Comments on: All the crozzled corpses

by: Scott Chaffin

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 20:37:28 +0000

If it’s so damned important, why the hell hasn’t he been writing about it all along?

You’ve not read much McCarthy if you think he hasn’t.

by: andrea

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 20:15:00 +0000

I’ve always thought that the apocalytic novel is a rather suspect genre anyway. It’s a great way of killing off everyone who annoys you (at least figuratively), and you get to wax profound in ways that the standard contemporary-scene novel makes difficult. Of course, people do get that way in real life; there is always that brief, shining moment after every crisis when people are running around making chesty pronouncements of “we are all one people now” and “brothers!” and “we’ve gotta stick together to the bitter end!” and writing lists of survivalist gear and planning their trips to the hills or measuring the back yard for a new bomb shelter — but it’s not so much actual realization of danger (that sinks in much later, and is the occasion of much less enjoyment) so much as people seeing themselves as characters in their favorite end-of-the-world movie or book.

As for me, I’m kind of like the character in an obscure scifi movie from Down Under called This Quiet Earth, right before he meets up with two other surviving characters, only instead of dawning horror as he realizes he’s apparently the only man left alive on the planet I’m experiencing dawning joy.

by: Skubie

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 17:49:33 +0000

Shit happens too. I’m not interested in writing or reading about it.

My major objection to this topic is the astonishing aura of self importance given off by a writer - any writer - announcing that the topic he’s chosen is the only valid one by which a writer’s “seriousness” can be measured.

If it’s so damned important, why the hell hasn’t he been writing about it all along? Is all his previous work relegated to the dustbin for lack of seriousness? Shame, Cormac, shame for wasting your precious brilliant gift on non serious subjects! We all have been cheated!

Leave the inflated pronouncements of self worth to the politicians. If you are a writer, write and let your readers assess your worth.

by: Scott Chaffin

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 01:53:12 +0000

Death happens. Why not write about it? Avoiding fictional encounters with it seems wacky. But…it’s your time…spend it how you wish. It’s one of the beauty of books. They’re always there, Wodehouse or McCarthy. crozzled or no.

by: Skubie

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 20:28:57 +0000

Wodehouse never wrote about death. No crozzled corpses. I’d sooner reread him than read any current fiction author today. Not that I forego modern authors, but at the first whiff of self indulgent pretentious crap I’m outta there.

by: andrea

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 15:01:53 +0000

I promise not to tell the NYTRB people.

by: Scott Chaffin

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 14:32:06 +0000

the ridiculous, over-the-top reverence accorded writers like that by the literati at places like The New York Review of Books.

That’s a completely different problem than CM’s body of work or his prose stylings. I’m with you on that 100%. But then none of that chatter has ever had any effect on my enjoyment of, and reverence for, CM’s books. And it shouldn’t for anybody, really.

by: andrea

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 13:11:55 +0000

Oh come on. Isn’t the idea of applying such overblown rhetoric to the well-worn paths trod by cheap zombie movies hilarious? Hm, it looks like there is a certain kind of enjoyment I could get out of reading The Road.

All kidding aside, I and Myers (he wrote Manifesto, not me, and “my Manifesto” is just a copy of the book) are reacting not so much to the ornate prose of Mr. McCarthy as we are to the ridiculous, over-the-top reverence accorded writers like that by the literati at places like The New York Review of Books. One gets the impression that mere common “enjoyment” of tomes like The Road is anathema to them — we are instead supposed to pray to the novel, or don a hairshirt, or fast before reading it. Sometimes I think a special circle in hell, consisting of nothing but shelves and shelves of Harlequin romances and Danielle Steele potboilers, awaits these people in the afterlife.

by: Scott Chaffin

Sat, 28 Oct 2006 06:50:43 +0000

Look, Cormac is about 100 years old. The end of the world is perfectly natural for him to write about at this time in his life. It’s not going to be a joyride at this point. That was Suttree.

And if he had written “incinerated” then it wouldn’t be McCarthy. I have no huge beef with your Manifesto, but good gravy, the last thing I need is another egghead trying to tell me what I can and can’t read and enjoy. The book stands there. Read it, or not. Another critic bitching is…just another critic bitching.