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September 26, 2010

Re-reading

I'm currently holding off on the currently beatified literary crop and returning to Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing for a bit. The following passage in my waterlogged copy was underlined - not by me, but only because whomever I inherited the book from beat me to it.

The task of the narrator is not an easy one, he said. He appears to be required to choose his tale from among the many that are possible. But of course that is not the case. The case is rather to make many of the one. Always the teller must be at pains to devise against his listener's claim - perhaps spoken, perhaps not - that he has heard the tale before. He sets forth the categories into which the listener will wish to fit the narrative as he hears it. But he understands that the narrative is itself in fact no category but is rather the category of all categories for there is nothing which falls outside its purview. All is telling.

I wanted to quote that here because it's a nice summation of Pioneer, which is pretty much done now. I think it's my best film. Hopefully I'll have reason to bring it up again in the coming months.

Posted by David Lowery at September 26, 2010 11:32 PM