The real launchpad for Mccarthy's subsequent work
This, much more so than the Orchard Keeper, feels like McCarthy's first full work. The narrative focus is much tighter, even if the paths that Culla and Rinthy take are every bit as shiftless and as doomed. But by the end of the book, Mccarthy has stepped well beyond the typical southern Gothic territory he spends most of his first novel treading through. Outer Dark, with it's central incestuous conflict, could easily have been just another novel about screwed-up Appalachian degenerates. Instead it launches itself into a space of morbid ceremonies, nightmarish pseudo-myths, and inexplicable, cyclical violence. It's not southern Gothic or even american Gothic as much as it is Gothic period. It's easy to see the jumping off points for the themes he would explore in Blood Meridian, The Crossing, et al here.