No Country for Inconsistent Authors
Let's not mince words with some flashy introduction this time around -- mostly because I want to get back to reading the book I'm going to bitch about in this post. I'll be a good little student-writer and put my thesis right up front: I'd like to rant briefly on the inconsistency of talented authors to be able to write good books.
My case study is Cormac McCarthy. I have no doubt that Cormac McCarthy is a talented author, and anyone who does need only consider his winning of the National Book Award for All the Pretty Horses (before you ask, yes, the same one they recently made into a movie; that issue will come up again shortly, so don't say I didn't warn you) or even the virtually unanimous praise he's received for his well-known Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West (which Wikipedia tells me is among the greatest novels written in the 20th Century -- and if it's on the Internet, it has to be true!).
McCarthy fans, however, will notice I've made one glaring omission in the list of his honors, and the reason I haven't mentioned it yet is that it is the crux of my argument. I know Cormac McCarthy is a talented author, and because of this I've been tempted on many occasions to read his books. So it's not surprising that I recently found myself staring at a shelf full of Cormac McCarthy novels wondering which one I should start with.
And after great consideration, I decided to go with what seemed like a slam-dunk choice: his most recent novel, The Road, which was not only an Oprah's Book Club selection but was also the recipient of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. My English-dork brain was all a-flutter looking at the pretty foil-stamped medal on the trade paperback cover. Ooh, I've read Pulitzer winners before! To Kill a Mockingbird ... American Pastoral ... Middlesex ... they were all so good! And that doesn't even include Beloved or The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, both of which I own and am just itching to read! How can I go wrong?
Here's how: in plain English, The Road sucks.
With all due respect to Mr. McCarthy, and to the legions of readers who have bestowed heaps of praise upon this book -- and trust me, there are plenty: it's practically impossible to find even a partly-negative review that wasn't posted to Amazon by some 12-year-old who could manage anything more insightful than "dis shit iz teh SUX0RS frrlz" -- I simply couldn't wait to finish this book so that I would never have to pick it up again.
The language, while beautiful in spurts, is somewhat repetitive, and only gets worse as the novel progresses. The two main characters are almost totally flat and not particularly interesting because they don't develop meaningfully (in fact, when something interesting does happen, at the end, it is almost devoid of emotional impact because it too is portrayed flatly). The dialogue, by and large, is even more repetitive, often consisting of back-and-forth exchanges of the exact same lines which end up feeling emotionless, stilted, and unnatural to the point of feeling almost scripted.
Oh, and one more thing: NOTHING HAPPENS. The plot meanders on for 287 chapterless pages, with painfully little rising action save for a few interesting and/or grotesque scenes and some confusing, unexplained flashbacks that are never resolved. Not even the final few paragraphs, which should be profound but end up feeling too detached and ethereal, don't save anything. Like I said before, by that point, I was just glad to put the book down.
I don't give up on books, especially not ones I've bought. And it pretty much took everything I had to not give up on The Road.
So I was pretty bummed about this. Especially given all the really incredible stuff I'd read about his writing, much of which came around the same time that a great deal of admiration was being lavished upon the Coen brothers for their film adaptation of the novel he wrote before The Road, a little book called No Country for Old Men. I was feeling betrayed and hurt, not ready to dive back into McCarthy's fray.
But sure enough, after a few days at home itching for some new fiction to read -- and having plowed through Mark Haddon's excellent novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time -- I couldn't resist the lure of that shiny red cover. I gave in and bought it. Then put off opening the book for a couple of days. But alas, I could hold off no longer. I put Cormac McCarthy on notice: you've got one last shot to wow me, sir. Don't make me regret it.
Boy, did I eat my words.
From page 5, No Country for Old Men leaped off the page, grabbed me by the throat, and hauled me in. I didn't think the action of the first chapter could possibly be matched, but the body count kept climbing. And just when the killing spree started slowing down, I realized that the suspense being built by the novel was overwhelming and intense, masterful even. And it sure doesn't hurt that Anton Chigurh may just be the most realistically horrifying villain ever committed to the printed page. Seriously. I'm glad it's fiction, because the man is evil fucking incarnate.
I'm now within a hundred pages of the end. The suspense is killing me, and I have to finish typing this so I can get back to the story and find out what happens in the last few chapters. It's that good. In fact, it's as good (if not better) than I was expecting a Cormac McCarthy novel to be.
So why is it that authors can't be that good all the time? Why does topical, self-indulgent crap like The Road end up being universally (and, in my opinion, undeservedly) praised when great works like No Country for Old Men show the same author at the height of his talents and skills, a writer in the motherfucking zone? Why couldn't Oprah command all the housewives in America to read a novel with a body count rivaling that of a John Woo film, instead of dull postapocalyptic drivel?
And why didn't someone (like an editor, perhaps?) insist to Mr. McCarthy to keep writing books in the fast-paced, edgy style that embodies No Country for Old Men? Because I'll go on record here: I may have hated The Road, but on the awesomeness of No Country for Old Men, I'll be making it a point to read all of Cormac McCarthy's previous works in the near future. And if he writes more novels in the same vein as this blood-soaked drama, I'll be sure to be first in line at the bookstore to pick it up and power my way through the prose.
That is, of course, after I actually finish this one.
Which reminds me.
My case study is Cormac McCarthy. I have no doubt that Cormac McCarthy is a talented author, and anyone who does need only consider his winning of the National Book Award for All the Pretty Horses (before you ask, yes, the same one they recently made into a movie; that issue will come up again shortly, so don't say I didn't warn you) or even the virtually unanimous praise he's received for his well-known Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West (which Wikipedia tells me is among the greatest novels written in the 20th Century -- and if it's on the Internet, it has to be true!).
McCarthy fans, however, will notice I've made one glaring omission in the list of his honors, and the reason I haven't mentioned it yet is that it is the crux of my argument. I know Cormac McCarthy is a talented author, and because of this I've been tempted on many occasions to read his books. So it's not surprising that I recently found myself staring at a shelf full of Cormac McCarthy novels wondering which one I should start with.
And after great consideration, I decided to go with what seemed like a slam-dunk choice: his most recent novel, The Road, which was not only an Oprah's Book Club selection but was also the recipient of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. My English-dork brain was all a-flutter looking at the pretty foil-stamped medal on the trade paperback cover. Ooh, I've read Pulitzer winners before! To Kill a Mockingbird ... American Pastoral ... Middlesex ... they were all so good! And that doesn't even include Beloved or The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, both of which I own and am just itching to read! How can I go wrong?
Here's how: in plain English, The Road sucks.
With all due respect to Mr. McCarthy, and to the legions of readers who have bestowed heaps of praise upon this book -- and trust me, there are plenty: it's practically impossible to find even a partly-negative review that wasn't posted to Amazon by some 12-year-old who could manage anything more insightful than "dis shit iz teh SUX0RS frrlz" -- I simply couldn't wait to finish this book so that I would never have to pick it up again.
The language, while beautiful in spurts, is somewhat repetitive, and only gets worse as the novel progresses. The two main characters are almost totally flat and not particularly interesting because they don't develop meaningfully (in fact, when something interesting does happen, at the end, it is almost devoid of emotional impact because it too is portrayed flatly). The dialogue, by and large, is even more repetitive, often consisting of back-and-forth exchanges of the exact same lines which end up feeling emotionless, stilted, and unnatural to the point of feeling almost scripted.
Oh, and one more thing: NOTHING HAPPENS. The plot meanders on for 287 chapterless pages, with painfully little rising action save for a few interesting and/or grotesque scenes and some confusing, unexplained flashbacks that are never resolved. Not even the final few paragraphs, which should be profound but end up feeling too detached and ethereal, don't save anything. Like I said before, by that point, I was just glad to put the book down.
I don't give up on books, especially not ones I've bought. And it pretty much took everything I had to not give up on The Road.
So I was pretty bummed about this. Especially given all the really incredible stuff I'd read about his writing, much of which came around the same time that a great deal of admiration was being lavished upon the Coen brothers for their film adaptation of the novel he wrote before The Road, a little book called No Country for Old Men. I was feeling betrayed and hurt, not ready to dive back into McCarthy's fray.
But sure enough, after a few days at home itching for some new fiction to read -- and having plowed through Mark Haddon's excellent novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time -- I couldn't resist the lure of that shiny red cover. I gave in and bought it. Then put off opening the book for a couple of days. But alas, I could hold off no longer. I put Cormac McCarthy on notice: you've got one last shot to wow me, sir. Don't make me regret it.
Boy, did I eat my words.
From page 5, No Country for Old Men leaped off the page, grabbed me by the throat, and hauled me in. I didn't think the action of the first chapter could possibly be matched, but the body count kept climbing. And just when the killing spree started slowing down, I realized that the suspense being built by the novel was overwhelming and intense, masterful even. And it sure doesn't hurt that Anton Chigurh may just be the most realistically horrifying villain ever committed to the printed page. Seriously. I'm glad it's fiction, because the man is evil fucking incarnate.
I'm now within a hundred pages of the end. The suspense is killing me, and I have to finish typing this so I can get back to the story and find out what happens in the last few chapters. It's that good. In fact, it's as good (if not better) than I was expecting a Cormac McCarthy novel to be.
So why is it that authors can't be that good all the time? Why does topical, self-indulgent crap like The Road end up being universally (and, in my opinion, undeservedly) praised when great works like No Country for Old Men show the same author at the height of his talents and skills, a writer in the motherfucking zone? Why couldn't Oprah command all the housewives in America to read a novel with a body count rivaling that of a John Woo film, instead of dull postapocalyptic drivel?
And why didn't someone (like an editor, perhaps?) insist to Mr. McCarthy to keep writing books in the fast-paced, edgy style that embodies No Country for Old Men? Because I'll go on record here: I may have hated The Road, but on the awesomeness of No Country for Old Men, I'll be making it a point to read all of Cormac McCarthy's previous works in the near future. And if he writes more novels in the same vein as this blood-soaked drama, I'll be sure to be first in line at the bookstore to pick it up and power my way through the prose.
That is, of course, after I actually finish this one.
Which reminds me.
posted by Dave at 2/11/2008 10:37:00 PM
1 Comments:
My dad's a big McCarthy fan, and I hear Blood Meridian is about as dark and creepy as No Country, so you might want to pick that one up next. [Thus begins the reading-my-blog-backload portion of my day.]
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