Comments on: Cormac McCarthy and I Have Drifted Apart: The Conclusion

By: Sean

Sean — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 09:28:31 +0000

The Road is an anti-war book? That would have some basis if the world-ending disaster that occurred in that world was revealed. There just isn’t enough information given to say war was the cause for the decrepit and miserable setting in the story. And really, for as minimal as McCarthy is with his writing, he tends to say pretty directly what he means.

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 17:17:38 +0000

*Correction: fluctuational

By: Ben

Ben — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 02:30:24 +0000

So…fond of the flucuational form of favoritism eh Angelle? Pretty solid book anyhow. Tim, I’d be glad to enter the arena next time as soon as Frank names the book (provided I have a chance to read it of course). Better make sure the book is nice and divisive. Like a Chuck Palahniuk novel or “the Bible”.

By: Tim Callahan

Tim Callahan — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 13:36:10 +0000

Um, did I mention that I like The Road?

Okay–my final retort is posted at my blog. Read it and weep, sucker!

And, Ben, I invite you to join us for the next battle! Which book should it be, Frank?

By: angelle

angelle — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 10:41:13 +0000

Ben - not that you were asking me, but History of Love was my favorite book before being knocked off by The Road. I met Nicole Krauss and was a bumbling idiot, I loved her book so much.

By: Ben

Ben — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 02:56:14 +0000

This Callahan fella puts up a good fight in his rebuttal. I think all this literary back-n-forth-ing has me all fired up to read the book. First I have to finish “Mary” by Nabokov, and after slogging through the barrage of locations and puzzling Russian names, I think McCarthy’s minimalism will be just the cool drink I’ll need to wash it down. I always marvel at the way Nabokov managed to write in a way that’s so formal (almost elegant), yet that somehow feels contemporary in its sentiments and its fluidity, even in his earliest work. But did you ever notice that there’s the name of a country or a city on just about every page? Curious.

Have you read “The History of Love” by Nicole Krauss? Just wondering…

By: Ben

Ben — Sun, 10 Jun 2007 02:36:26 +0000

I have located “The Shadow of the Wind” and I’ll bring it on Tuesday. anyway nice rambling diatribe– i mean, review.

By: angelle

angelle — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 19:29:26 +0000

and wow, I wrote a lot. Sorry about that!

By: angelle

angelle — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 19:29:09 +0000

Okay, I concede with your comment on that the end was a little sentimental when his dad died. But then again, of all the things that happen in the whole journey, that’s really the most affecting, isn’t it? He’s had his dad this whole way, and even if somewhere inside he knows that it’s his burden to bear in the future, everything else that has come before, while scary, is ongoing, daily “scariness”. But your dad dying, and leaving you to this savage world alone… in a way that HAS to be sentimental, and maybe made more powerful because of the fact that is one of the few emotionally packed moments.

But okay, I’m not a father, I don’t have a son. So I probably was reading this in an entirely different mindset than you. The things I took away from it were completely different than what you were reading it for, I’m sure. And so those things you mentioned in this entry didn’t really bother me. I mentioned, I think, that this was my first McCarthy. I’d shyed away from his other books initially, only because the subject matter didn’t seem appealing to me. But I took this up on light recommendation and fell in love with it. I DID just accept his paragraphs and sentences and words more because I wasn’t reading them word for word or line by line, but because running over them in my head felt pleasant, and gave me a good general sense of the world, instead of actually making me stop and think about how much sense they actually made. Now, looking at what you’ve excerpted, sure, they don’t make all that much sense sometimes. But I definitely kind of just took it as is. Maybe that’s wrong of me, and I can see a little why you have issue with it.

Regardless, how ironic that this book, which has now started my interest in the rest of his books (reading No Country for Old Men right now) is the book that simultaneously killed your desire to read anything of his from here on. Sad, really, but I guess this goes to show you how different readers take away completely different things from a book. The book was a little bit of a salvation to me, so it holds a good place in my heart and in my world of literature that I love.

I hope though, that you’ll give him another chance in the future maybe.

And yeah, I’m always looking for new interesting blogs to read. I’m trying to be a writer myself, so it’s always just interesting to read the thoughts of other people with similar interests.