For me, one of the hallmarks of good writing and the essence of reading enjoyment is the relationship one finds in another’s written words to make the reading meaningful. Experiencing of an event, once turned into memory, changes just through lack of detail or perception and emotion experienced at the moment. But most, good or bad, temper like steel to remain fairly fixed in a new form and are stored away. But what joy to bring them back by recall; sparked by hearing, seeing, or reading of something similar.
Going back to the watermelon patch, the farmer is pointing out the damage Harrogate has wreaked upon his crop:
I’m tellin ya, I seen him. I didn’t know what the hell was goin on when he dropped his drawers. Then when I seen what he was up to, I still didn’t believe it. But yonder they lay.
What do you aim to do?
Hell, I don’t know. It’s about too late to do anything. He’s damn near screwed the whole patch. I don’t see why he couldnt of stuck to just one. Or a few.
This is a comment lament among farmers everywhere. My mind immediately (after seeing the two men in the field, shaking their heads) called to the forefront my peach trees, and the bounty of ripening peaches each individually nicked by squirrel teeth almost without exception. Likening Harrogate’s infidelity with melons to this made me laugh out loud.
Even the darkness of Cormac McCarthy’s stories can bring in the warmth and reality of human nature.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
So true so true. I’m eager to hear more of your comments on this huge novel.
I shall often offer them here; McCarthy has a wealth of unusual viewpoints on reality that never cease to surprise me. I am his groupie, he my guru. He leadeth me to break down the barriers of punctuation and march proudly forth down the long run-on sentence.
As far as the reading experience, while memory recalled changes the reading, the reading transforms the memory as well. I shall never see my peach trees again without the haunting of Harrogate’s ghost.