Author’s note: This piece is based solely on my opinion. If you agree, great, if not, that’s cool too. I hope we can still be friends. Everyone has different tastes. For example, one of my wife’s favorite novels is, Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road.” I have not told her I wrote this for the simple fact that I’m not stupid.
As an author, I should never hate on other authors. It’s bad form. Hey, gang, we’re all on the same team, fighting the same fight, suffering the same setbacks, and celebrating the same victories. I love the writing community I’ve discovered online because that’s what we’re all about. We either know where other writers are and want to help them over their hump, or they know where we are and want to help us for exactly the same reason.
So, I would never talk shit about another author, especially one who’s won a Pulitzer Prize. I’ve honestly said since I pecked my first story into a Macintosh 512K at the only newspaper in 1987 that would give a job to someone as inexperienced as me—if I ever win a Pulitzer, I’m wearing it around my neck on a big gold chain 24/7.
Damn right, that’s what I would have done.
I’ve moved on from that. I’m here for my fellow writers who need a digital hug, or (hopefully) a literal kick in the pants when it comes to making their writing better. I love you all.
Except Cormac McCarthy. Fuck that guy.
McCarthy won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished fiction by an American author for his post-apocalyptic novel, “The Road,” even though authors have written about that kind of thing for years and no one paid them any attention. John Hillcoat directed the 2009 movie based on “The Road” that starred Viggo “Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings” Mortensen, Robert Duvall, and Charlize Theron.
What a great cast. I nearly went to the theater to watch this movie, but like I try to do with every film based on a book, I stopped at the public library to read “The Road” first (support your public library, folks).
Hey, gang, I have a question. Have you ever slogged through “The Road”? Come on, be honest. If so, good for you. You have the kind of strength to actually survive the post-apocalyptic hellscape America will become soon enough. However, that wasn’t me.
The same year McCarthy won the Pulitzer, Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love,” came out (and white-trashed so many American kitchens with those words painted on barn wood), as did “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” “Water for Elephants,” Gillian Flynn’s “Sharp Objects” (Flynn can write. Damn, can she write), and another post-apocalyptic work—which is highly more entertaining than McCarthy’s—Max Brooks’, “World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War.”
McCarthy can’t hold the jocks of these authors. They create characters, they paint a scene with something other than dirt and plants described in the depth of a surgeon discussing a recently-freed bowel obstruction, and they do not—I REPEAT, DO NOT—write shit sentences like this:
“He rose and stood tottering in that cold autistic dark with his arms outheld for balance while the vestibular calculations in his skull cranked out their reckonings.”
Wait. What? This is the kind of faux-poetry nerds get beaten up for writing in junior high school.
I’m fully convinced people say they like McCarthy’s work only because others have said they should. You want to feel like garbage at an intellectual dinner party, say you don’t understand the appeal of Cormac McCarthy, and twenty people will start lecturing you on how you failed to understand the deeper meaning of “Blood Meridian” that made such a violent book so goddamned boring, or the fact that Cormac really would know how to use a fucking quote mark if he thought it necessary, thank you very much.
Dear Pulitzer Prize committee: Never consider me for your award. I’ve seen what you think is good, and it ain’t.
God, thank you so much. Now that he has another book out his PR team is pushing him into my face every time I open the NYTimes Sunday Book Review. Have never understood his appeal. Couldn’t make it through a paragraph of his writing, much less an entire book. Of course those who read books are perfect fodder for a con job like Cormac McCarthy: his manly man stream-of-consciousness and violent, pornographic imagination must be very thrilling to those who have spent zero time in the American West.
When I saw No Country for old Men I was fascinated with the film and later, when I found out that The Road was written by the same writer, I admit that I made a schedule to read the novels. They’re great movies so I thought the same about the books. I started reading No Country for old Man and it didn’t take me long to realize, what the hell do people see in that prose? It seems vague, mechanical, repetitive, empty. It sounds like the kind of writing a teenager with experiences just reading comics would do. And for those who say “ohh, you don’t understand his writing” they will have to sell me very well on that because I don’t see an ounce of complex or depth in what he writes. Since the movies I mentioned are cold and atmospheric, I thought I would find rich and interesting lyrics. I have come to the conclusion that American propaganda has been combined with the confusion of mixing film success with the narrative quality of the author of the novels.
I have noticed that rabid McCarthy fans are frequently people who are not very well read, generally. I tried reading him once or twice and it just did not resonate. His purple passages are a lesser version of Lawrence Durrell, while his excruciatingly descriptive passages of ordinary things are verbatim Hemingway.
To guy who wrote, “McCarthy fans are frequently people who are not very well read”. That is the most asinine statement I’ve read in a while. Harold Bloom and James wood are two examples that prove that claim wrong.
As for the rest? If you think Elizabeth Gilbert, Gillian Flynn and Max Brooks are better writers, I don’t know what to tell you. You may be beyond help at this point. I doubt any argument, no matter how strong or well articulated it is, will move you away from the opinion you already hold.
But have it your way. Imagine every voice raised in praise of McCarthy is from a large cohort of barely literate simpletons. Everything they love about his writing is baseless and silly. Cormac McCarthy is a stupid person’s idea of a great writer. That includes every literary scholar that’s wasted time writing a paper on his body of work or lectured on one of his novels. Even Harold Bloom and Amy Hungerford from Yale, and James Wood from The New Yorker. What do they know?
And to those who voted to award him a Pulitzer and a National Book Award, if you could ask every one of them why they voted for McCarthy they’d probably tell you they didn’t really have a reason except, “others said they should”.
Funny considering i know who he is, how who are you?
Thank you thank you thank you! I’m halfway into the road and his cheap Hemingway imitation self conscious writing has made me stop and Google “who else finds Cormac McCarthy to be a fraud”. Glad it’s not just me.
You’re definitely not alone, Scott. I’ve tried a number of his books, and could only do a couple of chapters (at most) before giving up. With The Road, I couldn’t even make it through the first chapter. Just awful.
Thanks for that affirmation Jason. I get very discouraged at the crap that passes for good writing and even more so, visual art. It’s one giant “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.
I saw a tee-shirt the other day that said “The Idiots are winning”, and I daresay it’s sadly true.
May I ask how you have connected with this online writing community you speak of? I’m writing a book, and it sometimes feels like I’m sealed in a vacuum.
Thank you, Jason, for what needed to be said about this exceedingly pretentious writer who was too cool to use quotation marks.
And “…autistic dark” WTF?
There has been a resurgence of his works championed by lit-bros on YouTube, and I guess it’s due to his recent passing. Even they have difficulty in analyzing his books by sounding pompous themselves. “You see, um, it’s the subversion of colonialism emboldened by our primal, violent nature *insert more big words here*.” Naw, dude, it’s just snuff content. The guy was in dire need of some Buspar. In fact, DO NOT read any of his stuff if you’re feeling down, especially in this shitty economy.