The main characters are Bone, a jobless hunk in his thirties who just doesn't know where to turn after deciding to quit his job and leave his wife and kids behind, and Cutter, a one-armed, one-legged Vietnam vet who seems to have left his soul and the better part of his sanity back in Saigon. Together, along with Cutter's common law wife, Mo, an attractive ex-hippie who spends her days walking around stoned to the gills, Cutter and Bone go through life aimlessly, not always remembering where they've been, and not really caring where they're going, with Bone living off wealthy older women, and Cutter getting by on his welfare checks. That is, until Bone happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, becoming a witness to the dumping of a young hooker who's just been murdered by a middle-aged man. From there, things slowly spiral out of control, as Bone becomes embroiled in a cat and mouse game with Cutter, who seems to be slowly losing himself to an obsession only he can understand.
But it is almost fruitless to write a plot synopsis for Cutter and Bone, as the plot really isn't the thing. It's the characters, their psychology, and Thornburg's mastery of mood and pacing. Thornburg writes with a clarity and a passion that is hard to resist, pulling you into a story that gets darker and darker as it goes along, and one that is peopled with characters who aren't exactly likable but are fascinating nonetheless.
Much has been said about the book's seemingly fiery politics, with Cutter's rants about the corruption of America bordering on hyperbole. Some critics and readers claim that Cutter and Bone is a leftist, anti-capitalist novel, others argue that it has a conservative bent, with its obvious disdain for hippies and radicals. But Thornburg, who was a fiscal republican, doesn't seem interested in partisan politics as much as in life choices and their price. His characters are all lost, broken outcasts who just can't seem to belong or find their way. Bone, in particular, is written as a man who has lost almost everything in exchange for his independence. And the one time he makes any kind of attachment, with Cutter and Mo, it leads to disaster. And Cutter is a man so angry at his country, the world, and himself, that ultimately he loses himself in a complex mystery that just might be of his own invention. Or is it?
Cutter and Bone is considered to be Thornburg's masterpiece, and it is easy to see why. It is far from a perfect novel – the dialogue is often clunky, and the politics too overheated – but it is original, unforgettable, and passionately written. It has the one quality that most writers strive to achieve even once in their career: After the last page is turned, the book lingers in the mind, its words echoing, its images refusing to fade.
* The novel was adapted into a feature film, Cutter's Way, released in 1981.
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Text © Ahmed Khalifa. 2021.
Ahmed Khalifa is a filmmaker and novelist. He is the writer/director of several short films and a feature, which was released on Netflix, and the author of a number of novels and short stories, including the YA horror novel, Beware The Stranger, available on Amazon. Find him on Twitter @AFKhalifa and on Facebook @Dark.Fantastic.AK·Writer
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