It’s not one motion, it’s flowing motion, which is how we actually experience things, and it does not come off at all like an “excited child.”
Okay, that’s fine by me. I actually agree that it’s at times quite powerful, I just think it’s pretty devastatingly flawed stylistically. That doesn’t, I think, detract from it being anybody’s favorite–I like plenty of books that are stylistic desasters–and I recognize that this isn’t really a provable point.
Thing is, to defend his lack of apostrophes as a style choice that shows the pretentionlessness of his narrative–that’s not going to float. The entirety of his narrative is suffused in pretention, from the poetic descriptions of whatnot that come out of nowhere to the narrative as a whole is a carefully and ambitiously crafted artifact. So the question is, again, what’s the point? Is the point the illusion of uncraftedness?
Frankly, I think it’s a bad, overused device that seems artsy but isn’t, especially if it’s used in ALL your fiction, no matter what the subject.
Now that, as far as literary studies is concerned, and actually I’d hazard to say as far as reading is concerned, is non-sense. You cannot just blithely separate stylistic choices from story. Indeed, you cannot, pratically speaking, access the actual story at all, only the discourse mediated through the, yes, stylistics of the piece. The meaning of the story does not lie in the story, but in the mediation of it through the various elements of the presentation of the story and its reception by us, the readers, frankly, the absence of apostrophes is so striking that it just cannot be ignored without misrepresenting the book.
*This *is what’s considered good writing? That looks like something a child would write.
Huh. I’ve only read one Cormac McCarthy book – “The Road” – and I don’t remember any oddball punctuation in it.
Me either. I’ve read The Road and Outer Dark, and weird punctuation is something I notice quite readily. So…he’s inconsistent, then?
No, I’m pretty sure he always does that. I know for sure he did it in The Road. If you didn’t notice, that just shows how unobtrusive it really is.
It’s in there. Look again.
“Pretention” is not a helpful word here, I think: it’s too loaded. In any case, even if it weren’t loaded, that’s not the point I’m making. McCarthy is definitely what I think of as a stylistically translucent author, an author whose prose has a distinct style that draws attention to itself. (Ursula Le Guin, by contrast, is a stylistically transparent author). You can read the story through the style, but the style itself colors the story.
It’s not that his style emphasizes some sort of lack of frippery (what you’re calling pretentionlessness). Rather, the style emphasizes the characters’ lack of frippery.
He doesn’t tend to write about showmen, about glamor girls, about glitz and dazzle. He writes about hardscrabble people living hardscrabble lives, struggling to keep their heads above water. His characters don’t have much luxury. The lack of apostrophes, of quotation marks, somehow emphasizes that for me: it makes his characters feel extra-spare. He engages in stylistic choices that draw attention to themselves precisely in order to emphasize this aspect of the characters.
I certainly recognize that it’s not for everyone: McCarthy, like another of my favorite authors China Mieville, seems to be a like him or hate him proposition. But those of us who like him like him for genuine reasons, not because we’re trying to seem cool. Shit, if I wanted to be cool, I’d go read James Joyce, not a western.
George Bernard Shaw used to skip the apostrophes, he used dont for don’t and wont for won’t, it was part of his interest in phonetics. He also liked phonetical spelling, but didnt go down that part as far. I read all his plays and prefaces at one point, never found his lack of apostrophes much of a problem, possibly because I was having to deal with his British English.
I’ve been meaning to give McCarthy a try. I’ve heard nothing but great things about his books. I knew about his punctuation peculiarities. Out of context, this passage sounds horrible. If this is typical, he’s not for me. This reeks of pure pretentiousness disguised as salt-of-the-earth-ness.
If that’s a real quote, it certainly is not typical. It’s more characteristic of him to use short, spare sentences.
I like Blood Meridian, but I’m sorta wary of anyone who likes it too much. 
But on topic … I never found McCarthy’s literary style distracting. I always found it effective.
He definitely goes in the lengthy sentence direction sometimes. From Blood Meridian:
One of my favorite passages from the book describes the band as they ride across a desert at night, and it echoes beneath their feet like a drum. But I’m having trouble Googling the passage.
Here’s another great passage, describing the band as they’re fleeing hostile Yuma Indians and seeking shelter near a well:
So, not short sentences always, and not simple compounds except when he’s going for an effect. Plenty of complexity. You may or may not like him, naturally, but he certainly has something he’s getting at.
I’d argue, too, that reading him is a cumulative experience. I responded to the quoted sentence above because I’ve read a lot of his work, and that one sentence instantly transports me to the experience. But yes, out of context it does read “run-on.”
I think I enjoy so much of his dialogue without the “ornamentation” of punctuation because it feels so much truer to how his characters speak: completely free of artifice and excess. They talk as if words were gold and they don’t have that kind of money to spend.
He’s an amazing writer, but there’s no doubt it can be distracting at times.
Hey, if you like him enough, you ignore it. If you don’t like him, you stop reading.
Isn’t that how it works with any author though? I’ve never read a perfect book, even from my absolute favorites. If the good outweighs the bad, then you keep reading.
And with McCarthy, the good outweighs the bad for most readers. He’s got the awards to prove that. I don’t see him changing anytime soon.
I find your spelling of genius in your description of this man “interesting”. :dubious:
Maybe he’s a sooper genious.
I agree with the OP.
And if he’s such a genius, what the hell is that story stub in “No Country” about the two guys in the black dodge charger (I’m completely guessing on the car, but there is a weird mention of the car and these guys, and I could never figure out who they were or what they meant to the story. I know a few others out here have this question, too.
ETA: didn’t notice it was a dio post. Figures.
I would suspect “most readers” either haven’t read or finished his books.
While double-checking that it wasn’t some strange foreign way of writing the word, I stumbled upon Urban Dictionary’s definition “genious” which I rather like.
This is the sentance that struck me in the first few pages of No Country…
When he was done he got the deputy’s wallet out of his pocket and took the money and put it in the pocket of his shirt and dropped the wallet to the floor. Then he picked up his airtank and the stungun and walked out the door and got into the deputy’s car and started the engine and backed around and pulled out and headed up the road.
[No Country… p6]
I simply cannot see that as competent writing… it’s not the fact it’s a long sentance per se, it’s just so clumsy. I get no sense from that if the character’s hurried, or relaxed, or nervous, or focused… it’s just a list of things the character did, almost like a screenplay. As noted, he has form on this, so it’s not even that he’s trying to show this particular character’s methodical, plodding nature. This is just how he writes.
I get that he’s *trying *to be all sparse and rugged and manly, with no excess verbiage or clutter on the page, but IMO it sounds like a a first-year undergraduate creative writing exercise (“try to be Hemingway or Faulkner”).
Shove a couple of full-stops in and you lose none of the impact and gain a much better sense of rhythm.
No quotation marks either, lots of commas in place of periods, very lengthy multi-clause sentences, and hardly any capitalization.
I had the same problem reading Saramago as I did with McCarthy. For me, both authors required a lot of “work” on my part as the reader. I couldn’t just dive into either book casually, which is the way I prefer to read.
As a result, I was able to finish McCarthy (“No Country for Old Men”) but never made it all the way through Saramago (“Death with Interruptions”).
I can see how others might enjoy that kind of style, but personally, it just wasn’t for me. I may try and read “The Road” at some point because I enjoyed the movie so much, but I doubt I’ll ever touch another Saramago book again.
Calling Cormack McCarthy “incompetent” is simply uneducated.