[HN Gopher] Early Cormac McCarthy Interviews Rediscovered
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Early Cormac McCarthy Interviews Rediscovered
Author : samclemens
Score : 79 points
Date : 2022-10-01 04:30 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| Holy shit, McCarthy has a new novel coming out Oct 25! Mark the
| day guys.
| rspeele wrote:
| I read post after post of gushing praise for Cormac McCarthy, so
| I bought _The Road_ on Kindle a few years ago. A few pages in I
| wished I had bought a hardcopy -- the e-book seemed to have been
| badly OCRed, and was missing most of the punctuation and a few of
| the spaces.
|
| Another few pages later, I looked up whether other people had the
| same problem. I was surprised to find that there was no issue
| with the Kindle copy. That's just how McCarthy writes. Although
| it's no secret, most people don't mention it -- somehow it had
| never come up in any of the glowing reviews I'd read. It's not
| been mentioned in any of the 30-ish comments in this thread so
| far.
|
| Now, it's a little thing, so it shouldn't bug me so much. But it
| did.
|
| When I read a work of fiction, I do not want to be thinking about
| _the writer_ or his stylistic choices. My brain 's little
| imagination engine should be cranking away, running the
| projector, imagining the characters speaking, moving, thinking,
| and feeling. Words from the page flow into it like fuel.
|
| With McCarthy, the engine would snarl and grind every time I hit
| some ugly looking naked contraction like "werent" or "didnt", or
| a bit of unquoted dialog that I didn't realize was a character
| speaking until the end of the sentence. The projector skipped a
| frame, and for that moment I was no longer thinking of "The Man"
| or "The Boy", but involuntarily thinking of "The Author" and his
| smug need to be special, to remind me of his presence, to prove
| that the rules of language are beneath him.
|
| Ironically, the justifications I have read for this style are
| that it's _supposed_ to flow more naturally. Apparently
| punctuation is unnecessary, baroque, and only slows the reader
| down. Perhaps many readers agree with that, but I don 't. I've
| spent most of my life reading English that was written according
| to standard rules of grammar, so it parses readily. McCarthy's
| "house rules" grammar does not.
|
| That all leaves a question. I finished _The Road_ and found it to
| be OK. Would I have _loved_ it, had it been written in
| conventional style? Still probably not. But at least I wouldn 't
| be annoyed at the author.
| piyh wrote:
| The thing that stuck with me after reading The Road was the
| crushing sadness. I finished the book on my honeymoon at
| midnight and cried for a long time.
| asdfqweqe12 wrote:
| You got filtered.
| mellosouls wrote:
| Your "meta" criticism is fair, and it's something I would
| normally bridle at as well, but in McCarthy's case, it just has
| me hooked, though it takes a while to get into the flow.
|
| In a less artificial way you could say the same about any
| writing that reads as non-standard, for instance it took me a
| long time to appreciate Shakespeare coming from a familiarity
| with modern English, but eventually I got it and it was life-
| changing.
|
| Obviously in McCarthy's case there is a "problem" of intent,
| but I think if you can replace your suspicion with an
| assumption of artistic good faith, you may be able to relax
| into the flow more easily.
| rspeele wrote:
| I believe you hit the nail on the head with the whole problem
| of intent thing. I can enjoy reading antiquated works written
| in antiquated style, like Shakespeare, because I know that
| they were made in an effective way for the time. I get over
| it, I get used to it, I move on. Kind of similar to watching
| a black & white movie, for example Dr. Strangelove is one of
| my favorite movies of all time and it doesn't need to be
| colorized or remade. Even a movie made in B&W after color
| became standard, like Schindler's List, I can understand the
| effect the creators are going for. But if somebody came out
| with a movie where they did something wacky like _invert_ all
| the colors for no apparent reason, I would find it annoying
| and distracting.
|
| It does lead to a fun hypothetical. If Cormac McCarthy was a
| dead author from the nth century, and his writing style was
| the way _everybody_ wrote in the nth century, I wouldn 't
| hold it against him. I would probably be able to get used to
| it, and quit muttering "this son of a bitch" aloud every two
| pages. Although I still doubt I would be a huge fan, I likely
| would be more appreciative of his work than I am now. But it
| would be exactly the same work, the same letters on the page.
| Why should the context change make any difference at all?
|
| So maybe that just makes me petty. But even if so, I can't
| argue myself into enjoying something I don't enjoy.
| jasonladuke0311 wrote:
| You should avoid House of Leaves at all costs.
| x-sp wrote:
| https://archive.ph/7lhHN
| jansan wrote:
| Why is it coming up now? Does he finally have a chance to win the
| Nobel Prize in Literature?
| voisin wrote:
| He has two books coming out, one this month and one next. First
| books since 2006 I believe.
| random42_ wrote:
| Probably because he's got two new books coming out this year:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/08/books/cormac-mccarthy-new...
| oxfeed65261 wrote:
| FTA:
|
| 'The find [of the early interviews] comes as McCarthy is
| preparing to publish two new intertwined novels, "The
| Passenger" and "Stella Maris" -- his first since 2006, when he
| released "The Road," a best seller that won the Pulitzer Prize.
|
| 'McCarthy will give no interviews in conjunction with their
| release. Instead, here is a look back at a less guarded time in
| his life.'
| mellosouls wrote:
| _Blood Meridian_ is worth a Nobel on it 's own, I've often
| wondered why he's never received it, he's distinctive and
| mesmerising at his best.
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| Same, maybe BM is just too... pulp genre-wise somehow? Or too
| cruel while being fictional and Nobel tolerates cruelty when
| it's based on true events?
| mellosouls wrote:
| I think it has some basis in real events and characters, eg
| The Judge was real (though obviously somewhat reimagined
| here).
| random42_ wrote:
| The Glanton Gang was also real:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Joel_Glanton
| sn41 wrote:
| I first heard of Cormac McCarthy when Harold Bloom raved about
| his "Blood Meridian". I am sorry to say this, I was not moved by
| Cormac McCarthy. I read "All the Pale Horses", and "No Country
| for Old Men". I started reading "Blood Meridian", but there was a
| gruesome scene involving infants. I never saw the point of Judge
| Holden, even though in my mind, I kept visualizing him being
| played by Daniel Day-Lewis. My plan is to read "Cities of the
| Plain" and "Outer Dark" - they are poetic titles, but I wonder
| whether I should spend the time.
| ne8il wrote:
| I think you will find those two novels similar to his other
| work. Also, there is a book in the Border Trilogy between "All
| the Pretty Horses" and "Cities of the Plain" - "The Crossing".
|
| "Suttree" doesn't come up as often as his other work but is my
| personal favorite. There are some darker moments but it's a
| very funny book - a lot of "Charles Portis"-esque conversations
| and encounters.
| johnvaluk wrote:
| Blood Meridian left me with the feeling that Judge Holden was
| originally multiple characters turned into a composite to serve
| as a narrative device and metaphor. I think I would have
| enjoyed the book more if it had been a straightforward odyssey
| of the kid, involving the many people and situations he
| encountered along the way. Using the Judge as a thematic binder
| sort of ruined it for me.
| CPLX wrote:
| There's a lot of interpretations and I don't know if he's
| ever endorsed one, but I see the judge as a general
| representation of a concept I'd describe loosely as
| capitalism, or the Industrial Revolution, or western
| technological progress in general.
|
| He's the embodiment of a force that just overtops and
| envelops everything in its path. It's doesn't even make sense
| to consider him moral or immoral or amoral (as many do when
| considering him a stand in for the devil) but more as a force
| that just transcends morality completely and makes it
| irrelevant, a force that has no other purpose but to expand
| and consume resources, indifferent to death or convention or
| tradition. A force that never sleeps.
|
| I think the scene where he calmly ignores the Indian attack
| while making explosives is probably the most literal example
| but the theme runs through his character.
| narrator wrote:
| Everyone loves "The Road", but more than half the book is the kid
| saying he's scared, hungry, or cold and dad saying it's going to
| be ok. The repetition gets ridiculous.
| pavlov wrote:
| Life with children is often repetitive and you find yourself
| reverting to the same old platitudes and patterns. So at least
| it's realistic?
| Eumenes wrote:
| Agreed, fortunately its a short book. Has me on the fence about
| reading Blood Meridian.
| beowulfey wrote:
| Definitely give it a try. Blood Meridian is like no other
| book. Definitely not repetitive!
| erokar wrote:
| I agree. While it certainly contains good writing that book is
| also mannered and sentimental, my least favourite of his.
| kekkidy wrote:
| [deleted]
| karaterobot wrote:
| I got a few paragraphs into the article and realized that I feel
| weird about reading an article that oriented around sharing
| inconsequential private details he probably regrets divulging
| decades ago. I don't need to know about his private life to
| appreciate his books. I think it's fine for scholars to dig this
| stuff up and record it, but I don't need to read about it.
| marttt wrote:
| +1, I was thinking the same thing, even though I am definitely
| and eagerly going to read the research paper on McCarthy's
| rediscovered interviews. There was a beauty in his reluctance
| to give interviews; I admit having spent _a lot_ of time years
| ago to track down stuff that would shed some light on his
| personality and the rationale behind his punctuation style.
| And, I felt kind of happy to realize that I have to make most
| of the conclusions myself.
|
| I liked the image of Cormac McCarthy the recluse, but oh well.
|
| In the age of digital archives, there's no "right to be
| forgotten" for geniuses, I guess.
| lqet wrote:
| One of my favorite authors. If you haven't read anything of him,
| start with "The Road" and "Child of God", they are quite
| accessible and highly thrilling (I also strongly suspect that
| Patrick Suskind read "Child of God" before he wrote "Perfume:
| Story of a Murderer").
|
| "No Country For Old Men" is also a great book. A bit more
| challenging, but a beautiful read: "All the Pretty Horses".
| "Blood Meridian" is simply in another league and one of the best
| novels of the past century. It also contains one of the greatest
| characters _ever_ , Judge Holden [0] He wafts his
| hat and the lunar dome of his skull passes palely under the lamps
| and he swings about and takes possession of one of the fiddles
| and he pirouettes and makes a pass, two passes, dancing and
| fiddling at once. His feet are light and nimble. He never sleeps.
| He says that he will never die. He dances in light and in shadow
| and he is a great favorite. He never sleeps, the judge. He is
| dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judge_Holden
| mjrbrennan wrote:
| Love Cormac as well he is also one of my favourite authors.
| That Judge passage is also one of my favourite passages in
| literature, alongside the ending of The Road which I have
| framed with a technical drawing of a brook trout:
| Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains.
| You could see them standing in the amber current where the
| white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They
| smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and
| torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were
| maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing
| which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the
| deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and
| they hummed of mystery.
|
| Just finished Cities of the Plain after reading the rest of the
| border trilogy and not being that impressed, but this one
| absolutely floored me and I shed tears at the end. Will need to
| go back and read all three in quick succession at some point.
|
| Still really need to read Child of God.
| williamcotton wrote:
| His prose is just immaculate. Do yourself a favor and read
| the above passage out loud. It has a driving rhythm. What's
| amazing is that he maintains the beat for entire novels.
| bmj wrote:
| Have you spent any time in the southwest United States? Those
| books hit me a particular way after many trips to west Texas,
| New Mexico, and Arizona. McCarthy has a way of capturing that
| landscape....
| mjrbrennan wrote:
| No I've never been to the states, I've always wanted to
| though. I want to visit so many states since America has
| such a huge cultural influence on me especially my fiction,
| but I live in Australia so it's kind of impractical. Can't
| wait to get there some day!
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| Blood Meridian is like a poem, that is movie but in a form of a
| sculpture and in prose.
| mtalantikite wrote:
| Maybe it's just because it was the order I read his work in,
| but I'd start with "Blood Meridian". It's just beyond so many
| other books out there. Same with the Border Trilogy.
|
| I'm coincidentally reading "The Road" right now for the first
| time -- somehow I never made it to it over the years -- and
| honestly I'm not sure I'd have gone into the rest of his work
| so deeply if I had started with it. Same with "Suttree".
| They're good, but "Blood Meridian" and the Border Trilogy I
| barely took breaks from while reading. Just plowed through them
| front to back. When I got to the end of "Blood Meridian" I just
| started at the front again. No need for a warm up, just jump
| right in to some of the best literature you'll ever encounter.
| Keblo wrote:
| Child of God is an easier read than Blood Meridian, and acts
| as a pretty good way to get used to his minimalist
| punctuation
| mtalantikite wrote:
| Sure, though my point is that I read Blood Meridian first
| and didn't find it all that hard to get into. It's just so
| good you'll give it your full attention and effort. Had I
| started with Suttree or The Road I may have just given up
| and not gotten to Blood Meridian at all. I put both of
| those books down for significant periods of time. I'm
| trying to finish The Road right now.
|
| I actually found "All the Pretty Horses" to be the harder
| read, since he'll just write full dialogues in Spanish, and
| it's not just a couple of times, it happens often (my
| Spanish is just ok, enough to survive traveling in latin
| america).
| ta20211004_1 wrote:
| Ok that passage from Blood Meridian is obviously great, but
| posting it out of context like this makes my skin crawl! It's
| almost a spoiler. Without knowing the preceding events, and the
| general way in which the story is grounded in reality, the
| otherworldliness of this passage is totally out of context!
|
| That's my 2c.
| ak39 wrote:
| Thanks for this. I have yet to read Blood Meridian. I have read
| The Road and NCFOM. Both were great and absorbing reads. But I
| have one major gripe with CM (if I am allowed to do so). It's
| not his style - in fact it's his unique and great style of
| writing that would make anyone forget about what I'm going to
| say.
|
| My problem with CM: his themes of post-apocalyptic, desperate
| humanity at war with itself and the singular savagery of ONE
| man against all - takes the assumed position that humans by
| nature (generally, of course) will almost always reduce to
| selfish savagery even to the point of normalising cannibalism.
| Of course, he needed to create this assumed backdrop for many
| of his stories (eg The Road needed this literally visceral
| danger for a father to demonstrate his instinctive protection
| for his only son) but CM's imagined scenario of a society
| that's eating itself is far from real evidence we have seen of
| humans. Real evidence shows that during catastrophic moments
| like earthquakes and prolonged famine and even war, human
| societies have shown remarkable strength to save and to protect
| and to help one another, sometimes at great individual
| sacrifice.
|
| I know you can't criticise a work of fiction this way, an
| author is entitled his artistic philosophy and outlook. But
| when the writing is so masterful, when the rest of the
| philosophies of the stories are so elevated and cerebrally
| engaging, one can't help but find the story of humans
| cultivating others for food jarring and out of place.
|
| (This is my first "criticism" of any work of literature.)
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > post-apocalyptic, desperate humanity at war with itself and
| the singular savagery
|
| If you were to show me that phrase and ask which book matches
| it most closely, I would have to say "Blood Meridian". It's a
| singular work. Texas-Mexico border area, 1850s. It's
| definitely post-apocalyptic, the aftermath of an invasion of
| technologically sophisticated but genocidally savage aliens
| ... for the native Americans.
| defen wrote:
| It's also worth noting that for Blood Meridian, McCarthy
| learned Spanish and did five years of historical research
| with his MacArthur award money. The broad strokes of the
| story are true - there really was a group of scalp hunters
| who went rogue, raping and murdering the people they had
| been hired to protect.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Any historical "invasion of technologically sophisticated
| aliens" in the time period blood meridian is set in
| happened centuries before. It's actually near a zenith of
| native political and military power. Spain is gone, Mexico
| is struggling to build a government, and the US hasn't yet
| become a dominant power in the region.
|
| Blood meridian is a book I often recommend as an
| approachable introduction to what people experiencing the
| period might have thought, but framing the context is
| somewhat important.
| jnsie wrote:
| > Real evidence shows that during catastrophic moments like
| earthquakes and prolonged famine and even war, human
| societies have shown remarkable strength to save and to
| protect and to help one another, sometimes at great
| individual sacrifice.
|
| I find it hard to agree with this after COVID showed that a
| substantial portion of the US and global population weren't
| willing to wear masks to protect their fellow man and life
| saving vaccines were purposefully politicized. I also think
| that post apocalyptic novels typically live in a world where
| traditional power structures have been abandoned/destroyed
| and individualism is necessary for survival so I'm not sure
| one can draw a parallel between typical catastrophes and
| apocalyptic events.
| brudgers wrote:
| At the end of The Road, there are The Good Guys.
|
| It is an allegory of fathers and sons.
| kamranjon wrote:
| I highly recommend Suttree, which is much less in that post-
| apocalyptic vein. It's incredibly humanistic and funny and I
| think it's his best work. It still has his incredible command
| of the English language and sequences of just absolutely
| beautiful prose, and in some ways it can be quite devastating
| but it's much more balanced with the endearing parts of
| humanity I think.
| whiddershins wrote:
| I second Suttree. I love the preface so much I memorized
| most of it.
| everybodyknows wrote:
| _Suttree_ is an early work, and said to be heavily
| autobiographical. I read it as a key to understanding
| McCarthy 's view of the world, being essentially tragic.
|
| I'd suggest there's a similar identification between the
| author and the Kid of _Blood Meridian_.
|
| What McCarthy thinks of Melville's _Moby Dick_ I have not
| heard, but for the reader anyway, there 's a rich cross-
| fertilization. Both of ideas -- being a pawn within a
| monstrous, doomed enterprise -- and of technique, as with
| the cryptic oracles of catastrophe who say their piece
| and then vanish from the narrative.
| somenameforme wrote:
| With good authors, I would always keep metaphor in mind. In
| the case of The Road, I think what you're hitting on arguably
| the single most critical question the book asks: do we
| cooperate because we're benevolent, or do we cooperate
| because we're selfish and cooperation furthers our own
| interests?
|
| When working together is clearly beneficial, not cooperating
| is simply illogical. But what happens when cooperation is not
| only not clearly beneficial, but may even be actively
| detrimental? What happens if you're starving to death, and
| you see a weaker man who has enough, barely enough, to feed
| himself approaching? And that is all there is?
|
| Adding a notion of a child, of the future itself, into the
| picture makes it all the more difficult.
| jjulius wrote:
| >... CM's imagined scenario of a society that's eating itself
| is far from real evidence we have seen of humans. Real
| evidence shows that during catastrophic moments like
| earthquakes and prolonged famine and even war, human
| societies have shown remarkable strength to save and to
| protect and to help one another, sometimes at great
| individual sacrifice.
|
| This is very tangential, but this is one of the reasons I
| could never get into The Walking Dead and similar shows. It
| was _really_ hard for me to suspend my disbelief there.
| tmountain wrote:
| Some of this is in the service of making commentary on
| broader topics. I view Blood Meridian as a treatise on the
| horrific nature of war. McCarthy accomplishes this via an
| endlessly gruesome tale, but the underlying message couldn't
| be more clear.
| afpx wrote:
| For real evidence of Humanity's cruelty: Read Pinker's
| "Better Angels". Luckily, we're trending upward.
| krelian wrote:
| The Road is his only post-apocalyptic novel, it's not really
| a theme of his.
|
| The potential for savagery, how easy it is for some to take a
| human life or completely disregard it _is_ a theme that runs
| in many of his novels. In a post-apocalyptic scenario like in
| The Road, where _everyone_ is literally scavenging for their
| lives you can bet your ass life will become a horror show.
| Not for everyone, not anywhere, but for enough people to
| determine that it is part of human nature just a much as
| extending help to one another.
|
| To me CM's work explores the duality of beauty (in the most
| expansive sense of the word) and tragedy that exists in the
| world.
|
| I recommend All the Pretty Horses if you want something less
| intense than The Road or Blood Meridian but no less powerful.
| One my favorite quotes:
|
| _"He thought that in the beauty of the world were hid a
| secret. He thought that the world's heart beat at some
| terrible cost and that the world's pain and its beauty moved
| in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this
| headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be
| exacted for the vision of a single flower."_
| tablespoon wrote:
| > ...but CM's imagined scenario of a society that's eating
| itself is far from real evidence we have seen of humans. Real
| evidence shows that during catastrophic moments like
| earthquakes and prolonged famine and even war, human
| societies have shown remarkable strength to save and to
| protect and to help one another, sometimes at great
| individual sacrifice.
|
| I've literally only read the Cliff's Notes version of The
| Road, but the scenario it describes seems far bleaker,
| prolonged, and hopeless than any historical event you might
| look for as precedent. It seems quite plausible that what the
| book describes is _after_ some people tried to pull together
| in some feel-good way, and then failed and fell apart again
| because it wasn 't going to work.
| marttt wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this. Link to the paper mentioned in the NYT
| story, "Cormac McCarthy's Interviews in Tennessee and Kentucky,
| 1968-1980" (The Cormac McCarthy Journal (2022) 20 (2): 108-135;
| free access):
| https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/psup/cormac-mccart...
|
| To me, Cormac McCarthy has an incredibly good sense of how people
| actually speak. As a side note, same thing was also said
| somewhere about Quentin Tarantino -- as one of the most relevant
| reasons why his movies are "cult".
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