All the crozzled corpses
Cormac McCarthy is at it again. This time he’s discovered the never-before-approached (except by thousand of other authors) subject of the end of the world! No really, he’s totally broken new ground here:
McCarthy has said that death is the major issue in the world and that writers who don’t address it are not serious.
That doesn’t mean those who do are any good. Here’s a sample of the Drone of the Dead from The Road:
The incinerate corpses shrunk to the size of a child and propped on the bare springs of the seats. Ten thousand dreams ensepulchred within their crozzled hearts.
“Incinerate”? WTF couldn’t he have simply said “incinerated“? That showy, left-off “d” is just the sort of pretentious, twittery mucking about with the English language that B.R. Myers has already countered in A Reader’s Manifesto. Read that instead of going on a dreary Road-trip.
(Via Open Book. Actually, this book is one I won’t be opening, thanks.)
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.
Comment by Scott Chaffin - October 28, 2006 1:50 am
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.
Comment by andrea - October 28, 2006 8:11 am
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.
Comment by Scott Chaffin - October 28, 2006 9:32 am
I promise not to tell the NYTRB people.
Comment by andrea - October 28, 2006 10:01 am
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.
Comment by Skubie - October 28, 2006 3:28 pm
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.
Comment by Scott Chaffin - October 28, 2006 8:53 pm
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.
Comment by Skubie - October 29, 2006 12:49 pm
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.
Comment by andrea - October 29, 2006 3:15 pm
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.
Comment by Scott Chaffin - October 29, 2006 3:37 pm