Even as I learn the ins and outs of new media, the question is always there, popping up in various forms: Can new media carry the impact of the words of some of our greatest writers? And if so, in what form of enhancement? Movies obviously have bridged the gaps, but still fall short in some areas while overwhelming static text in many ways simply by the capabilities of audio and visual effects.
But can someone like McCarthy’s Suttree be more fully realized than McCarthy has written him? Can the others?
"The old man looked up at him. From under the whites of his eyeballs peeked a rim of the red flame that raged in his head. You come back and find me dead, he began. Find me layin here dead, you just throw some coaloil on me and set me alight. You hear?"
I don’t think that even as McCarthy conjures up all sorts of images in his readers, can one come up with too much more imaginative embellishment of one’s own. He provides all the words to give you the image. There’s rarely a need to look any further than that.
McCarthy as interactive fiction? I don’t know. From where he leads you in, and once you’re there, I think you’d be a damn fool to venture any further on your own.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology