老无所依:现代性的隐忧——读科马克·麦卡锡的《老无所依》

No Country for Old Men and The Malaises of Modernity:A Reading of Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men

科马克·麦卡锡后期风格代表作品《老无所依》一经出版便饱受非议,对作品创作形式的批评显然超过了对作家超拔思想的关注。麦卡锡通过一场生死逐利的猫鼠游戏呈现了高度现代化美国社会的道德窳败和内部分裂的问题。现代社会屈从于工具理性的暴虐、人的主体性消弭、国家的自由民主实践遭遇社会撕裂的严重挑战,这是作家故事建构的社会观察。小说警示了社会进步的表面的富丽堂皇,通过反思现代性的功过以重建道德信仰。尽管作者借警长贝尔之口谴责了美国社会对极端多元文化的放纵,但他却忽视了国家治理实践中多数人暴政的一面。

No Country for Old Men,one of Cormac McCarthy’s later works,was not well received since its publication.The novel’s writing style was under heavy criticism,but McCarthy’s perspicacious portrayal and diagnosis of a highly-modernized decadent and growingly divided American society via a fictionalized deadly cat-and-mouse game was admirable.In the novel,McCarthy addresses the social consequences of instrumental rationality,degradation of human subjectivity and American social disintegration as a crippled liberal democratic praxis.The story warns about the illusive achievements of social progress and calls for an examination into the boon and bane of modernity for the sake of building social faith and morality.Although McCarthy,embodied as the Sheriff in the story,criticizes the social indulgence of extreme multiculturalism,he fails to reflect on the democratic tyranny of the majority.