The Stonemason is a profoundly moving drama set in Louisville, Kentucky in the 1970s, concerning several generations of a black family. McCarthy's narrator, Ben, reveals a painful episode in his family's history, grounding us at the same time in the beautiful dynamic between him and his grandfather, Papaw. Ben, Ben's father, and Papaw are all stonemasons, but in descriptions of "the trade" we learn as much about this family's capacity for love as we do about constructing sound foundations for houses, barns and bridges.
Papaw's knowledge about stonemasonry is analogous to his deep spiritual wisdom, and Ben recognizes both as he looks back on his apprenticeship in the "trade at which I thoughtmyself a master and of which I stood in darkest ignorance. And as I came to know him ... As I came to know him ... Oh I could hardly believe my good fortune. I swore then I'dcleave to that old man like a bride. I swore he'd take nothing to his grave."
Papaw's son Big Ben and great-grandson Soldier do not respond as whole-heartedly to the old man's wealth of knowledge and patient guidance and the tragedy of the story is largely rooted in this fact. Both of these characters have lost connection with the work of their hands and by association with the earth, their family, and themselves. They are profoundly dissatisfied. Of his father, Ben later wonders, "Why could he not see the worth of that which he had laid aside and the poverty of all he hungered for? Why could he not see that he too was blest?"
The Stonemason reveals afresh the mastery of character, plot, pathos, and the poetic facility for language that distinguishes Cormac McCarthy's fiction, and which recently earned him the National Book Award for his bestselling novel, All The Pretty Horses.
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Book Description Cloth. Condition: New. Dust Jacket Condition: New. First Edition. Pristine. New York: The Ecco Press. 1994. First Edition, stated. Octavo, 133 pp. One of just 7500 printed for the first edition. As New, in like jacket. Flawless and unread, sealed and laid flat since acquisition, Very Fine. See scans. An example for the collector. A play in five acts by the enigmatic author of The Crossing and winner of the National Book Award. The Stonemason is the story of several generations of a black family of stonemasons in Kentucky. A line from Act 3, Scene 1, quoted on the jacket back flap: "The reason the stonemason's trade remains esoteric above all others is that the foundation and hearth are the soul of human society and it is that soul that the false mason threatens. So. It's not the mortar that holds the work together. What holds the stone trues the wall as well and I've seen him check his four-foot wooden level with a plumb bob and then break the level over the wall and call for a new one. Not in anger, but only to safeguard the true. To safeguard it everywhere. He says that to a man who's never laid a stone that there's nothing you can tell him. Even the truth would be wrong." L13n. Seller Inventory # 000119
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