Obtain O Guarda Do Pomar Written By Cormac McCarthy Viewable As Edition

Orchard Keeper: Cormac McCarthy's first novel of a Southern Quartet

sitelinkThe Orchard Keeper by sitelinkCormac McCarthy was selected by sitelinkTom "Big Daddy" Mathews as the Moderator's Choice for Members of sitelinkOn the Southern Literary Trail for January,.


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First Edition, Random House, New York, New York,

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Cormac McCarthy, Dust Jacket Photo, "The Orchard Keeper"

Them that's got shall get
Them that's not shall lose
So the Bible said

and it still is news
Mama may have Papa may have
But God bless the child that's got his own
That's got his ownBillie Holliday, God Bless the Child,

You have to read this book.
I rarely say it. I feel so strongly about it, I'll say it again, Read this book. Read it straight through. Then read it more thoroughly, more thoughtfully, See how Cormac McCarthy put this story together,

The hill country of Eastern Tennessee has always been different, During the American Civil War, the mountainous areas of Tennessee were a hotbed of Unionism,

Set in Red Branch, Tennessee, Cormac McCarthy created a community that portrayed the independence of the residents of that area of the state.
Red Branch is located somewhere between Knoxville and Sevierville in Tennessee, The time of the story is between World War I and World War II,

The people of Red Branch are a close knit bunch, It's a place of hospitality if you're one of their own, If you're not from around there, you're not likely to be welcome, If you're a member of the Alcohol and Tobacco Unit of the Federal government, don't expect a whole lot of information about who is running whiskey out of the Tennessee Hills.


Folks in Red Branch do what comes naturally, Sex is a gift to be engaged in and enjoyed, The young women are just as willing and eager as the young men are to enjoy one another, Young Josh Tipton, a bit player in the overall scheme of things, is humiliated that his young lady insults him by telling him he's the nicest young man that ever needled her.
Perhaps he's insulted to be a nice young man, But considering McCarthy's comedic moments, it's more likely Josh's humiliation over the needle size of his pride and joy,

A quick read, sitelinkThe Orchard Keeper, at first blush is a simple enough tale, There are three main protagonists, Marion Sylder, a bad boy not above breaking the law by running unbranded whiskey out of the hills in fast cars Uncle Ather Ownby, who tends a ruined apple orchard, a hermit, content to live alone away from the encroachment of civilization, and young John Rattney, a fatherless boy, who comes to be fostered and mentored by both Sylder and Ownby.


McCarthy writes of a land and a people fast changing, What was once unblemished forested mountainsides is being encroached upon by progress, Or so some would call it, McCarthy intimates it is a present fast forgetting the past,

“They are gone now, Fled, banished in death or exile, lost, undone, Over the land sun and wind still move to burn and sway the trees, the grasses, No avatar, no scion, no vestige of that people remains, On the lips of the strange race that now dwells there their names are myth, legend, dust, ”

John's last memory of his father, Kenneth, is being given an orange drink by his father, purchased for a nickel, before his father left for South Carolina in search of a job.
It's the last time John ever sees his father,

John's mother reminds him that his father was a hero in the army, returning from service with a platinum plate in his skull.
She also tells him that if only his father were there, neither he nor she would want for anything, for his father had always been a good provider.
Evidence is to the contrary,

Kenneth Rattney was no hero, He was a con man and a thief, always on the lookout for an easy buck, Whether he came by it honestly or not, he didn't care,

Kenneth hitches a ride with Marion Sylder, who is coming back home to Red Branch after an absence of five years.
Sylder's driving a new black Ford coupe, He's well dressed. Rattney's wrong when he decides Sylder's an easy mark, When Sylder has a flat, Rattney attacks him with a tire iron, Sylder kills him in self defense, disposing of his body by rolling him off the road where the body lands in the old spray pit of the gnarled and ruined orchard tended by Uncle Ather.
Sylder has no idea whose body he's rolled off the road,

Uncle Ather, walking through his ruined orchard discovers Rattner's body floating in the old spray pit, Ather's learned a long time ago that bringing in the authorities is only going to lead to meddling, He hides the body, piling cut cedar trees over the old pit, Neither does Ather know the identity of the body floating in the pit,

Back at the rickety shack John and his mother occupy, John is drawn into the nature of the wilderness that surrounds him.
He moves his bed to the enclosed porch of the house, watching the change of the seasons, His mother, for all purposes, a widow, leaves John to his own devises, John does not attend school, No truant officers exist to drag him away from his wandering through the woods that surround him,

During his regular walks through the remarkable landscape in which he lives, John meets both Marion Sylder and Uncle Ather, Both become mentors, essentially foster fathers to him,

John watches Sylder slide through a curve, plunging into a swift running creek, He pulls him from his car, Sylder realizes the boy saved his life and he returns the favor by seeing the boy share the comfort of his home, supplies him with enough money to increase the string of his traps with which he wishes to earn money for his mother's support, and gives the boy his first dog.


Uncle Ather is a fount of folkways and woodlore, He is a natural storyteller, a man seemingly older than the hills he wanders, Ather still remembers when civilization was so distant that "painters," or panthers, regularly roamed the woods, their screams piercing the black night unlit by a distant civilization.


However, society is changing, There is no place for characters such as Marion Sylder and Uncle Ather Ownby, Running unbranded, or shall we say, untaxed whiskey, isn't good for Government Revenue, Sheriff Gifford, the symbol of government authority is on the lookout for Sylder, Ather calls the law down on himself when he shoots up a tank put up on one of his beloved mountains by the United States Army.


John Rattner remains loyal to both his friends as the law closes in on them, McCarthy makes it clear that both bootlegger and mountain hermit can be fathers of greater influence than a man who merely fertilizes an egg.


What first appears to be a relatively simple plot is not as simple as it appears, Just who is the narrator of this tale Is this an unknown, omniscient narrator, speaking to us in the third person Or, is this a classic bildungsroman told by an older, wiser John Rattner

McCarthy created a remarkable story with his debut.
The language of the hill people is pitch perfect, His prose describing the Tennessee hill country is more poetry in the indelible beauty of a vanishing world captured forever on the page.


McCarthy's manuscript landed on the desk of Albert Erskine at Random House, Erskine had been Faulkner's editor, As he read McCarthy's manuscript, I wonder if Erskine at times questioned whether Bill Faulkner ever died, I can see Erskine shaking his head in wonder at the words on the rough manuscript that a new Southern voice had produced.


McCarthy was seen as the heir apparent to William Faulkner, Orville Prescott, reviewing The Orchard Keeper noted that the author had read much Faulkner, And imitated him much. Yet, Prescott found a raw narrative power in this first novel, Prescott, O. , Still Another Disciple of William Faulkner, The New York Times, May

In, the William Faulkner Foundation selected McCarthy as the author of the most notable novel.
Rightly so.

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