I got all excited when I read the other thread about books and saw how people (Ron D., Harms, Green, Rob, Chick, and R. Dulin) were going nuts over Cormac McCarthy, even going so far as to call him a "fricken genius." I love finding great writers I haven't read before. So I went out and found Blood Meridian. Unfortunately, what I got looks and sounds a lot like some really bad writing. Just flat-out awful.

In the Wumpusian style of putting HTML where my arguments should be, I'm just going to point out that I found a great article from a recent Atlantic Monthly where someone basically calls out Cormac McCarthy (and several other authors, including Annie Proulx) for, well ... bad writing. And even better -- it's also online. I was going to excerpt a paragraph but it would be awkward and long since it frequently cites quotations. Anyway, it's all good.

From Atlantic Monthly, Jul/Aug 2001, "A Reader's Manifesto"

I never really liked McCarthy either. I read All the Pretty Horses, and was like "whatever, the guy thinks hes Faulkner". And he likes to show off. At least Marquez had a sense of indebted influence from Kafka to Faulkner and Borges. Maybe its a national thing, american writers like to prove themseleves, generally speaking.

I particularly am biased though since the most authors ive read of "contemporary" and "serious" literature is like Delillo (didnt like his stuff after Mao2), Marquez etc. the big guys. Annie Proulx i read a few of her short stories, seems like a ripoff of the ashbury NY school of poets in story form... boring, though i like ashbury!

What i think people fail to see from Faulkner (an obvious great writer), and using him as an influence, is he had a heart for his characters goddamnit! these so called "literary college" writers are basically talking to themselves imo. but again, im not well read enough in contermporary authors.

basically im lazy.

etc

HAHA this is the best article i've ever read about contemporary modern literature (and why i dont read it!) This guys awesome! Thanks for the link Bruce! I like this quote,

And so on. To anyone who calls that excruciating, DeLillo might well
respond, "That's my whole point! This is communication in
Consumerland!" It isn't unlikely, considering how the dialogue loses its
logic halfway through, that the whole thing was written only to be
skimmed anyway. Like the bursts of brand names that occur
throughout the text ("Tegrin, Denorex, Selsun Blue"), this is more
evidence of DeLillo's belief�apparently shared by Mark Leyner,
Brett Easton Ellis, and others�that writing trite and diffuse prose is a
brilliant way to capture the trite and diffuse nature of modern life.

But why should we bother with Consumerland fiction at all, if the
effect of reading it is the same queasy fatigue we can get from an
evening of channel-surfing? Do we need writers like DeLillo for their
insight, which rarely rises above the level of "some people put on a
uniform and feel bigger"?

heeehaw! too good to be true imo!

etc

hehe this article is so damn funny, you all have to read it... it makes a good statement as well on the state of "literature", particularly contemporary american literature. I've had the same thoughts since college and being reccomended these same authors by arty friends. hehe good stuff!

Though i think Delillo is slammed a bit. His 80's novel do have a zeitgeist undercurrent to them, and although they dont have anything startling to say about modern life in general. They do give us a perspective of a chaotic media influenced world of junk, not exactly "fun" reading but telling of our countries excesses etc. Delillo does have a way of making mementos of modern life seem eerily evil imo. Though the same could be said of Stephen King! And i liked Stephen Kings early stuff!

etc

>Unfortunately, what I got looks and sounds a lot like some really bad writing. Just flat-out awful.

I'm sorry you feel that way, Bruce, but I respectively disagree. I think McCarthy is a fantastic writer; Blood Meridian is one of the best books I've ever read.

As for the article, I don't put much stock into articles like the one you linked to. (And for the record, I really don't put much stock into what literary critics say either.) It seems like a lot of angry jibber-jabber and I don't give it much thought.

>these so called "literary college" writers are basically talking to themselves imo.

That statement definitely does not apply to McCarthy; he published his first book in 1965. In fact, before the publication of All the Pretty Horses, his books didn't sell worth a damn and he was usually dirt poor. Not exactly the kind of fella that can be lumped in with "literary college" writers.

I only read All the Pretty Horses, and I think the author of that Atlantic Monthly article says that McCarthy's 1965 book is well above any of his later books, all in his opinion of course.

I sorta, not completely, agree with the Atlantic Monthly article... its really another literary article about low brow, high brow... and why are these writers "literature" when a Stephen King and Michael Chrichton can run circles with "better" understood sentences then them. The writer of the article, Myers?, is basically saying this,

"Many readers wrestle with only one bad book before concluding that they are too dumb to enjoy anything "challenging." Their first foray into
literature shouldn't have to end, for lack of better advice, on the third page of something like Underworld. At the very least, the critics could start toning down their hyperbole. How better to ensure that Faulkner and Melville remain unread by the young than to invoke their names in praise of some new bore every week? How better to discourage clear and honest self-expression than to call Annie Proulx�as Carolyn See did in The Washington Post�"the best prose stylist working in English now, bar none"? "

I dont agree completely, but from my experience of reading some of these novels, i was expecting less literary glitz and more substance. And there is a literary elitist attitude. I remember in my first year college english lit class naming Chrichton as one of my fave authors (at the time). My teacher thought it bad taste. I told her i liked his simple style and his stories, what else do you need?

etc

The elegance of simplicity is lost on a lot of entertainment media including books, film and games. A broad generalization maybe, but one I'm constantly reminded of when playing overly convoluted games or reading overly wordy articles like Bruce's analysis of Reach for the Stars.

Zing!

--Dave

That article has stirred up quite a controversy, including responses from many well-known writers and thinkers. One particularly good response appeared in the NY Times Book Review a few weeks ago --

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/09/books/review/09SHULEVT.html

-- in which Judith Shulevitz accuses Myers of not having "a sure grasp of the world he's attacking" and of "two weaknesses fatal to a critic: a tin ear and the lack of a sense of humor."

His criticism of Delillo seems pointless. Delillo is doing exactly what we want our great writers to do. Cormar McCarthy has written wonderful books and not so wonderful books. This is not news.

I also love her closing line about Myers:

"Hating indiscriminately is a greater sin than loving too much."

It should also be said that while you're entitled to feel, of Blood Meridian, that:

"what I got looks and sounds a lot like some really bad writing. Just flat-out awful."

But there are many, many people (including me) who consider the book one of our modern masterpieces. To me it's like Henry James. I had a hard time getting started with him, but once I had ... Jesus.

Harold Bloom, a very hard man to please, considers it to be "as close ... to being the American prose epic as one can find"

Bloom on Booknotes:
"Oh, I teach it steadily in a course called How to Read and Why, so I must have read it by now--since I re-read everything I really care for--20 or 30 times. Probably I have it memorized by now. But it's fascinating to me that you ask that, Brian, because the first two times that I read it, I could not read it. And I admit this to my
students and I admit that in this book. I broke down--I don't know what--after 15 or 20 pages the first time and after 70 or 80 pages the
second, because the sheer carnage of it, though it is intensely stylized, is nevertheless overwhelming. It's--it's--it's shocking.
It's--it's horrifying. And it takes a very strong stomach, but if you break through it, if you--if you read your way into the cosmos of the
book, then you are rewarded. You get an extraordinary landscape. You get an extraordinary visionary intensity of personality and character.
You get a great vision, a frightening vision of what is indeed something very deeply embedded in the American spirit, in the American psyche. And the more you read the book, I find, the more you will be able to read the book. It is--it's as close, I think, to being the American prose epic as one can find, more perhaps even than Faulkner,
though there are individual books by Faulkner like "As I Lay Dying," which are perhaps of even higher aesthetic quality and originality
than "Blood Meridian." But I think you would have to go back to "Moby Dick" for an American epic that fully compares to "Blood Meridian."

(I haven't read any Cormac McCarthy.)

I would hazard a guess that only a writer doing something right, maybe even brilliant, after a fashion, could elicit such debate.

Dickens was considered a hack once, y'know, by the literati, I mean.

-Andrew

What do you mean "once" ?? :) It's too bad, people hate sentimentality so much it ruins Dickens for them. There are societies that exist just to defend Dickens!