Tag Archives: Cormac McCarthy

In tagging all the Literature posts it amazes me how long ago I’ve read this or that. Of course this latest span of time spent with Ishiguro’s Unconsoled has set me way back in reading, though I’ve got a post … Continue reading →

It always makes me laugh to think what authors must think of how readers interpret their words. It used to bother me in fact to think that readers turned and twisted things around to make something out of nothing, or … Continue reading → Continue reading →

What is the inborn nature of man? There’s a premise throughout the novel that pits hope against acceptance.  Even when hope fades, there is an acceptance that short of death, they must go onward.  There’s also McCarthy’s usual good versus … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Oh, I’m sure I’ll have more to say as the story settles into my mind to raise questions of the sort we don’t like to think about. There’s always a sadness to finishing a good book.  I wanted it to … Continue reading → Continue reading →

I’m within twenty-five pages of finishing this book and it’d be done a lot sooner (though I think I’ve broken a record here, at least for close reading versus the good old days when I read a book in a … Continue reading → Continue reading →

There’s a change happening within the characters–as well there should be, according to fiction "law"; but who’dve thought that McCarthy would abide? Showing, via the dialogue, that as the man becomes more unsure of their fate, the boy, still frightened, … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Here then, is the antithesis of beauty in the beauty of words: The soft black talc blew through the streets like squid ink uncoiling along a sea floor and the cold crept down and the dark came early and the … Continue reading → Continue reading →

McCarthy loves to throw out a question of ethics and leave the reader to decipher for himself beyond the character to go inside one’s own head.  He weaves it throughout this book as well, never letting us forget that we … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Something clicked as I realized I’m at the halfway point in this book.  The sparseness of words, the white space, the dialogue, the emptiness of the visual text that matches the landscape of McCarthy’s world. No Country for Old Men … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Not merely a vision of a possible future, a warning of sorts, but a vision of man’s nature comes from this story, and it’s not the nature of man that enabled this mess, but rather what occurs later, in McCarthy’s … Continue reading → Continue reading →

McCarthy has given a lot of thought to creating this world, and the greyness of it that he so repeatedly and rather singlely described it as is truly all it is.  He hits us below the belt with the simple … Continue reading → Continue reading →

Just as I am getting into Francine Prose’s section on the "beautiful" sentence, what better place to be than in a McCarthy novel? Prose states:  The well-made sentence transcends time and genre.  A beautiful sentence is a beautiful sentence, regardless … Continue reading → Continue reading →

As you all know, I’m a big McCarthy fan but maybe I’m getting a bit persnickety about his writing.  At his best, he is absolutely awesome.  At his worst, he’s still in the top 5%.  But in this novel, while … Continue reading → Continue reading →