Sunday, July 30, 2023

The anxiety of Cormac McCarthy's influence

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Essays & Opinions

The anxiety of Cormac McCarthy's influence. “Books are made out of books. The novel depends for its life on the novels that have been written”... more »



New York Times Op-Ed:  ‘The Bear’ and the Need for a Place to Belong, by David French(Author, Divided We Fall: America’s Secession Threat and How to Restore Our Nation (2020)):

The BearEvery now and then, a fictional character can have a profound real-world impact. I’m thinking, for example, of Jason Sudeikis’s Ted Lasso in 2020. There was a moment in the first season of the character’s self-titled show when a simple act of immediate forgiveness symbolized the generosity of a show that radiated across American culture and reminded us of the power of kindness and mercy to alter the course of a person’s life.

In 2023, a very different character is revealing different truths, and the effect is, if anything, even richer and more meaningful. The character is Richie Jerimovich, brilliantly portrayed by Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and the show in which he appears is FX’s “The Bear,” the second season of which was released last month. Episode by episode, Richie opens a window into the souls of so very many of our friends and neighbors. He challenges us. He makes us examine ourselves. He forces us to answer an uncomfortable question: How do we respond to people in pain?

For those who haven’t watched the show or followed the growing amount of “Bear” discourse online, it rests on a simple and dark premise: An elite New York City chef, Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), returns home to Chicago after his drug addict older brother dies by suicide and leaves him the local family sandwich shop.

Of course, Carmy doesn’t just inherit a sandwich shop, he also inherits its employees — a collection of longtime friends and co-workers who interact with one another with such high intensity and aggression that there are moments of the show that are actually painful to watch.

The entire cast is a delight, but from the opening episode, your attention is drawn to Richie. He was Carmy’s late brother’s best friend and serves as the sandwich shop’s de facto manager. He’s also angry, difficult and abusive. No one is louder than him. No one is more aggressive than him. From the first moment you see him, you recognize him as intolerable.

But just when you’re about to write him off as the villain of the show, you see something else: Richie is in immense pain. He just buried his best friend. He’s estranged from his now ex-wife, even though it’s evident he still adores her. He spends too little time with his young daughter. In a moment of candor, he tells Carmy that he’s “all I got.” That’s one reason for his constant, off-putting intensity. He’s lost so much. How can he lose the little that remains?

Like many viewers, I was drawn to Richie, in spite of all his anger and irrationality. Why? Because we know him. We know people like him. In some ways, we might even be him — especially if we’ve suffered profound loss. There are millions upon millions of Richies in these United States. ...

There is no one “Richie moment” like Ted Lasso’s singular act of forgiveness. There are instead a series of moments, but they all rest on an unshakable foundation: However dysfunctional they may appear on the surface, the crew at the sandwich shop actually love one another. And by “love” I don’t mean anything that looks sentimental, or even particularly tender. ...

One of the most beautiful passages in all of Scripture is in the Book of Isaiah. In Christian tradition, the prophet describes the coming messiah and declares, “A bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench.” Richie is the very definition of a bruised reed, and as is so often the case, his bruises don’t manifest themselves in attractive ways. It’s easy to love someone who presents as vulnerable. It’s harder to love those who manifest their pain with rage and snarls.

I’ve seen this with my own eyes. I’ve seen how we’ve become a nation of bruised reeds, busy breaking one another. We see the rage but we miss the pain. We exclude the very people we most need to include. We lash back to inflict even greater wounds. We forget to seek the virtues hidden under a shell of vice. ...

[M]y amateur recommendation is to give Moss-Bachrach, the actor who plays Richie, all of the awards. Now. Episode by episode, his performance reveals both the nature of suffering and the simple human power of telling a person in pain — by deeds even more than by words — that he will not be left behind, that he has a place where he truly belongs.

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Other op-eds by David French:

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