"McCarthy’s detractors, meanwhile, found his writing overly mannered, his characters overly masculine, and accused him of relishing the violence he wrote about so vividly."
Yeah, maybe his detractors were on to something.
I haven't even started "The Road" because of its reputation. I have only read "Child of God" and wondered why someone might write about the worst among us. But then I'm not a fan of Quentin Tarantino as a filmmaker for the same reason.
If you read his last two novels he was clearly well-informed about mathematics.
However I have to assume that McCarthy didn't actually master all the material in the math books mentioned here, I think the reporter may be a little too credulous about that. I suspect he had the very common experience of buying a yellow book and being defeated in the first couple chapters.
This article makes me want to cry. I'm an unbelievably big Cormac McCarthy fan and the findings in his library shed so much light on many inscrutable and poetic passages from his books.
I think for example about the following quote from the judge, an insatiably curious (and evil) character from Blood Meridian:
> Whatever exists, he said. Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.
Cormac's personal library contained "upwards of 20,000 volumes." Turns out, that wasn't the judge speaking but McCarthy himself.
Slight tangent brought up by the article, but usually the greats aren't good at just one thing but have a combination of eccentricities that form the person. I find it heartening that Cormac had these in spades.
> They were guessing it contained upwards of 20,000 volumes. By comparison, Ernest Hemingway, considered a voracious book collector, left behind a personal library of 9,000.
Reminds me: I once read a listicle about famous people with large personal libraries. Most were writers and had collections in the lower thousands, a few reached into the tens of thousands. The person with by far the most books was Karl Lagerfeld, who owned 300,000 books.
Are there any collections of annotated pages from books belonging to well-known authors that have been made available online? I'd be interested to get some impression of how they engaged with the material, whatever it is.
Fascinating article. As I was reading it, particularly the part about his son John saying his father was very loving and was there for him, but also saying he did not like to be interrupted during his work or reading, and would say "Go away! I am reading!" immediately made me think he was quite narcissistic. His work was more important than even his own son. Later on his brother Dennis confirmed my suspicions that McCarthy was a narcissist. I have an insatiable curiosity as well and truly love learning, but in being a christian I have actively worked against my tendency to narcissism. A life like McCarthys sounds romantically fabulous, but when you think about the end of it, four people around your bed, it sounds tragic. There is something profound in sacrificially loving others and it doesn’t seem like Cormac experienced that. Though I am sure his wives, brother Dennis, and son John, did.
There's nothing wrong with having boundaries. Anyways, the quote goes on:
"But he was a great father, always there for me, and I learned so much from him. We would have these long conversations about science and history and music, and whatever else, and he was the funniest person I’ve ever met, just a natural comedian.” "
> “I had two dreams about him after he died. I dont remember the first one all that well but it was about meetin him in town somewheres and he give me some money and I think I lost it. But the second one it was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin through the mountains of a night. Goin through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin. Never said nothin. He just rode on past and he had this blanket wrapped around him and he had his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. About the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin on ahead and that he was fixin to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up.”
I have loved Cormac's books since I was a child, but never read Larry McMurtry until recently. If you're in the same boat, I implore you to give one of the below a try.
Lonesome Dove -- A great story about washed-up Texas Rangers with achingly beautiful writing.
The Last Picture Show -- More tonally similar to Cormac's stories. Coming of age in a dusty Texas town.
Leaving Cheyenne -- I have never in my life recommended a romance novel until this moment. I'm literally crying as I write this, remembering the closing scene.
The answer stems from McCarthy’s deeply disparaging view of modern society, which he considered lost, divorced from nature, history and tradition and heading toward social collapse and apocalypse. “Cormac considered contemporary fiction a waste of time,” said Dennis, “because contemporary writers no longer have a legitimate culture to feed their souls.”
Just listened to Broken Record episode and learned Cormac McCarthy had black Ferrari. Opened HN and we talk about his personal library. Time to read No Country For Old Man I guess.
Someone who enjoys this please enlighten me or show me a way into McCarthy's prose using examples of what's good. I tried several times to read his novels and I'm sorry, but it's just terrible. It's hard to put my finger on what is so unappealing. The closest I can come to what is bad about it is that it reads like farce without humor (if you take 'farce' to be a question of tempo, as in "tragedy sped up"). The opening to Blood Meridian (his masterpiece, I'm told) is just this endless stream of backstory that The Kid is supposed to have done or been but no exposition of anything. It sounds like the imagination of a 13yo boy playing with his GI Joes or super heroes. The fragmentary style and purply-pulpish register is very hard to take seriously. Where's the beef? Please post some passages that don't sound like common pulp fiction, unless that's what people are crowing about, in which case...I got nothin'.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 50.6 ms ] threadI could not stop reading it, but at the same time I hated how it made me feel. I stoped reading novels for years after finishing it.
Yeah, maybe his detractors were on to something.
I haven't even started "The Road" because of its reputation. I have only read "Child of God" and wondered why someone might write about the worst among us. But then I'm not a fan of Quentin Tarantino as a filmmaker for the same reason.
However I have to assume that McCarthy didn't actually master all the material in the math books mentioned here, I think the reporter may be a little too credulous about that. I suspect he had the very common experience of buying a yellow book and being defeated in the first couple chapters.
I think for example about the following quote from the judge, an insatiably curious (and evil) character from Blood Meridian:
> Whatever exists, he said. Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.
Cormac's personal library contained "upwards of 20,000 volumes." Turns out, that wasn't the judge speaking but McCarthy himself.
Reminds me: I once read a listicle about famous people with large personal libraries. Most were writers and had collections in the lower thousands, a few reached into the tens of thousands. The person with by far the most books was Karl Lagerfeld, who owned 300,000 books.
Good movie.
"But he was a great father, always there for me, and I learned so much from him. We would have these long conversations about science and history and music, and whatever else, and he was the funniest person I’ve ever met, just a natural comedian.” "
This is my favourite interview with him so I will take this post as an excuse to share it.
https://youtu.be/HrUy1Vn2KdI
Thank you.
Lonesome Dove -- A great story about washed-up Texas Rangers with achingly beautiful writing.
The Last Picture Show -- More tonally similar to Cormac's stories. Coming of age in a dusty Texas town.
Leaving Cheyenne -- I have never in my life recommended a romance novel until this moment. I'm literally crying as I write this, remembering the closing scene.
"Moby-Dick was Cormac McCarthy's favorite book"
... and mine too...