Urethra, Cerebella, Hernia Sue."McCarthy mixes in some history of Sevier County. In the 1890's a vigilante group known as the White Caps sprang up in Sevier County. "They was a bunch of lowlife thieves and cowards and murderers. The only thing they ever done was to whip women and rob old people of their savins. Pensioners and widows. And murder people in their beds at night." (Lester Ballard's grandfather Leland "was a by god White Cap".) An old man who had been born in 1885 is asked whether he thinks people were meaner back in the days of the White Caps then they are now. "No, he said. I don't. I think people are the same from the day God first made one."I can well understand that one would not want to read CHILD OF GOD. Only someone who is somewhat unhinged could "enjoy" reading it. But I must say that McCarthy paints his squalid picture masterfully. The sentences are short and direct, much like the writing in "No Country for Old Men" and "The Road", in contrast to the Faulknerian prose of McCarthy's other novels. There is very little metaphysics. The story is told by means of short vignettes, in chapters of no more than ten pages with most being less than four pages. Several anonymous locals contribute their two cents to the tale of Lester Ballard, somewhat like a Greek chorus. In short, the novel is a masterpiece of compact dramatic writing.

Shockingly realistic novel about a man raised in Tennessee. Well written but so sad. Not one of my favorites but well worth reading all the same.

A compra foi para meu cunhado, um dos livros favoritos dele.

A shortish book with short sentences.Not for the squeamish,as it depicts a necrophiliac killer,but McCarthy's writing is superb and this book was best read out of 40 I read over the year.

Cormac McCarthy's 'Child of God' is a haunting tale of isolation and despair. McCarthy's stark prose and vivid imagery create a bleak and desolate world that is both disturbing and compelling. The protagonist, Lester Ballard, is a deeply flawed character whose descent into madness is both horrifying and tragically human. McCarthy's unflinching portrayal of the darker side of humanity makes 'Child of God' a shocking but surely rewarding read.

Well how can a mere mortal describe one of the great writer's prose. Never fails can delight with his artful work.