Writer: Cormac McCarthy

  I find that knowing something of the writer's background is helpful for me in understanding their work. I should have been a historian, I tend towards categorizing writers not by personality but historical epoch. One thing wholly lacking in prison is information. The federal Bureau of Prisons is quite terrified of the internet, so no Google. This lack of information aids in infantilizing prisoners. This is part of a series of writers that I did look up when I got internet access. Some will be about the writer, and others may feature the writer. I went to YouTube for my main source, but others will also include some other material relating to the book or author discussed. One thing I did not have when younger was access to information about how writers wrote. I think that kept me from understanding the actual work, which, in turn, led me away from writing.

 I began reading Cormac McCarthy because Joel C said I should. I knew of McCarthy from No Country For Old Men (the film), but Joel had me start with Blood Meridian. I then went on to read The Road, No Country For Old Men, and The Border Trilogy. I will not say that he is the greatest American novelist, as one video does below. He is his own thing. And that is what makes him important in my opinion: he goes about doing things his way. He also makes it work. I suspect there was much work put into the writing - including thoughtful purpose.

My other posts touching on Cormac McCarthy are here.

About the videos below, I learned some things I could not have learned about McCarthy while in prison - prisons limit, even cripple, the means of getting information. The Bureau of Prisons had a fear of Google and Wikipedia, so no internet access. I note the points where these videos informed me about McCarthy and about writing.

From a Yale literature lecture, 17. Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

and the next session:

As good an explanation of Blood Meridian's ending as I think we will hear unless something surfaces from McCarthy himself. My take had been that The Judge absorbed The Kid. See, probably not the best interpretation to a very strange ending.

If I may suggest a takeaway from this video - it would be to pay attention to the reference to A Rose for Emily. Clarity may not be the best ending. Reality is not rarely clear, so why should fiction. What is important is what I find scariest - The Judge walks out from the outhouse.

I found this video interesting is two-fold. First, the interplay between the criticism of the critic. I come down on the side against the critic. There are arguments that can be made about McCarthy's prose without taking sentences out of context. I think the best comment I have heard so far about McCarthy's style is that he took Faulkner and Southern Gothic and went to New Mexico with it. As much as I have read and liked Theodore Dreiser, his style is not preferable to Cormac McCarthy.

What else is that I think what McCarthy shares with Melville is the King James Bible and Shakespeare. Years ago, while watching a Boyd Crowder scene in Justified, it came back to me how influential the King James Bible was to American speech and writing and thinking. The King James Bible and Shakespeare share a section of time in English culture. I think the video misses this point.

This video is about an hour long. That's a fair warning, but it is worth the time. The presenter is Colin Shanafelt, Professor of English, (Austin, Texas). He put the actual text on the screen; it is done in that kind of detail. Thankfully, it is not boring. My key takeaway is McCarthy's use of verbs for description, his attention to detail, and imagery. Three areas in which I do not excel.

This video is a sequel of sorts to the one about Blood Meridian's ending; not as detailed or focused about McCarthy's prose. It does an interesting job of discussing the novel's imagery.

I think this post has also grown too long, so I will end it here with this: read Cormac McCarthy, for with all of his grimness (which frankly, seems rather romantic when put against Joyce Carol Oates) there is much to be learned from him about America and about American writing.

sch 7/18