Ah, just when the muses had returned, poked me with their golden staffs and had me hopping, hoping; I read Faulkner:
Pa stands over the bed, dangle-armed, humped, motionless. He raises his hand to his head, scouring his hair, listening to the saw. He comes nearer and rubs his hand, palm and back, on his thigh and lays it on her face and then on the hump of quilt where her hands are. He touches the quilt as he saw Dewey Dell do, trying to smoothe it up to the chin, but disarranging it instead. He tries to smoothe it again, clumsily, his hand awkward as a claw, smoothing at the wrinkles which he made and which continue to emerge beneath his hand with perverse ubquity, so that at last he desists, his hand falling to his side and stroking itself again, palm and back, on his thigh. The sound of the saw snores steadily into the room. Pa breathes with a quiet, rasping sound, mouthing the snuff against his gums. "God’s will be done," he says. "Now I can get them teeth." (As I Lay Dying, p. 51)
Dangle-armed, not arms dangling; humped, not hunched over. It is the language Faulkner uses to describe action without using adverbs; turning them to adjectives as if they belonged there. This same phrase has been repeated in a slightly different way, just as Faulkner has repeated Anse’s movement of wiping his hands before he touches Addie, who has just died. Do you think Faulkner’s run short of words? Not when he uses others such as "perverse ubiquity." The saw has repeatedly been "snoring" into the room, where the dying woman had lain in her bed. How perfect the word used to simulate the making of her coffin to the woman they hope is just sleeping on her bed.
I used to be inspired to write by reading good writing. But with Faulkner and McCarthy and Steinbeck, I am halted. There is no way I can ever hope to write like this; my writing will improve with every reading, but I will always be a hundred steps behind those I admire.
Shall I be content with reading, then; to soar within the language used in stories told by others? Methinks so.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
One of the things I learned from McCarthy was to find my own way, which is why he’s McCarthy–a name distinct from Steinbeck, whom I could leave or take–and not Faulkner. It would be, therefore, a creative contradiction to want to write “like” McCarthy.
I think you mean you want to a great writer, whatever that means. But aren’t they great (hypothetically) because they are fiercely singular?
You’re right, I certainly am not one to follow in someone else’s footsteps, but what I’d love to be able to do is as you say, find a new path that is so different and yet so wonderful that it feels good. That it is something I would be proud of.