NP Satan in Lit (was Re: No Country plausibility issues)

[Richard Ryan]

A couple few things:

1.  I haven't seen the movie of NCFOM - I'm guessing I'll like it
 better than the book, partly because the book feels at its best like a good
 hardboiled movie script, and also because in the movie one presumably
 doesn't have to sit through the sheriff's tedious corn pone
 philosophizing.

2.  I suppose there are horror movies I've enjoyed where its precisely
 the inhuman implacability of the villains/monsters that gives the movie
 its creepy pleasure (the original Halloween, Wolfcreek, or the
 American remake of The Ring come to mind).  But I'd also say that in the best
 horror movies it's our discovery of the humanity of the monsters in
 question that is most affecting (i.e., during Frankenstein's encounter with
 the blind man; in the moment at the end of the first Hellraiser when
 Pinhead momentarily reverts to his earlier human form; when we find
 ourselves charmed and seduced by the vampires in "The Hunger," "The
 Addiction," "Lost Boys" etc).  My point is simply to acknowledge that it's
 possible for the human and the monstrous to cohabit in a literary or
 cinematic figure. 
 
3.  What are these human/attractive elements of the Judge you folks
 keep mentioning? I seem to have missed them, but I freely admit that I
 find the enormous flashing "IMPORTANT SYMBOL" sign McCarthy has placed
 over his head terribly distracting...


----- Original Message ----
From: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
To: Tim Strzechowski <dedalus204 at comcast.net>
Cc: the Robot Vegetable <veg at dvandva.org>; Pynchon-l
 <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2007 3:44:05 PM
Subject: Re: NP Satan in Lit (was Re: No Country plausibility issues)


On Nov 20, 2007 2:24 PM, Tim Strzechowski <dedalus204 at comcast.net>
 wrote:
>
> Now I'm not suggesting that the Judge IS Satan ... if anything,
 there's more of a Confidence Man ambiguity surrounding how we should
 read
 his character ... but there are quite a few aspects that make him
 transcend the earthly "monster" figure and make him less fleshly, more
 supernatural.

I understand the points you're making re. the complexity of the Judge,
but I don't think your "earthly versus supernatural" dichotomy is a
good one.  His complexity/attractiveness make him MORE human in
comparison to the Horror Movie Monster Richard Ryan compared him to.
The HMM is invincible, always resurrecting from the dead, and is
mostly one-dimensional, and that makes him "supernatural" (meaning w/o
human qualities).  The judge IS supernatural, but he is also very
wonderfully human in many respects.

David Morris