why Cormac McCarthy?
or, the rhythm and cadence and humor
I’m e rathke, the author of a number of books. Many of you are here because of Howl so today’s post is perfect for you. Learn more about what you signed up for here. Go here to manage your email notifications.
Well, mostly on accident, this month is primarily about Cormac McCarthy this month at my newsletter.
In asking this question, I don’t know what I expected to find. I suppose it was a way to fish for recommendations without asking for recommendations, like some kind of nerd. But I found it interesting how many writers pointed to Cormac McCarthy as an influence.
So I think it’s worthwhile, briefly, to spend some time on McCarthy, who went from obscure writer of baroque gothics to an internationally acclaimed writer of terse western thrillers.
Many people don’t realize the dramatic stylistic shift that happened in McCarthy’s career. Between his fifth and sixth books, he became, essentially, a new writer. And great praise and success followed.
While Suttree and Blood Meridian present the apex of his lush, baroque style, All the Pretty Horses is a very stripped-down version of his style. It continues to carry his evocative prose and his stylistic quirks, but the language is much more straightforward, the prose leaner.
This led to him winning his first literary award, and it was a big one: The National Book Critics Circle Award. As if often the case with big awards, they catapult the book into public consciousness.
And so All the Pretty Horses became a bestseller almost immediately upon winning the award. To put it simply, he found a big incentive to continue in this vein.
He saw very clearly how all his life led only to this moment and all after led to nowhere at all. He felt something cold and soulless enter him like another being and he imagined that it smiled malignly and he had no reason to believe that it would ever leave.
That above quote is from All the Pretty Horses. Still evocative but you’ll notice a distinct difference between that and this from Suttree:
There is a moon shaped rictus in the streetlamp's globe where a stone has gone and from this aperture there drifts down through the constant helix of aspiring insects a faint and steady rain of the same forms burnt and lifeless.
I mean, I hope you can see the difference. Can hear it.
Can you hear it?
Close your eyes and listen:
Do you hear the breathless nature of that Suttree sentence? Do you hear the multisyllabic assault, the evocative yet obscure way he brings you to see what he wants you to see?
Compare that with the simple and declarative nature of the passage from All the Pretty Horses.
So the difference is real, but I want to talk about something specific now and I’ll use two passages from the same two books.
He stood at the window of the empty cafe and watched the activites in the square and he said that it was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all.
That’s from All the Pretty Horses. Now from Suttree.
Peering down into the water where the morning sun fashioned wheels of light, coronets fanwise in which lay trapped each twig, each grain of sediment, long flakes and blades of light in the dusty water sliding away like optic strobes where motes sifted and spun.
McCarthy is employing very specific yet opposite techniques in both of these passages, but I believe these two techniques are what give McCarthy that very McCarthyesque feel.
It’s what makes his prose so sticky and unforgettable, the cadence of them getting into your blood.
If you’re a good Christian who reads the King James Bible or went to church where you heard it intoned again and again, you may be familiar with polysyndeton. A fancy word that basically means using a lot of conjunctions to allow a sentence to flow onward. In elementary and middle school, you probably had a teacher tell you that this was the sign of a run-on sentence.
There’s no accounting for taste, I’m afraid.
But this is what that passage from All the Pretty Horses is doing. It’s a hallmark of McCarthy’s style. You’ll also find him beginning many sentences with And.
The passage from Suttree, on the other hand, is asyndeton, which is a fancy way of saying the opposite of the above. Rather than link things with coordinating conjunctions, you link them without using any conjunctions. Your school teachers probably told you this was ungrammatical.
Tell that to Caesar!
Vini, vidi, vici.
While there’s a lot more that goes into McCarthy than ands and their exclusion, I think this is the technique that gets stuck inside you, making your own thoughts ramble along down the grooves in the tracks he carved after you read one or two of his novels.
The element most often cited in McCarthy is the brutal darkness and unforgiving nature of his outlook. Which is certainly something of note and, apparently, the most obvious thing taken from anyone who reads even a few pages.
He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.
That’s from The Road, which is, perhaps, one of his most hopeful novels.
But, to me, the true power of McCarthy happens in his dialogue and the way it juxtaposes his prose.
His prose is a stylized hammer but his dialogue is effortlessly conversational. It’s also often hilarious, even when it’s also quite bleak. Here’s an example from Suttree:
And what happens then?
When?
After you're dead.
Dont nothing happen. You're dead.
You told me once you believed in God.
The old man waved his hand. Maybe, he said. I got no reason to think he believes in me. Oh I'd like to see him for a minute if I could.
What would you say to him?
Well, I think I'd just tell him. I'd say: Wait a minute. Wait just one minute before you start in on me. Before you say anything, there's just one thing I'd like to know. And he'll say: what's that? And then I'm goin to ast him: What did you have me in that crapgame down there for anyway? I couldnt put any part of it together.
Suttree smiled. What do you think he'll say?
The ragpicker spat and wiped his mouth. I dont believe he can answer it. I dont believe there is an answer.
The flow of the dialogue contrasts so powerfully with his prose that you never confuse the two, even though he never uses quotation marks to signal their difference. This is another trademark of McCarthy, but he’s not alone in this mislike of quotation marks.
For me, though, the humor is a deeply understated aspect to McCarthy, who fills his novels with so many jokes that I found myself sometimes wishing he had written a sitcom. And I mean that quite seriously (I still need to write my impassioned defense of sitcoms) because few people are as funny as McCarthy so often was.
Anyway, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite jokes McCarthy ever wrote. It’s from Suttree, his most laugh out loudly novel.
Mr Suttree in what year did your greatuncle Jeffrey pass away?
It was in 1884.
Did he die by natural causes?
No sir.
And what were the circumstances surrounding his death?
He was taking part in a public function when the platform gave way.
Our information is that he was hanged for a homicide
Where to start with Cormac McCarthy
My novels:
Glossolalia - A Le Guinian fantasy novel about an anarchic community dealing with a disaster
Sing, Behemoth, Sing - Deadwood meets Neon Genesis Evangelion
Howl - Vampire Hunter D meets The Book of the New Sun in this lofi cyberpunk/solarpunk monster hunting adventure
Colony Collapse - Star Trek meets Firefly in the opening episode of this space opera
The Blood Dancers - The standalone sequel to Colony Collapse.
Iron Wolf - Sequel to Howl. Out today!
Some free books for your trouble:
Love reading your analysis of his work. Btw is The Road really one of his most hopeful novels? I loved it but it was essentially just unrelenting misery the whole way through!
My husband and I drove from Tampa, FL to Anaconda, Montana in a big swoop following the Lewis & Clark Trail out west then returning through Wyoming, NM, down through Del Rio Texas and back to Tampa. in the early 1990s. I read Blood Meridian out loud as we drove. This was a trip to visit libraries along the way. At that time this book had not yet made its impact and was unknown to most people we encountered. It had won no major awards though McCarthy had a MacArthur grant having been spotted by Saul Bellow. I don't think CM finished college. That was likely part of why he is so powerful.