Cormac McCarthy

[dwwoelfel]

I read "All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy in high school, and thought that it was a very good book. I especially liked the dialogue, and the way that he captured the Cowboy sense of humor. If you ever decide to read it, don't start judging the book until after you get to about page 30. If you don't start to like it by then, you probably never will. Also, don't judge it by the movie. The movie had its strong points, but it was very drawn out.

I recently discovered that "All the Pretty Horses" was the first book in a trilogy. I would like to know if anyone else has read "All the Pretty Horses," and, if you liked it, whether the other two books in the trilogy are as good.

-Daniel

[Scott_Connery]

I haven't read in quite a few years, but I remember disliking it intensely when I read it. And I like cowboys......

[jlew]

I strongly urge you to read this book...

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...=glance&s=books

...its a great attack on the mess that modern prose is in.

I depise 99% of the new fiction that comes out every year. Its boring, unreadable crap. I thought I was the only one who felt this way until I read a trimmed down version of the aforementioned book in Atlantic Monthly a few years ago. Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, Annie Proulx, Toni Morrison, and a few other critics' darlings are put to the sword for the obtuseness and faux-intellectuality of their writing. The bit about Oprah and Toni Morrison is worth the price of admission alone. (It's quoted in the review above.)

If you can find this anywhere, I suggest you pick it up.

Sorry to come on like a late-night K-Tel Records commercial, but...I think a lot of people need to read this book. Modern writing is so bad that someone has to point out that the Emperor's duds seem to be see-through. When I read authors like Cormac McCarthy I think of Peter Keating reading that Gertrude Stein-ian novelist in The Fountainhead..."If I don't understand it...it must be art!"

[dwwoelfel]

Please explain what is so hard to understand in "All the Pretty Horses." At the beginning, he does throw you right into the middle of a story, and it seems like it is impossible to understand, but after you get into the book, you will see that it is not hard to understand at all. Cormac McCarthy may write down words like he is Gertrude Stein (doesn't abide by laws of capitalization or punctuation), but he writes his ideas down like he is Ayn Rand (justice, love, individualism, entrepreneurship, will to succeed, etc.).

-Daniel

[scottkursk]

I strongly urge you to read this book...

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...=glance&s=books

...its a great attack on the mess that modern prose is in.

I depise 99% of the new fiction that comes out every year. Its boring, unreadable crap. I thought I was the only one who felt this way until I read a trimmed down version of the aforementioned book in Atlantic Monthly a few years ago. Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, Annie Proulx, Toni Morrison, and a few other critics' darlings are put to the sword for the obtuseness and faux-intellectuality of their writing. The bit about Oprah and Toni Morrison is worth the price of admission alone. (It's quoted in the review above.)

I put that book on my wishlist. That looks really good, especially that quote from Toni Morrison. It reminds me of when Francis Fukayama (I think it was him) said that Maya Angelou could be compared to a really bad 6th graders poetry. I seem to remember wherever her goes now he has protesters because he pointed out just how talentless she is.

[jlew]

dwwoelfel...I've tried to read Cormac McCarthy in the past, and after your last post decided to try again. I must say that my initial misgivings with Mr. McCarthy's writing style were well-founded.

The man's work is simply a mess. I'm not even going to say anything about the lack of a single quotation mark and how that just breaks down the wall between the narrator and the characters - who is telling the story? everyone? no one? does it matter?

No, the main problem for me is this forced sentence structure of his:

"The hacendado placed the tin on the table between them and took a silver lighter from his pocket and lit the boy's cigarette and then his own." (pg 113)

(And that's just from me randomly opening the book to any old page. You yourself could do it, too. With McCarthy, its easy. There's drivel on every page.)

Why was it necessary to put that sentence togther that way? It could easily be written as:

"The hacendado placed the tin on the table between them. He took a silver lighter from his pocket. With it, he lit the boy's cigarette and then his own."

Why wasn't it written like that? More than likely because it wouldn't have sounded "writerly" if it had. Only the truly "gifted" can cram a bunch of simple words together to create a confusing mishmash of a sentence. And its for that very reason that I dislike the vast majority (if not the sum total) of modern writers.

I can't resist...here's another example for the page facing the above quotation:

"The man rose and folded the newspaper and crossed the kitchen and came back with a wooden rack of butcher and boning knives together with an oilstone and set them out on the paper." (pg 112)

Are you kidding me?

Or how about this...same page, next paragraph:

"He was a spare man with broad shoulders and graying hair and he was tall in the manner of nortenos and light of skin."

Tall in the manner of nortenos and light of skin? Who the heck talks like that? Apparently Americans do, because on the back of the book is a quote from Shelby Foote extolling Mr. McCarthy's book for its use of language: "The novel's hero...is the English language - or perhaps I should say the American language..."

Perhaps you shouldn't say anything Mr. Foote. You're talking bollocks.

I'm not saying things should be simple and spelled out for me. But neither should they be buried under a ton of "style" and then sung to the high heavens as a masterwork of the use of the English language by people who should know better. Give me a break.

Or better yet just give me Harry Potter.

[chicoflaco]

I read "All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy in high school, and thought that it was a very good book. I especially liked the dialogue, and the way that he captured the Cowboy sense of humor. If you ever decide to read it, don't start judging the book until after you get to about page 30. If you don't start to like it by then, you probably never will. Also, don't judge it by the movie. The movie had its strong points, but it was very drawn out.

I recently discovered that "All the Pretty Horses" was the first book in a trilogy. I would like to know if anyone else has read "All the Pretty Horses," and, if you liked it, whether the other two books in the trilogy are as good.

-Daniel

This book is awful. Cormac's metaphors make no sense, he's foggy and lacks clarity and I remember that he gives the horse omniscience, like the horse knows what the guy is thinking. When I read that I was like, ok that's enough.