So I decided to try and read a few high profile contemporary books and started with The Road by Cormac McCarthy and boy I think I may have misfired here. I’m only about 20 pages in but it has been a VERY slow 20 pages because of his writing style. Very little punctuation makes it hard to parse but I’m finding the bigger barrier to be his excessive use of “and”. Huge run on sentences that will have 5+ ands in them.
“I did this and this was happening over there and the sky was blue and Greta was sleeping soundly and there was a street sign pointing towards the orchard and Joe smelled hoagies in the air”
We’ve been taught since grade school not to do that but he clearly doesn’t agree. It’s been really distracting and I’ve had to reread entire passages to confirm that I understand them. I’m losing the forest for the trees.
I had planned on reading this, No Country for Old Men and Blood Meridian but am deflated by the prospect if this is how all of his books are.
What’s the straight dope? Does it start to click at some point? Did you have to soldier thru? Am I just dense?
It’s been a long time since I’ve read the Road but I think it’s got its own idiosyncrasies not in his other books. I think Blood Meridian is harder, big long descriptive paragraphs but it has more consistent punctuation than the Road. Lots of archaic words, full conversations in Spanish with no translation except your own potential knowledge or context clues. Some of these are not works you can easily read with e.g. kids around.
Fair point. Maybe I should have phrased it differently. I guess what I’m saying is I feel like I’m bouncing off of the book because the writing style doesn’t seem to be compatible with my feeble brain. I’m wondering if others had this same difficulty but powered thru and it clicked later. I hate missing out on good stories because of style disconnects.
I find that reading some criticism, analysis, etc. of a particular work, very helpful. I love wordy literature, such as in the 19th Century but postmodernism gives me a headache. But reading a critic’s take gives me a sort of roadmap of the novel. However, be prepared for spoilers if you do that. Not really reading on casual lever, though, is it? We all want to just dive in and understand it and enjoy a book. I like Cormac, but The Road is quite brutal in parts. However, the relationship between the 2 characters is what makes it for me, bc even in a horrible situation, our relationships keep us human.
Well I feel a little better. There is an entire section on his Wikipedia page about the exact syntax issue I’m struggling with so I guess it’s not just me.
Now I’m seeing that this style is prevalent in other “prestige” authors like Hemingway and The Bible.
Maybe the subject of this thread should be changed to “ Polysyndetic syntax. Ouch
Some writers are very easy to read; others can be challenging, either because of their stylistic affectation, the density of the subtext, or just awkward prose. Personally, I found Cormac McCarthy a bit tiresome even though I was interested in the story of The Road. I’ve also never been able to make it through Ulysses despite the manifest praise it gets, and I will probably never take another stab at Foucault’s Pendulum. I struggled with Catch-22 the first time I read it but Joseph Heller eventually became one of my favorite authors.
I don’t know who actually enjoys James Fenimore Cooper, but his grasp of history and Native American culture is so terrible, even by the standards of the day, I find him unreadable even beyond just how tortured his script is.
Hmm, must be preference.
I’m not a big reader (<1 book per year if I’m lucky) however this one grabbed me right away and, like they say, I couldn’t put it down.
I haven’t tried any of his other books though.
The Road is significantly more accessible than Blood Meridian or Outer Dark, the other two McCarthy novels I’ve read. He’s definitely harder to get into than the median author, and if you’re not into the Road I’d look for something more your taste.
I may be over the hump. I just got thru his last memory of his wife and that was gripping. And depressing.
I think I’ve realized that his writing is better read quickly and absorbing the entire scene at once vs trying to process each sentence or paragraph like more typical writing. I dunno if that makes sense or not but that’s what seems to be working for me now.
All the Pretty Horses is probably his most accessible work and a good entry point. Really enjoyed that and The Crossing but haven’t finished the Border trilogy yet because the two protagonists seem like different people in the third installment. I agree with Andy’s comment that Blood Meridien is one of the best novels I’ve read; I had dreams about it after finishing. Currently working my way through his final novel The Passenger, which is challenging in that every chapter alternates POV between the protagonist and his sister, who is either schizophrenic or possessed or possibly an alien, in any case all you get is the dialogue of her hallucinations. I guess it beats whole pages in Spanish.
Sure McCarthy is an acquired taste, but in the scope of things a few extra ‘ands’ in a sentence hardly signify when compared to reading, say, Finnegan’s Wake.
I’ve only read his No Country for Old Men, so can’t directly answer the OP.
I did not find the writing style difficult. There is a lot of internal mental dialog as we ride around in the heads of the various players. Some of which is run-on (just like our own real mental dialog), but I found it not nearly as bad as the OP describes from The Road.
I too have little patience for deliberately difficult styles and did not find No Country for Old Men off-putting.
Quick update. I definitely powered thru and got adjusted. Still some awkward passages where it’s tough to be sure exactly who is talking on the first pass or when the physical location of the characters changes but I’m 180 pages into The Road now and it’s great.
