|
| The Orchard Keeper | 
 enlarge | Author: Cormac Mccarthy
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $13.95
Buy Used: $5.66
You Save: $8.29 (59%)
New (37) Used (34) from $5.66
Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 20639
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.7
ISBN: 0679728724
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780679728726
ASIN: 0679728724
Publication Date: February 2, 1993
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Standard used condition.
|
| Customer Reviews:
 Gestating Genius September 20, 2001
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
This is not in the same league as McCarthy's later masterpieces. The prose is unnecessarily difficult. The writing is often murky, and it is difficult sometimes to tell exactly what is happening. But the story is original, and it is worth reading if you are a McCarthy fan. This is an early work, and as such it is a fascinating look at genius in its developmental stage.
 Signs of future brilliance August 18, 2004
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
Cormac McCarthy's debut novel "The Orchard Keeper" is pure Faulkner emulation, from the multiple narrative viewpoints to the impressionistic prose to the laconic, slack-jawed dialogue. This style appeals to me, as it should to all Faulkner fans, but there is a certain sacrifice of substance to achieve the effect McCarthy obviously desired. The small details, the picturesque scenes, the dramatic situations he conjures are the work of a master, but these feel like mere window dressing when the characters are plumbed for depth, only to find the string is barely wet.
The plot could be described in a way that would be immediately enticing to potential readers: A boy named John Wesley Rattner (a Methodist?) growing up in the mountains of eastern Tennessee during the Depression, an essentially good kid who enjoys fishing and trapping, is told by his pious mother that someday he will find and kill the man who murdered his father. One day he pulls a man out of a wrecked car in a creek; this turns out to be Marion Sylder, a bootlegger who, unbeknownst to Rattner, happens to be his father's murderer.
As Rattner and Sylder, each completely oblivious to the other's relationship to Rattner's father, begin a friendship, the novel traces a twisting story among various members of the community, giving a clear view of life in a rustic setting that is well served by McCarthy's style. Looming in the background is a wizened old man named Arthur Ownby whom everybody calls Uncle Ather and who is like a legendary figure of nature, the human soul of the mountains, living almost as a druidical hermit and resenting any intrusion into his privacy.
The elements are all in place, but while I was reading this novel I couldn't help but think of a similar but better one that came out around the same time, William H. Gass's "Omensetter's Luck," which likewise offers a complex story in a shady, enigmatic tone but more distinctive and original characterization. "The Orchard Keeper" falls short of its goal, but it is an admirable effort that portends the brilliance that McCarthy would manifest in "Blood Meridian," possibly the best American novel of the 1980s.
McCarthy finds the beauty in desperation April 29, 1997
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
In 1930s rural Tennessee, men from three generations play out their lives in ignorance of a secret that binds them together. John Wesley Rattner is a young boy aiming to make a living from trapping muskrats. Marion Sylder is the bootlegger who, years before, killed Rattner's itinerant father. Ather Ownby is the old man who alone knows where the body of Kenneth Rattner lies rotting to nothing.McCarthy tells their story of `profound inconsequence' in language of exotic precision. They are bound together through their relationship with nature and the land which offers up little sustenance but imbues their lives of dispossessed independence with meaning. In his prose, McCarthy elevates the everyday to a poetic significance, with some of the richest descriptions of the unforgiving natural world to be found anywhere. A bird on the wing, a wind in the trees, a car on a mountain road: he handles each image with equal skill, so that we exist with them in that place and time. McCarthy treads the fine line between pathos and bathos, walking with sure steps, so that we feel for his subject - men hunting, the animals they hunt, the landscape as part of which they exist - but we never feel sorry. His dialogue is sparse, but loaded, with a natural rhythm you may have thought lost to the world. McCarthy finds the beauty in desperation and depicts it unsentimentally. While his story is a guiltless one of violence and resignation in the face of material poverty, his subject is `all questions ever pressed upon humanity and beyond understanding'. Except McCarthy appears to understand them, and is able to explicate them.
 First Rate Work April 21, 1998
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
Any reader of McCarthy's work knows that he views the human condition as one of substantial adversity, but not without redeeming value. His earlier work, set in Tennessee (including this) seem to have a more affecting quality. Something seems more "true", closer to home. These books evoke an emotional reaction to the characters. His later work set on the border, reflects a world of great natural beauty and incredible human savagery. I prefer the earlier works, although this may just be a matter of personal taste. This is a really fine book, as are most of the works of this excellent writer.
Early McCarthy November 10, 2006
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I am informally studying Cormac having read his last works first, namely "No Place for Old Men", preceeded by the "Trilogy" and "Blood Meridian". His precise knowledge about the area and customs of his story and the minimilist language which he develops in the later novels is interesting to watch grow.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
