how awful goodness is
notes on sin
A basic premise of Christianity, as I understand it, is that sin makes us less human, not more.1 That is, when we say “I’m only human” about something we’ve done that’s a bit shameful, we are speaking incorrectly, because in those moments we are in fact being something less than human. When we indulge in spite or hatred or or indifference or rejoice in the misfortune of somebody we don’t like, we are less than human. And when Augustine talks about evil as being a privation of good, I take this to be the same thought put more broadly. Doing wrong is always diminishing. It is the absence of something else.
This is not how we think of these things, partly because our image of the person who is not “only human” is that of a person who is obsessed with not doing wrong rather than a person who is motivated by goodness. We envision a life defined by restriction and refusal. Probably most lives that are good lives will be in some sense so defined, or at least capable of being defined that way. Still, we end up with an idea of a good life which is defined negatively, by refusing contamination. Yet that is not really the kind of life Christian ascetics model for us—they are, if anything, a little overeager to roll around in the dirt. (One saint cleaning her shit-covered cell by licking the floor and walls resurfaces in my mind from time to time like an intrusive thought.)
But then it is, also, how we think these things in colloquial speech—that is, for every “only human” you get somebody saying (for instance) “I wasn’t myself.” We (correctly) view statements like I wasn’t myself as moral fudging, a way of dodging responsibility, but in a certain sense it’s true. When I do something cruel or slothful I am not myself because I am less than myself.
People have already dumped all over this Vanity Fair article about Cormac McCarthy’s “love affair” with a sixteen-year-old girl named Augusta Britt. It is being mocked mostly for its self-parodically florid writing style. It isn’t good, yes, though what I didn’t like about the writing felt pretty standard-issue glossy magazine profile: a kind of gushy breathlessness.… And it does not seem to have been fact-checked very carefully (see here), which is a bigger problem. It’s pretty likely some of the things in the profile are not true, but (at the very least) misremembered. On the other hand the basic facts certainly seem to be true.
But also… McCarthy’s actions in the piece are boring. Like Alice Munro picking her husband over her daughter, McCarthy seeing an abused and vulnerable teenager and categorizing her as a sexual prospect is just cliche. Escalating the relationship into a sexual one through his letters—cliche. The way he hangs around, vulture-like, for the rest of her life—cliche.
The author of the piece really wants this to be a grand love affair, one that exists beyond moral judgment, wrapped up with McCarthy’s “genius.”2 But it isn’t. All over the country, adult men are doing this to teenagers. Of course this stuff is interesting in a biographical sense. It’s just that when people do bad and wretched things they tend to become more alike than different. Whatever was in him that was lovable (and Britt clearly still loves him) is not present here.
In Paradise Lost there’s a moment when Satan is confronted by an angel and Milton writes “abash'd the Devil stood / and felt how awful goodness is.” Unlike many readers I find Milton’s Satan a pathetic figure devoid of charisma—constantly boasting in ways he cannot live up to, seething in resentment over not being God’s Number One Specialest Boy. (Eve, on the other hand, is very interesting.… but anyway.)
Maybe for this reason, this little bit of Paradise Lost has never left my mind—when the devil is forced to see “his lustre visibly impair’d” thanks to his fall from heaven. He is not as much as he was. How awful goodness is. How much less of everything is sin.
Not saying this claim is exclusive to Christianity, just limiting it.
I have read barely any Cormac McCarthy and this is unlikely to change any time soon. However while checking this over I saw this post by BDM Industries reader
which makes a good case for there not being much genius there.
Beautiful piece.
As a moderate McCarthy fan I will vouch for Blood Meridian. The Judge is an all-time character and I think it reaches the sort of mythological plane people ascribe to all his work (and has the benefit in this context of not including an Augusta Britt stand-in). Would be really interested to hear your take. All The Pretty Horses is a very conventional story beautifully told. Other than that idk.
thank you for this astonishing essay. It is reviving.