The Sheltering Sky

I just finished The Sheltering Sky, and it is important. That is the highest praise I give books; I really don't know what else would mean more. I should let it sink in before I claim things like that, but it's the inner world of the book, and not the outer world, that is most impressive. Like McCarthy, the book exists in layers, and the bottom-most layer must always be the Ultimate Truth of the Universe. (I capitalize because this ultimate truth is a worldview specific to the book - not our objective reality, and this way it feels like another literary component, equal with Plot or Characters, for instance.) The book's jacket insists that the book is about the ways "in which [the characters'] incomprehension destroys them." I think that's both overly dramatic and completely misses the essence the book obviously makes a specific effort to convey. Maybe this is because I believe that all books written in layers must finally and necessarily reduce to the bottom-most. All else is a vehicle; or, at best, all else is ostensible. I would say the book is about the delusions we carry regarding the nature of time and our passage through it.

Some symbols are powerful and immovable in our perception. The relationship of the earth with the sky is one. Day and night is another. The stars; darkness. This book made me remember the idea of a landscape that is part of no living thing, great or small. The idea of lifelessness in anything can be terrifying if we carry around with us a perception of fundamental divinity in the world. Do you remember the first time you wondered what exactly you were looking at when you looked at the sky? I remember something quite close to that the first time I saw a shooting star: it appeared from nothingness, streaked, broke in two, and disappeared again into nothingness. Life is short.