William J Cobb on books & film

Back in 1994 it was I reviewed my first book and I’ve been at it ever since, with professional rigor (and sore eyes, at times), for the New York Times, the Houston Chronicle, and most recently, the Dallas Morning News. (I’m doing a book right now, J. Robert Lennon’s Castle.) The best side: now and then I get a knockout book at my doorstep, like last year’s favorite, Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses: the best novel I’ve read, outside Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, in several years. More recently I reviewed Dennis Lehane’s The Given Day (both of these were for the Dallas MN), which has a terrific and horrifying depiction of the Boston policemen’s strike of 1918, and some great fictional Babe Ruth moments. How else do you know what’s being published? Today’s edition of the NY Times reviewed a biography of John Cheever (Blake Bailey’s Cheever: A LIfe) that would no doubt be a great read. Cheever’s best stories, like “The Country Husband” or “The Housebreaker of Shady Hill,” are American classics, as they say. Plus the posthumous Seinfeld appearance is an added bonus to his prestige. He sounds like a drunken monster, but we won’t be tedious. I also reviewed Per Petterson’s To Siberia recently, also good but not a knockout like Out Stealing Horses. Petterson is a Norwegian, which is only one of the most gorgeous countries in the world: I spent a month there in 1984, hiking fjords with blonde Norwegian medical students.

Back in 1988 I first heard of Cormac McCarthy from a friend who said I should read Blood Meridian because it would blow my mind. I did and thought it amazing, The Judge being one of the great characters of modern lit. Even if he does seem a bit too much the devil at times, the devil as god. That was when McCarthy was a cult figure, the somewhat unknown great writer, and perhaps it’s just me being the mountain hermit of Westcliffe, Colorado but I resent all the Oprah publicity. It’s like when your favorite indie band goes mainstream and then the music doesn’t sound quite as good. I hate how writers, including myself, are now forced to hawk themselves. I admire McCarthy for being aloof and earthy at the same time.
So a couple summers ago E & I are in Santa Fe, meeting up with a friend who lives in Taos, and we agree to rendezvous at an Indian flea market north of town, near the pueblo of Tesuque. It’s a few miles north of Santa Fe and is odd in relation to other U.S. city suburbs, in that there’s basically nothing out there, no outlying business district, minimalls, Circuit Citys (goodbye), etc., but red rock desert landscape and one exit at Tesuque. We haven’t seen the flea market so we pull off at that exit, stop at the only convenience store, and ask an old timer in the parking lot where to go. It looks like there’s maybe 20 houses in that little area, no big development or anything. He directs us up ‘The Road’ to where the flea market is. . . . BUT I just learned that none other than Cormac McCarthy lives in the ‘tiny village’ of Tesuque. So I probably asked him for directions. I know we talked to some old guy who looked like he could see the past and future and look into your soul.