While he compiles his recollections, he’s also celebrating his discreet passion for another man, Cole. McNulty is writing in old age, looking back over 50 years, “and wondering where the years went”. Days Without End is at once an affecting love story, and a nostalgic celebration of a long life. You could say that this is a western, but like the best of the genre, its vision fuses old and new: warfare, homecoming, gender politics, coming of age and romance. He transforms the blood-red landscape of middle America into the embodiment of the American myth – violent, transgressive, passionate, timeless and a little bit mad – a place that becomes both the subject of song and the song itself. The American west of McNulty’s superb narration owes something to Twain, Whitman, Crane, and even Cormac McCarthy, but Barry is not content merely to pay homage to these masters.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |