Customer Reviews

The Sunset Limited - Acting Edition

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In his brilliant book Existential Psychotherapy, the psychiatrist Irvin Yalom devotes an entire section to meaninglessness. As life has no objective meaning, we are left to construct our own. Yalom starts the section out hauntingly, with an actual suicide note of someone now dead from his own hand. In the note, the man describes a group of morons whose only purpose is to move bricks from one side of a yard to another, back and forth, without any reflection as to why. One day, one moron does so reflect and, from that day forward, is never as content to move the bricks as he was before. The author of the note states that he is that one moron.

That person, whose identity is unknown, could well be the character White, one of only two characters in this play by Cormac McCarthy. On the outside, he would seem to have things going for him. He is well educated, articulate and displays the mannerisms of someone comfortable in social class. Yet inside is an emptiness so profound that jumping in front of the Sunset Limited, a train, is seen as the only option. Indeed, White's outlook is so bleak that he does not view this as pessimistic, but rather as realistic and even something to embrace.

White's polar opposite is, not surprisingly, Black. He is the opposite of White in two ways. Externally, he is dirt poor, has a violent and misguided history and a life few would envy. More profoundly, however, is the polarity of what is inside. Black has a faith in the Bible, in Jesus, that infuses his life with a meaning totally lacking in White. Despite his hard circumstances, he sees a reason to live and to try to help White see such a reason as well.

The conversation between the two is simple yet profound. White's education and worldliness have left him with a powerful intellect but no guide to use it for personal fulfillment. Every attempt by Black to show White a path towards some light can easily be rationalized away. But this rationalization always leads back to the hard end of the Sunset Limited.

SUNSET LIMITED is very stripped down. It has one act, only two characters and even these characters are nameless except for their opposite descriptors. This allows for the dialogue and ideas to take center stage. As the conversation is about life, death and meaning, this is a good call by McCarthy. The starkness of the set-up is also a clue that McCarthy views the morality at issue to be absolute. SUNSET LIMITED is a short yet powerful read.

I am impressed by the scope and challenge of Cormac McCarthy's canon. This particular work is a little more akin to earlier works like _Child of God_ and _Outer Dark_, where the settings were a little more sparse and laced with symbolism. In this, however, McCarthy has pared himself down to minimal basics, and his symbolism thrives for that and tackles ideas more expansive than those earlier works. The two characters of this 'novel in dramatic form' are simply called White and Black, and the previous reviewer duly noted some of the dualistic connections through that simplicity. The mastery here works in that the connections are quite multifaceted--Black is simple in his dialect, yet addresses wonderful complexities and paradoxes of Christian thought, his ideas of God's design wonderfully circular and avoidant of easy rhetoric. White goes through much of this book a little too reactionary until the very end, but he is opposed to Black in so many ways. There are echoes here of racism, arguments in philosophy, hell and purgatory, and as I read I became aware of more and more possibilities.

The situation itself may sound somewhat high-schoolish in its almost adolescent initial stab at symbolism (Black, a simple religious man living in a ghetto, saves White, who is a professor and well-to-do intellectual, when White jumps in front of a subway train in a suicide attempt--Black brings White back to his home in the ghetto and takes this as an opportunity to proselytize), but McCarthy quickly establishes this initial angle so that the rest of his book can deepen the levels of meaning within this book. Being dramatic in its format, the narrative of course hinges primarily on dialogue between the two, and at its best moments that dialogue turns around on its own axle and examines endlessly the true meaning of salvation, of samaratinism, of hell and punishment.

Though I enjoyed the banter endlessly, I did find that I missed some McCarthy's uncanny ability to make even the most symbolic of situations grounded heavily in the earth--his ability to keep your feet on the floor and let you know that the story itself comes from a very concrete setting. _The Sunset Limited_ feels almost a little too Sartre-esque at times when Black says things like, "Do you know what's out there?" It lacks the handling of someone like Beckett, who could make something like a coffee pot or a dinner infused with mango and rutabaga so real and tactile that one can easily be distracted from metaphor for a while to enjoy the scenery, no matter how sparse. In _The Road_, for example, McCarthy deals with the big questions of what distinguishes man from beasts, but does so in a very palpable situation, even though alien. The desolate, post-apocalyptic world McCarthy created for that novel was wonderfully immediate and vivid, and perhaps for this book (play), he let his symbolism carry away the narrative, and his little moments of verisimilitude don't weigh as heavily as they have in other works.

Clearly, the ideas in this book will resonate long after reading them, and I love how McCarthy is becoming a writer who is willing to tackle the biggest questions of existence in very effective ways. I would give this book 3.5 stars if I could--exquisite in its ideas, though maybe a little less masterful in its execution.

Here we have issues of life and death talked over by an erudite, nihilistic white professor and the earthy, plain-speaking black ex-con who prevents him from jumping off a subway platform and takes him home. Black -- as he's identified in the dialogue -- makes a compelling case for valuing community, caring for others, respecting Biblical wisdom, rebounding from setbacks, refusing to believe that life is worthless. In the face of that, White doggedly hangs on to his belief in nothing other than life's futility.

The work of other writers resonates here. White reminds me of some of Flannery O'Connor's characters who are confounded by their own intellect, "the primacy of the intellect" as White puts it. His claustrophobic urgency to get out of his predicament recalls Sartre's No Exit, and his renunciation of religion calls up some of Beckett's Waiting for Godot. What makes this book more accessible is the presence of American voices, although some readers might find Black's inauthentic. Black calls White "honey" a few times, conjuring up conversations between Jim and Huck. Twain's ear for dialect may be better than McCarthy's, but this is still a worthwhile read.

Although very brief, Mccarthy's play took me twice the time it should have because I had to stop and savor the dialogue. I was loving the comments of "Black." I found them profound, witty, gentle and loving, and often very moving. "White", too, had terrific witty lines.This play reminded me of an Edward Albee type of verbal exchange--one that was so rich and brilliantly composed that I was genually thrilled to be reading it.
However, I felt that the final few pages jumped ship. Suddenly The characters were worn out, not able to keep going. I could imagine Black saying and doing so much more. He, earlier, vowed to go home with White, yet inexplicably he gave up. The character built by McCarthy would not have suddenly folded. That part did not seem to fit. I wish I knew what McCarthy was feeling at that point.
I have read most of McCarthy's works, and found this and The Road to be my favorates. We are blessed to have a writer as fine as McCarthy. The only other living author I treasure as much is Haruki Murakami.

Cormac McCarthy's opus is a truly impressive work, both in terms of the sheer number of works of fiction and the variety of topics and situations that are tackled in it. In this short play we are faced with two characters, unimaginatively called Black and White because of their skin color. These characters come across each other in the most dramatic of ways: Black saves White during a suicide attempt. The entire play is condensed in a single act that takes place after the dramatic rescue. The reader plays witness to the conversation between these two characters in Black's sparsely furnished Brooklyn apartment. As Black tries to prevent White from a repeated suicide attempt, the conversation quickly evolves in the direction of "big" questions: the meaning of life and the existence of God. Black is originally from the South, and has had many run-ins with the law. It is only while serving a prison sentence for one of his more violent crimes that he has an epiphany that rekindles his own religious spirit. White, on the other hand, is a well educated college professor and an atheist, who has very little sympathy not only for God but for most other human beings as well. He seems to espouse an extremely nihilistic view of the world that throughout the play Black tries to shake him out of. The struggle between White and Black proceeds through a lengthy dialogue that stretches across the entirety of the play. Despite the apparent vast disparity between their educational and intellectual levels, Black holds his own in this battle of wits with White. However, in the end (just like in real life) it is not clear whether these persuasive arguments are successful in converting each other.

The topics covered in this very short play are among the most difficult and contentious ones that writers and philosophers have grappled with since time immemorial. This very familiarity, however, is what makes these themes very difficult to deal with in a new and fresh way, but remarkably enough McCarthy manages to do just that. The allegories and symbolism that he uses could have easily been regarded as trite and cloying, yet he shows a lot of talent and intellectual finesse in preventing them from becoming cheap tricks. By using the most rudimentary and worn-out writing and dramatic devices, he manages to create something original and inspiring. This short play is a testament to his genius.

Don't be fooled, there is no action in this book. It is simply a conversation between two men, after a climatic event occured to bring them together. They speak of life, death, and the meaning behind it all. "The Sunset Limited" is pure McCarthy, and would probably be breathtaking performed by the proper players. It is a short read, but a powerful one. When you close the back cover you will be flushed with thoughts about your own mortality and convictions. I would not suggest this as an introductionn to Cormac McCarthy (The Road or Blood Merdian are the proper beginnings), but for the reader interested in diving into this authors rich catelogue, I highly suggest it!

I admit I'm relatively new to the works of Cormac McCarthy. I just read his novel `The Road' and thought it was one of the best books I'd ever read - maybe the finest post-apocalyptic work ever written, conveying the true range and depth of tragedy as perhaps only the poetry of great literature can. In turn, this novel urged me on to eagerly check out McCarthy's latest play, `The Sunset Limited'; after finishing it, I have to say I was pleasantly surprised overall.

What astonished me about `Sunset Limited' was McCarthy's very gifted talent for depicting African-American language and character. I haven't read any other of McCarthy's works besides the two aforementioned titles, but I'll admit I had him pegged for someone whose sole frame of reference was dingy towns in the southwest of America and stoic, antiquated cowboy mores `ala' John Ford and Sam Peckinpah. Yet here he fearlessly dives into a present-day urban conversation between a black ex-con and a white college professor. McCarthy knows the talk, knows the culture, and nails this character's heart and soul; I have to think August Wilson would've been genuinely impressed. McCarthy's confident and genuinely empathetic writing of the black character is (to me, at least) the play's most impressive achievement.

Already the infamy of this play is McCarthy's positioning the play's two sole characters to hold what amounts to one long Socratic dialogue on the (non)existence of God: one fervently believes in God, the other passionately despises all assertions of His supposed existence. McCarthy's play is structured as a very basic ideological exchange: devout (black) man expresses the core values and beliefs of his religious faith to suicidal existential-atheist (white) man; suicidal existential-atheist then refutes the devout's faith by expressing the core values and beliefs of his spiritual nihilism and unshakeable conviction of the absolute meaninglessness of life. The names (or lack thereof) of the characters, "Black" and "White," is a schematic decision which, one infers, is an elucidation of the very narrow-mindedness with which both these characters view the world; unfortunately, therein also lies the play's very fundamental spiritual, philosophical and dramatic limitations.

I knew all this going into the play, and its simplistic setup didn't make me enjoy it any less; McCarthy writes very entertaining and often surprisingly funny dialogue (as one might expect from the given set-up, the African-American character has almost all the wittiest lines). Yet when I finally arrived at the play's "penultimate moment," of the existential-athiest's unleashing his supposedly pitiless and scathing worldview upon the religious believer, although it obviously wasn't a breezy romp through a flower garden, it also wasn't the soul-shatteringly eloquent or metaphysically insightful diatribe I might've anticipated. The white professor is presented as first and foremost an abstractionist thinker, much along the lines of Ted Kaczynski, a.k.a. the Unabomber (who infamously excelled in Ivy League university advanced calculus at a very young age, yet was a miserable failure with dating women). McCarthy presents so little of the existential-athiest's backstory in the course of the play that he becomes more of an abstract conceit than a fully fleshed-out entity; his despair and sense of internal void never achieve the actual dramatic greatness of, say, Jerry's monologues in Edward Albee's one-act masterpiece "Zoo Story" (forty years later, Albee's piece is still the most haunting and compelling dramatic meditation on modern urban dehumanization I've ever encountered).

Many of the professor's observations have true merit and force: his espousing that "the world is basically a forced labor camp from which the workers - all innocents - are led forth by lottery, a few each day, to be executed," has more actually disturbing real-world resonance and merit than the majority of his later, rather generic existential ranting and praying for death, etc. In other moments, the professor seems to rush to intellectual judgements: at one point, he asks his Jesus-loving host, "show me a religion that addresses death and I'll show you something I might be interested in." For all his supposed decades of academia, has the professor never even dabbled in Taoism or Buddhism, or any of the eastern religions that address the topic of death head-on (and with a genuine sense of emotional rationality, at that)?

Granted, when I was an adolescent I probably felt or thought much like McCarthy's professor does; the bedrock value system of the atheist is rooted in the belief that one knows everything there is to know, and that there is nothing left to learn. Reading McCarthy's play is an exercise in beholding the two philosophical and spiritual extremes of devout faith and existential atheism; what is entirely absent from the characters' discussion is any consideration of emotionally rational agnostic humanism as a worldview, along the lines of Dr. Albert Ellis' lifetime's work in rational-emotive therapy. Some may find that an intellectual dialogue revolving wholly around black-and-white concepts, minus all greys, is not nearly as deep or profound a meditation on the human condition as one might find in other, wiser works. I might argue that Dr. Ellis' book `A Rational Guide to Living', published in 1975, is the perfect intellectual retort to McCarthy's play, and the direct refutation of all that McCarthy's professor insists as metaphysical truth.

It's interesting to note that Carl Sagan, the eminent astronomer and Pulitzer and Emmy-winning creator of `Cosmos', was an agnostic humanist as well. I longed to hear what Sagan or Dr. Ellis might have contributed to the discussion between McCarthy's two characters; in a sense, Sagan's and Ellis's rational agnostic humanism fills in all the grey areas missing in this play (McCarthy could've added an elderly agnostic-humanist to this play and named him "Grey"). While not explicitly agreeing that God does in fact exist, agnosticism steadfastly acknowledges the eternal mystery of the universe, and that one can or will never truly know all that there is to know: which, in turn, allows for a perpetual sense of wonder and fascination with our universe. In short, it is this acceptance of one's own humility, and finite temporality in the universe, that allows one to embrace and cherish being a part of this world. What is finally most striking about McCarthy's professor is not any of the actual ideas or theories he floats, but his terrible intellectual vanity, his absolutistic insistence that he knows all there is to know, and that for him there is no mystery left in this universe to discover - which, of course, is the biggest intellectual and philosophical load of crap of all. At the play's conclusion, we are left not with the searing, heart-rending weight of actual tragedy, but rather with the scrawny and pathetic simplemindedness of an immeasurably egotistical and simultaneously self-pitying buffoon.

Although the play's black character is by far the more emotionally-grounded of the two; his emotional stability is rooted in his faith, and one of the questions McCarthy asks at the end of the play is, will the black character have any chance at finding emotional well-being in a universe without God? For those of us in the audience who are already emotionally rational agnostics, the final moments of McCarthy's play may not be quite as profoundly earthshaking or haunting as one might As for refuting the devout character's faith, Michael Stipe of the band R.E.M. maybe put it most succinctly and beautifully: "I don't need a heaven/I don't need religion/I am in the place where I should be."

`Sunset Limited' is indeed a serious, very well-written and dramatically enjoyable consideration of timeless themes: what is the meaning of life, is there a God, etc. However, its positing two opposing extremes as the whole of human intellectual, spiritual and emotional experience is a little like selecting the colors yellow and purple from the entire color spectrum, then presenting them as if they're the only colors which exist. A limited view of the universe, dramatic or otherwise, is only as brilliant or insightful as its limitations allow. Even in McCarthy's nightmare world of `The Road,' surely there are fleeting moments when the distant, darkened sun breaks through the lingering clouds and ash, and light hits drops of water, and a rainbow appears in its entirety.

Pulitizer Prize-winning author Cormac McCarthy is the author of numerous celebrated works, including ALL THE PRETTY HORSES, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, and THE ROAD. Along the way he has written two plays. The 1995 THE STONEMASON is often described as a play in search of a theatre: with a somewhat simplistic plot and equally simplistic characters, not to mention impossible sets and stage directions, it does not seem to have received a major professional production since it was first published. The 2006 THE SUNSET LIMITED has been more successful, receiving limited runs in Chicago, New York, and being translated into a 2011 HBO special. Even so, critics have not been more greatly kind to this play than they were to THE STONEMASON, describing it as everything from sultifying to self-indulgent.

The play's cast is two characters: an uneducated black man and an over-educated white man, who have met when the black man prevents the white man's suicide via the symbolically named Sunset Limited train. Black takes White to his small ghetto apartment and there follows about fifty-five pages of dialogue in which the two men do intellectual value to find meaning in life. For Black, a killer who spent much of his life in prison, that value has come in a highly spiritual form of Christianity, and he sees himself as sent by God to aid those around him locked in insurmountable tragedy. For White, a professor who has perhaps read one essay on existentialism too many, there is no possible value except a deliberate embracing of death. The two wrangle on this subject in various ways for the duration of the play, Black trying to convince White that life is worth living, White repeatedly stating that death is the only intelligence choice.

There are several problems with this play and, to my mind at least, the most obvious one is that it comes very close to being a re-write of John-Paul Sartre's celebrated 1944 drama NO EXIT, which presents three people trapped in what may or may not be hell and arguing amongst themselves in an attempt to justify their lives. Frankly, Sartre doesn't just do it better--he does it much, much, much better, and NO EXIT leaves THE SUNSET LIMITED in the dust in every possible sense. Moreover, NO EXIT is actually a play, whereas THE SUNSET LIMITED is not, not really; it is more akin to the ancient Roman genre generally known as "closet drama." This style of playwriting, best known through the works of Lucius Annaeus Seneca (also known as Seneca the Younger), is essentially one in which the format of a play is used but the work itself is intended to be read instead of performed. McCarthy himself seems to note that THE SUNSET LIMITED is closet drama, for he subtitles it "a novel in dramatic form."

Well, not only is McCarthy no Sartre, he's no Seneca either. THE SUNSET LIMITED is worth reading once, but it is artificial in construction, obvious in content, and entirely pat in resolution. There's some fine style to the words as they string across the page, but in the end they simply don't add up anything beyond the usual nihlism that has become McCarthy's stock in trade to the point of self-caricature. Recommended for McCarthy fans, but only hardcore ones.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

I have become a devoted McCarthy fan. I believe he is one of the most gifted, talented, honest and bravest authors on the scene today. This would be a great text for any high school, or college literature course because it would stimulate great dialog and teach students to become more reflective thinkers. He challenges the reader to think about some of life's biggest issues. Cormac has often been accused of revealing the darker side of the human condition. With this book I found myself laughing so hard I nearly fell off my chair, and then quickly found myself in a more solemn "Wow" moment, which is more the norm when reading Cormac. He has the gift of producing profound and wonderous moments for the reader. This is one of my favorites so far in my Cormac McCarthy journey.

The man never ceases to amaze me. In this short play with two characters [Black and White] and in just one room McCarthy exposes us to a vain attempt by an uneducated black with a love of the bible and a heart as big as Texas to save an educated white professoer full of useless, or wasted, education on his way to death. Ending tragically, as most McCarthy books do, it none-the less shows the power of determination: one in himself and the task at hand and the other in a belief in a higher power and a hope for His ability to intervene.