[HN Gopher] Cormac McCarthy's Sideline: Freelance copy editor
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Cormac McCarthy's Sideline: Freelance copy editor
Author : samclemens
Score : 46 points
Date : 2024-02-27 01:05 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.millersbookreview.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.millersbookreview.com)
| brudgers wrote:
| I am reminded, when something doesn't make sense to me -- the
| relationship between McCarthy and the Santa Fe Institute -- I
| have collapsed someone's entire day to day experience into a
| short phrase.
|
| McCarthy did not leverage acclaim into Hollywood work like
| Faulkner. He worked with people who appreciated his skills
| directly.
|
| McCarthy had a day job. That makes sense. My unease with
| imagining his playing celebrity was worthy.
| scop wrote:
| One of the funny things about McCarthy is how he is associated
| with minimalism. It forces you to really think about what
| "minimalism" means. While his punctuation is minimal, his writing
| is not "short". But his writing is _distilled_. As the article
| notes, while he has less punctuation than Faulkner he has double
| the words per mark. How can a writer be minimal when his
| sentences are longer? It 's easy to see when you read him: he
| paints an image so vividly (even when the image itself is
| unsure/opaque!), that you can hardly imagine adding or removing a
| word.
| scop wrote:
| > On the mountain the limestone shelves and climbs in ragged
| escarpments among the clutching roots of hickories, oaks and
| tulip poplars which even here brace themselves against the
| precarious declination allowed them by the chance drop of a
| seed.
|
| - _The Orchard Keeper_ , pg 11 (his first novel)
|
| For example, one could easily dice this sentence into multiple
| sentences or divide it with a semicolon. Somebody could also
| remove several words. But there is an image so completely
| captured by the sentence, an image in its fullness, that I can
| only admire it.
| logicprog wrote:
| I have very bad brain fog today, so this might be that
| talking, but I don't even know for certain how to parse that
| sentence grammatically. There doesn't seem to be a verb or
| object, only one long extended subject, unless both "shelves"
| and "climbs" are verbs, in which case thats some serious
| Calvin-and-Hobbes verbing, but it works I suppose. In any
| case trying to understand this sentence required several
| read-throughs before I came up with the second explanation,
| and made my headache about two increments worse. I'm not a
| huge fan. It doesn't matter much to me whether writing is
| "difficult" in to sense of having a lot of big words, complex
| sentence structure, or long sentences, but I hate _ambiguous_
| writing.
| scop wrote:
| Nope you're not off. I chose McCarthy's earliest novel
| because it is him at his most "impressionistic" and indeed
| many sentences require multiple read through to determine
| what's being said. But that's the artistic pleasure in it:
| a scene is painted slowly in my mind's eyes that, once
| fully formed/comprehended, is hard to find elsewhere in
| literature. This being art, you are completely free to find
| it off putting and completely ignore it. But I've found
| beauty in McCarthy that is, well, hard to put into words.
| His writing, much like technical documentation, can require
| many readings to get the picture.
| logicprog wrote:
| You know, I think I can actually dig what you're getting
| at! :) It's not really for me, I like a lot more
| immediate clarity in the individual sentences of my
| fiction books, because for larger works like novels
| having to reread sentences feels more to me like being
| tripped up then getting a chance to admire a line of
| poetry or something, but I can totally see where you're
| coming from
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| What you're missing is some context to McCarthy's writing
| which is the specific voice he uses in a book like _Orchard
| Keeper_ (in addition to the plot of course). It 's a
| southern style famously associated with Faulkner and meant
| to mimic the spoken word of regional Southern areas in many
| ways. It helps to read it out loud.
|
| You called it "ambiguous", but McCarthy's writing is often
| extremely verbose, an avalanche of specificity, painting
| extremely evocative landscapes and imagery. Here for
| instance is his famous description of a Comanche sneak
| attack:
|
| > A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or
| clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a
| fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and
| pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior
| owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided
| cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an
| umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained
| wedding veil and some in headgear or cranefeathers or
| rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and
| one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise
| naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador, the
| breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of
| mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very
| bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with
| the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground
| and their horses' ears and tails worked with bits of
| brightly colored cloth and one whose horse's whole head was
| painted crimson red and all the horsemen's faces gaudy and
| grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns,
| death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and
| riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more
| horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian
| reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke
| like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing
| where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.
| logicprog wrote:
| I do like that passage a lot! It jives much better with
| my reader's sensibilities.
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| Surprised to hear he is associated with minimalism. I read half
| of one of his books and it seemed really maximalist
| thematically and narratively. Very gratuitous, flippant,
| unstructured, violent, sexual, etc. Very little subtlety or
| restraint.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| Only some of his books are associated with minimalism in the
| common parlance of the word. A book like _The Road_ or _No
| Country for Old Men_ is wildly more minimalistic than _Blood
| Meridian_ or _Suttree_.
| stvltvs wrote:
| I haven't read every McCarthy novel, but from what I've
| seen, he wrote less flowery prose in his later works.
| kylebenzle wrote:
| I got through most of this but does anyone know why McCarthy
| famously hated punctuation marks and only, "believed in periods,
| capitals, and the occasional comma"?
|
| Everyone makes a big deal of it but is it really just preference
| or is the idea deeper, that like a all the meaning should be
| contained in the words anyway and punctuation is a shortcut?
| idontwantthis wrote:
| His wildest choice to me is using "could of" etc. I get it's
| for pronunciation purposes, but now that it seems on its way to
| replace the correct spelling, it really jarred me.
| hndc wrote:
| Wild? Using it in dialogue seems perfectly reasonable. It's a
| common malapropism.
| cheeseomlit wrote:
| Even in dialogue I would've expected "could've". 'Could of'
| reads more like a typo
| karaterobot wrote:
| I have wondered what McCarthy's actual relationship to science
| was. The article quotes him saying, about his tenure at the Santa
| Fe Institute:
|
| > "I'm here because I like science, and this is a fun place to
| spend time"
|
| I would not have drawn that conclusion from reading his novels,
| or from his essay about _The Kekule Problem_. I took _The
| Passenger_ and _Stella Maris_ to be something like a summary of
| where he, personally, stood at the end of his life, and they both
| seemed to take a more complicated stance on scientific progress.
| _Blood Meridian_ did too. There are plenty of other examples; it
| 's a theme. I don't believe you can fairly draw conclusions about
| what an author believes based on what they put in their books,
| but when a consistent trend emerges over time, it's hard to
| ignore it. I'm not implying that he secretly hated science, I
| just wonder if he didn't appreciate it in a different way than
| you might assume given the quote above. Maybe it's the "progress"
| part of scientific he was cynical about?
| jonnyone wrote:
| Maybe interested in science, but disliked scientism?
| da-bacon wrote:
| I'm surprised you find the Kekule Problem not supporting that
| he liked science. I think of it more as pointing out that the
| unconsciousness has been ignored scientifically, but he
| certainly frames it as a question of science: "The unconscious
| is a biological system before it is anything else. To put it as
| pithily as possibly--and as accurately--the unconscious is a
| machine for operating an animal." "To repeat. The unconscious
| is a biological operative and language is not."
|
| For those who are interested, here is the article
| https://nautil.us/the-kekul-problem-236574/
|
| As you say, Cormac's relationship with science is a bit hard to
| get from his novels. But I also think he really did love
| science, you might enjoy one of the most memorable days during
| the short time I was at the Santa Fe Institute
| https://dabacon.org/babel/2023/06/13/cormac/
| karaterobot wrote:
| I took that essay to be at least in part about how much of
| what we think of as a world governed by symbolic logic is
| really governed by a powerful unconscious world that is
| resistant to the scientific way of thinking. Not to say it is
| magical, but that underneath our modern brain is an older
| brain that works differently. I first read that essay after
| reading _The Passenger_ , and wanted to connect it to what I
| took to be one of the themes of that book, which is that
| humans fundamentally aren't prepared to wield the tools of
| symbolic thinking, math and language. That they tend toward
| destruction (atomic warfare in the book) and, beyond that, a
| kind of insanity. That leads me to think he is fascinated by
| science, but not in the uncomplicated "fuck yeah science!!!"
| way.
| slibhb wrote:
| Worth a watch if you're interested in McCarthy:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrUy1Vn2KdI
|
| The gist is that he liked smart people. He was good friends
| with Murray Gell-Mann and others at The Santa Fe Institute. I
| absolutely think he "liked science," I don't think he was
| cynical about it, though I do see where you could pick that up
| in his writing.
|
| According to Gell-Mann, McCarthy knew a lot about 20th century
| physics...not in terms of math but in a "history of ideas"
| sense, i.e. where major physicists stood on various questions.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > According to Gell-Mann, McCarthy knew a lot about 20th
| century physics...not in terms of math but in a "history of
| ideas" sense, i.e. where major physicists stood on various
| questions.
|
| This really came across in _The Passenger_ and _Stella
| Maris_.
| bobcostas55 wrote:
| From Stella Maris:
|
| >Cantor, Gauss, Riemann, Euler. Hilbert. Poincare. Noether.
| Hypatia. Klein, Minkowski, Turing, von Neumann. Hardly even a
| partial list. Cauchy, Lie, Dedekind, Brouwer. Boole. Peano.
| Church is still alive. Hamilton, Laplace, Lagrange. The
| ancients of course. You look at these names and the work they
| represent and you realize that the annals of latterday
| literature and philosophy by comparison are barren beyond
| description.
|
| If anything, I would say the book suggests he was cynical about
| literature rather than science!
| karaterobot wrote:
| But what about this one:
|
| > You will never know what the world is made of. The only
| thing that's certain is that it's not made of the world. As
| you close upon some mathematical description of reality you
| cant help but lose what is being described. Every inquiry
| displaces what is addressed. A moment in time is a fact, not
| a possibility. The world will take your life. But above all
| and lastly the world does not know that you are here. You
| think that you understand this. But you don't. Not in your
| heart you don't. If you did you would be terrified. And
| you're not. Not yet.
|
| Almost Lovecraftian to me. I don't think he is drawing a
| distinction between literature and science either, they are
| similar in this view of the world. It's more like pre-modern
| vs. modern, not art vs. science.
| beacon294 wrote:
| What is this from?
| defen wrote:
| The Thalidomide Kid, a hallucinated entity in the mind of
| the main character of _The Passenger_
| beacon294 wrote:
| Thanks, I have a copy in eyeshot. I'll pick it up.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| I think he was quite cynical of a totalitarian mindset of
| control and mastery that can rest in the background of the
| scientific "project." Many things that we would generally
| consider horrific by modern standards were considered
| completely reasonable in the past when done "in the name of
| science."
|
| Judge Holden is, after all, the main villain of Blood Meridian,
| and yet he says in a speech:
|
| > Whatever exists, he said. Whatever in creation exists without
| my knowledge exists without my consent. [...] The man who
| believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives
| in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain
| will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself
| the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry
| will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and
| it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to
| dictate the terms of his own fate.
|
| I'm sure many people here would, without understanding the
| context of the quote and his character, identify with that
| quote nonetheless precisely because of what it offers ---
| control and mastery.
| metaxy2 wrote:
| Man, McCarthy's vendetta against semicolons makes sense in his
| hard-bitten Western prose, but does it really make sense to have
| _zero_ semicolons in these nonfiction books? When used properly,
| semicolons reveal a layer of meaning that occurs in natural
| speech: when you have two sentences that are grammatically
| separate sentences but have a link in meaning or make a larger
| point together.
|
| That said, I can't say I would turn down a free copyediting job
| by Cormac McCarthy even if I had to drop all my semicolons in
| exchange.
| farleykr wrote:
| I've noticed that high-performing people often develop
| idiosyncrasies that shape how they do what they do. I wouldn't
| use McCarthy's rules about semicolons as a general rule for any
| writer except maybe as an exercise. Constraints breed
| creativity. I think the number of successful writers who do use
| semicolons validates their usefulness. But I would also argue
| that somehow McCarthy figured out that ditching them was part
| of what allowed him to write as well as he did.
| dhosek wrote:
| McCarthy also was averse to apostrophes and quotation marks.
| I remember when I had my first iPhone thinking that Cormac
| McCarthy would hate how it turned dont into don't.
| munificent wrote:
| I've done a lot of writing in the past decade and I can
| honestly say I've never felt the need for a semicolon. I think
| writers overestimate the finality of a period. If one sentence
| follows another, readers will understand the implicit
| connection between them. After all, you put them next to each
| other.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| Once you write enough you realize most of these all or nothing
| pronouncements on grammar and punctuation are more like
| personal vendettas and affectations. Semicolons should always
| be in your toolbelt; they can elevate a sentence's elegance and
| grace, improve and control the rhythm and clarity, and really
| improve readability.
|
| Some people think all non-fiction writing has to abide by
| technical writing standards, but that's hogwash and pointless
| hardheadedness _once you actually know how to write and use
| complex sentences to capture complex ideas well_.
| spondylosaurus wrote:
| Ward Farnsworth says it well:
|
| > _A lapse from a supposed rule of style isn 't an offense
| against nature. It's just a choice with consequences, and
| sometimes you want the consequences._
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _Semicolons should always be in your toolbelt; they can
| elevate a sentence 's elegance and grace, improve and control
| the rhythm and clarity, and really improve readability._
|
| You are a member of an ever-smaller group of people who feel
| that way. https://unherd.com/newsroom/the-melancholy-decline-
| of-the-se...
|
| > _In 2017, author Ben Blatt discovered that semicolon use
| dropped by about 70% from 1800 to 2000. The ghosts of several
| authors are now rejoicing. Writers like George Orwell, who
| called semicolons "an unnecessary stop". Or Edgar Allan Poe,
| who preferred the dash. Or Kurt Vonnegut, who famously
| advised against their use, saying "All they do is show you've
| been to college." The symbol is facing the same melancholy
| fate as the dodo, the dinosaur, and the Soviet Union.
| Extinction._
| metaxy2 wrote:
| Maybe "endangerment" is more fair, given that it's still
| massively popular compared to, say, the interrobang.
| Finnucane wrote:
| As a copyeditor myself, who works in academia, I have to say
| that such 'rules' usually only work for the people applying
| them to their own work, but that doesn't mean they have no
| value. Why do it? It clearly provides a kind of discipline that
| makes you consider what's necessary for clarity. Do these two
| parts of a sentence really need to be together, or can they be
| separate? For technical or academic writers who may have
| difficulty expressing themselves clearly, a little artificial
| restraint could help.
| ilamont wrote:
| Made me think of Gene Wolfe (an engineer and later editor for
| _Plant Engineering_ magazine) and Orson Scott Card, who continued
| to write for _Compute!_ even after _Ender 's Game_ became popular
| (see
| https://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/index/index.php?autho...)
|
| Regarding "McCarthy's vendetta against semicolons" (@metaxy2)
| there are a number of high profile writers who are _very_
| particular about grammar. Example: Stephen King 's _On Writing_
| shared some opinions about adverbs:
|
| _"I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will
| shout it from the rooftops. To put it another way, they're like
| dandelions. If you have one in your lawn, it looks pretty and
| unique. If you fail to root it out, however, you find five the
| next day...fifty the day after that...and then, my brothers and
| sisters, your lawn is totally, completely, and profligately
| covered with dandelions. By then you see them for the weeds they
| really are, but by then it's--GASP!!--too late."_
| at_a_remove wrote:
| If only he diverted a little of his rage against the adverb and
| pointed it toward the exclamation mark.
| beacon294 wrote:
| I think he was also joking a little bit. Profligately is an
| adverb.
| abeppu wrote:
| > Another point they stress: the adventure of wrestling with big
| ideas and expressing them: "Just enjoy writing," they say. "Try
| to write the best version of your paper. . . . You can't please
| an anonymous reader, but you should be able to please yourself."
|
| Miller put two colons into the first sentence. There are four
| quotation marks wrapping text that isn't actually quoting anyone,
| in an article about a novelist who doesn't use quotation marks
| even when characters are speaking. The quoted paraphrase includes
| an unnecessary ellipsis.
|
| Does Miller believe that McCarthy's rules are good ones?
| abeppu wrote:
| Actually, I was able to get to the Nature article through my
| library. I had thought the material in quotes was Miller
| paraphrasing. In fact, he's quoting from two separated points
| in the article but has changed the punctuation. The original
| used a colon.
|
| > Finally, try to write the best version of your paper: the one
| that you like. You can't please an anonymous reader, but you
| should be able to please yourself.
|
| I think in the context of writing about how a writer uses
| punctuation, these choices are significant.
| pizzafeelsright wrote:
| I have read half of his work. I recall that he would dictate to
| his wife who would then write.
|
| I wondered if the lack of punctuation is just text to speech made
| manifest.
| swozey wrote:
| I found McCarthys style of writing to really frustrate me. I
| think it really took me out of the book to read and try to piece
| the way conversations were going. I really, really didn't enjoy
| reading that book.
|
| I read it a LONG time ago, and I know how popular it is and I've
| read just about every post-apocalypse book I can find, my
| favorite being A Canticle for Leibowitiz.
|
| So I checked out the 1* Amazon reviews and there are some really
| funny ones written in McCarthys style -
| https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/0307265439/ref=acr_dp...
|
| edit: I didn't say what book, The Road. I do believe someone has
| told me to read Blood Meridian, but I haven't tried.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| _The Road_ is probably his most "accessible" book (it was
| recommended by Oprah after all), second being _All the Pretty
| Horses,_ which is a modern and romantic western written in his
| style.
|
| But you might just not like his stylistic tics. His lack of
| quotation marks is a stylistic move that repeats across all of
| his books.
| drcode wrote:
| "This conclusion section could really use an aside about a
| trapper who wore a necklace made of ears"
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(page generated 2024-02-27 23:01 UTC)