Theater Grotessco: The Stonemason

Abstract

Hyperreality is grounded in deep earth mysteries. McCarthy has always been interested in stones and stonework, the solid, lasting terra firma in a homeland of restless change, a humanscape of dreams and illusions. The novelist scratches for a fixed base to earthly things, mineral to gaseous. From geologic strata and ancient petroglyphs to Greek middens and Roman walls, medieval roads and Gaelic forts to city gutters and nuclear winter rubble, McCarthy is fascinated with a history of stonework and admires those who hardscrabble the earth, however miserably. “Stacking up stone is the oldest trade there is,” he told Woodward in the 1992 interview, “older than fire,” and the literary archaeologist found “rather interesting” the loss of stonework to hydraulic cement.

Amid a place of stone, Be secret and exult,

—W.B. Yeats, “To a Friend whose Work has Come to Nothing”