Outer Dark
”I've seen the meanness of humans till I don't know why god ain't put out the sun and gone away…”
FIRST EDITION of McCarthy’s masterful second novel, establishing the literary style that he would carry through his later works.
“Outer Dark is a morality tale that has elements of a Southern-Gothic horror story. Its main characters are involved in a quest. A newborn child, the product of an incestuous affair between a backwoods brother and sister, is abandoned by the brother and found by a passing tinker. The sister sets out on a long search for the child, and the brother obsessively pursues her, while both suffer physical and spiritual deprivations...
“McCarthy's re-creation of the local dialect is surpassed by his poetic descriptions of the land and its people. His is an Irish singing voice imbued with Southern Biblical intonations. The result is an antiphony of speech and verse played against a landscape of penance. And, finely controlled as it is, his simple narrative with its suspenseful qualities becomes a profound parable that ultimately speaks to any society in any time.” (Time, Sept. 27, 1968).
New York: Random House, 1968. Octavo, original half turquoise cloth over gray boards, original dust jacket. Book near-fine with only light, general wear; dust jacket with hints of dampstaining evident on verso, closed tear at top of spine, and abrasion at base of spine.
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