Just finished No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy. WTF?

Because at his best, McCarthy is one of the greatest writers living today (despite his quirks; which I'm not fond of either).

If you're published and lauded by [international] reviewers, and your books have been translated in popular films, you can bend and break more rules than a newbie writer still trying to make his mark.

Cormac McCarthy gets away with it largely because he's . . . well . . . Cormac McCarthy. I don't like his punctuational fetishes much, and don't see the point, but he's such a strong writer that I'll put up with 'em. Some readers seem to feel the format enhances his writing, so . . .

I don't know enough of McCarthy's publication history to understand how he managed to get over the bar to the point where he could do this with publication success.

But you're almost certainly right: If any of the rest of us submitted a manuscript formatted in that manner it would have a high probability of never even getting read, let alone accepted.

alleycat said:

Because at his best, McCarthy is one of the greatest writers living today (despite his quirks; which I'm not fond of either).

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At his best, Cormac McCarthy makes me want to burn the brain that came up with that shite. I'd rather read Jordan's eleventy billionth autobiography than The Road again.

Seriously. I gave myself a migraine trying to figure out how the hell that manipulative, depressing 300-page pile o' wangst managed to win the Pulitzer.

Some word combinations were magical but I was too put off by the gimmicky absence of punctuation and dialogue attribution.

"Look at me, being so avant garde!"

No, Cormac. Look at me walking past your books to find a novelist who knows what the fuck punctuation is for.

blacbird said:

Cormac McCarthy gets away with it largely because he's . . . well . . . Cormac McCarthy.

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And thank God there's only one of him.

Did you actually want to write that way?

There is a thread about McCarthy(The Road) in the bookclub section here http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=148114&highlight=mccarthy

I imagine the lack of grammar has also to do with the fact he used a typewriter. Something of laziness involved?

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There's a thread going on about the King James bible elsewhere on this website. Could be useful linking that one to this one.

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He simply wasn't the first to write this way. In my readings, once I got used to the grammar, stopped questioning it and simply read the words that were there, I just heard them in my head or as though someone were telling them to me, exactly like every other book except automatically in his psychological dialect.

As I see it, McCarthy already stated the literary world would be forced to look at the Judge and Blood Meridian,1985?, as the peek of his powers. The earlier work is depraved, too, but not written like BM, i.e., American Inferno. The rest would be made for Hollywood and for money. He had his interview on Oprah, remember, when he alluded to his child. I'm certain that factored in.

I wish he'd drop capitalization, too.

As my dad used to say, "Picasso could draw better than anyone." You have to show your mastery of the traditions and conventions of your art form before you can flout them successfully.

I am not a big Cormac McCarthy fan, but I am a fan of some other writers who take/took an experimental approach to narrative, like Percival Everett and Jose Saramago. Experimental literature is experimental on purpose; the trick is to make it clear that you are actively choosing not to use conventions. And not every reader enjoys it, either--that's why thousands of books get published every year, after all.

Rule #1: If you're good enough, you can break the rules.
Rule #1a: You're not good enough.

I hated The Road but liked No Country for Old Men. I'm still undecided about McCarthy, but he's not a hack or a fluke.

scarletpeaches said:

At his best, Cormac McCarthy makes me want to burn the brain that came up with that shite.

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Wheeeee!

It's more than a bit lost on me, as well.

Someone's already mentioned Picasso, but I feel that point deserves another voice behind it.

Read Kurt Vonnegut's Bluebeard, it what I'd say to you. Might explain why artists do what they do.

The reason The Road got a Pulitzer is because the guys who give Pulitzers had never run into post-apocalyptic science fiction before and thought that McCarthy invented it.

Heh-heh-heh-heh, Uncle Jim.

I'll stick to my beloved genre books. The best are like great sex, with a strong beginning, tension-building middle, concluding with a satisfying climax.

Can't stand Picasso's art. Always thought he was wildly overrated. I'd crawl over him to get to Van Gogh any old night.

Gosh, but I love being a Philistine!

I never really liked McCarthy. No Country for Old Men is boring, and I didn't particularly care for The Road either. But to each his own. The guy won a Pulitzer, and is lauded for whatever reasons. He's "earned" his right to be "inventive." To me, that just smells pretentious.

McCarthy's first book, The Orchard Keeper, had perfectly conventional punctuation.

On that token, you can say Pia Zadora "earned" her right to being called an Actress because her sugar daddy bought her she won a Golden Globe award. Awards generally don't mean much.

I've never read McCarthy. Maybe I will not expand my horizons after what I've read here.

maestrowork said:

I never really liked McCarthy. No Country for Old Men is boring, and I didn't particularly care for The Road either. But to each his own. The guy won a Pulitzer, and is lauded for whatever reasons. He's "earned" his right to be "inventive." To me, that just smells pretentious.

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He's been accused of being inaccessible for using Spanish in his novels, too.
I'd say he was derivative first (Faulkner!), inventive second, then more like self-revivalist than innovative in the end, if that makes any sense.

If I were reading McCarthy for the first time, I would want to read Child of God. I think it's a great set up into his imagination.

Movie was meh anyway, and probably took a lot less time to watch than it would to read the book.

Approximately the same.

Plus, it had Aragorn.

AMCrenshaw said:

Approximately the same.

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Really? Hm. Maybe I shouldn't have slept through the last third.