Cormac McCarthy's novel Outer Dark is one of his earlier works that foreshadows his apocalyptic tone adopted in Blood Meridian Or the Evening Redness in the West. The book is puzzling in many regards, but it seems to fit into McCarthy's scheme to portray characters without resorting to what one could call a clear sense of judgment, even for those who act in what is clearly morally ambivalent or totally devoid ways. Of course, any work that involves the product of an incestuous relationship between a brother and sister as the main plot point isn't exactly what one would term conventional in any sense.

However, as with his other works, McCarthy isn't simply set on centering the narrative on such a repugnant action and going from there. Again, shock value seems to be the least of his concerns; he's much too talented of an author to resort to such triteness. He also doesn't seem to be concerned with exacting vengeance upon these derelicts. On the contrary, one could argue that he shows incredible sympathy or at least remarkable restraint by not allowing the two main characters, Rinthy and Culla Holme, to suffer from some horrendous fate or everlasting torment. That's not to say that they don't suffer, but it would have been easier for McCarthy to exact some form of swift justice upon these two loesome individuals. For some reason, though, it does not, and that's one of the peculiar aspects of the text.

The text also features three nameless individuals who, for lack of a better term, serve as the primary force of moral clarity on one hand and outright evil on the other. They are reminiscent of the Judge in Blood Meridian, but they float in and out of the narrative too infrequently to get a true sense of their motives. What exactly they are trying to accomplish by their pursuit of Culla is unclear. What is clear is that their actions at the end of the novel provide one of the more gruesome scenes I've encountered but one that is no less puzzling for its appearance in this text. Some accounts of this event seek to paint religious overtones to explain its occurrence. I can't say for sure whether or not I agree, but I can say that it is a disturbing action that surely serves more than just to bring the quest of the narrative to a screeching halt.

I can't think of any other writer in recent memory who has created such portraits of worlds both familiar and strange in an effort to relieve any sense of comfort in their inherent notions of stock stereotypes as McCarthy consistently does in his early novels. The outright sense of horror and outrage combined with an inability to harshly condemn and pass judgment upon those whose actions seem repugnant to most creates a dilemma for the reader to try to ascertain what the right way to feel about the text is. The only other option is outright passivity, but I don't think McCarthy or anyone else would feel comfortable with that type of reaction.

Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood Meridian Or the Evening Redness in the West is without a doubt one of the goriest, bleakest, most blood drenched books I've ever encountered. That being said, I have to point out that this isn't all purely for shock value. No, the book has a literate tone to it that seems to originate from a different time and place. McCarthy's ability to write about characters who range from the illiterate and borderline mentally defective to the most well-spoken and wordily has a lot to do with that tone and his unique voice regarding the nature of humanity.

What I find intriguing about the book is that McCarthy's tone isn't one of moral outrage and he doesn't try to compensate for the harshness by injecting some highly moralistic character as a counterbalance to those who engage in acts of depravity beyond most people's ability to comprehend. Rather, McCarthy adopts a highly neutral stance in order to strip bare the high-handed romance of the "Wild West" and portray the country for what it sometimes resembled, a literal hell on earth. To say the book is a "horror" story is not too far of a stretch, but not in the sense that Stephen King writes horror. It's a horror that's all too real and it's personified in the looming character of the Judge, who is without a doubt one of the most terrifying figures in recent literature.

The book isn't for everyone, and the gore factor will sway most people to give up early, but if you can stomach that, you can see one of the better writers today create a world both wholly strange to us and all too familiar.

I've had Aphex Twin's double album Selected Ambient Works volume 2 for years, and I've probably listened to it, and the second disc's first track more than I can possibly recall. As you can see, the album has a mythology all its own due to its unique packaging and lack thereof any song titles. I find all of that interesting, but it's not the reason why I like the album so much.

For lack of a better analogy on how to describe the sound of the work, let me say that Richard D. James (aka Aphex Twin) has been said to have composed it after a series of lucid dreams in which he heard the music, which he tried to compose upon reawakening . Listening to the work, you can tell that it just might have been like that. The music, ambient in nature without any real percussion, sounds as if it's from another dimension. In fact, the sticker on the outside of the package quotes a reviewer who states that it sounds like the kind of music the obelisk in 2001: A Space Odyssey would make if it made sound. To me, that's one of the greatest analogies out there.