Cormac McCarthy reviews Super Mario 3
I’m e rathke, the author of a number of books. Many of you are here because of Howl so today’s post is perfect for you. Learn more about what you signed up for here. Go here to manage your email notifications.
I wrote the following a few months ago. I think right after I finished Suttree. I did not know then, of course, that McCarthy would be dead soon, but I share this in the spirit of good times for good people.
Where to Start with Cormac McCarthy
My son wandered the house carrying a small plastic monstrosity chirping incessantly through our home while I stared out into the desert waiting to die but he connected it to the television and the house drowned in chiptune orchestration while a pixelated becapped man’s fluttering racoon tail propelled him into the air.
Dad, the boy’s voice chirped in time with the digital music compression distorted, Want to play?
My bones ached and the weight of the sun rooted me to my chair where I watched the sand blow and the desert ever spread before what remains of my life but he is my boy and up I rose to sit beside him where he showed me how to hold the device and how to control the little man amidst this horde of monsters traversing this desolate land of bricks and turtles and stagnant clouds.
Like a newborn foal, I walked unsteady towards my demise.
That’s a goomba, my boy said. Jump on him.
In the moment it took me to find the jump button, the little fungal monster consumed me and the music mocked me and the plumber Mario fell away from the land as if he was always separate from it only to spin back to what my boy called the overworld map where we, this plumber and I, moved in straight lines between numbered squares.
Try again, my boy said and I tried again.
The sun descended while Mario performed a thousand suicides by goomba and turtle and lava and pit. And as the communion between us grew tighter and stronger, he hunted the goombas and turtles through the technicolor geometric landscape foregoing all food but fungus and drinking only hate in his lustful slake for violence and debauchery in the name of his princess but finally he reached the palace only to find a mushroom headed child bellowing about his king transformed into a dog and the princess my boy told me this was all for had been taken elsewhere yet still Mario leapt into the airship where once more we died over and over caught in an inescapable eternal recurrence.
Mario maneuvered through a seeming maze of rocketing black spheres while the claustrophobia of the square of my television closed us in together.
Together. My plumber and me.
That’s Larry, my boy said. One of Bowser’s sons.
I did not ask. It cannot matter.
The spiked turtle shot sequences of three expanding circles at my Mario and he shrank first and then died and the airship once more flew elsewhere and we had but one life left before we must begin again.
An hour later and Mario entered the desert of World Two and I turned away from the screen and the inviting animations of the overworld map towards the darkness of the desert beyond my window.
Death called me as it calls for us all and I handed the device back to my boy who yawned and transformed the timid tinkering plumber I’d come to know into death’s angel incarnate genociding an entire world of goombas while my mouth hung agape at the speed and grace of this new Mario.
Before the hour was through I met and watched Bowser’s many children die and then the great firebreathing monstrous turtle himself in his hellish land of fire and lava and Reichian tanks threatening to spill out into the many worlds belonging to this web of kings and queens but none of them were the princess we sought.
And then there she was and my boy yawned once more and turned to me. Have fun?
Did.
My boy smiled and told me he was going to bed.
Alone with the dark and the desert and the day of chaos and claustrophobia and destruction, the desert continues its siren call and death sighs through my own lungs.
My novels:
Glossolalia - A Le Guinian fantasy novel about an anarchic community dealing with a disaster
Sing, Behemoth, Sing - Deadwood meets Neon Genesis Evangelion
Howl - Vampire Hunter D meets The Book of the New Sun in this lofi cyberpunk/solarpunk monster hunting adventure
Colony Collapse - Star Trek meets Firefly in the opening episode of this space opera
The Blood Dancers - The standalone sequel to Colony Collapse.
Iron Wolf - Sequel to Howl. Out today!
Some free books for your trouble:
Fantastic. Captured him perfectly. Like an early draft of The Road.
This was perfect.