In this lengthy interview with Cormac McCarthy, the New York Times gets an in depth look at how this writer operates. McCarthy could spend hours lecturing on his favorite reptile, the Rattlesnake or sharing stories of the places he has visited.Post something you might have found interesting and if possible, try to relate it to something from The Road.
9 comments:
You guys better get going with the online discussions. As of today, every group member should have contributed to 2 discussions.
Reading the interview I found it interesting how similar McCarthy's speech is to his writing. He says "It's very interesting to see an animal out in the wild that can kill you graveyard dead" with strong adjectives. Instead of simply saying "that can kill you dead" he says "that can kill you graveyard dead" so as to make sure one gets the point. He uses the same tactics in his writing like in the sentence, "The mummied dead." McCarthy describes every last word he writes and speaks with the strongest and most descriptive diction possible.
Jordan Penney
After having read the interview, Cormac McCarthy’s Venomous Fiction, I’d have to say that some of the things that I found truly interesting would be that McCarthy doesn’t like to talk about himself and his books, he only writes about places that he’s visited, and he’s experienced the sorts of things that he depicts in his books such as the “intense natural observations, and morbid realisms.” Also, I thought that it was interesting that McCarthy never wrote journalism, gave readings, blurbed a book, or granted an interview. In fact, “For most of his career, he didn’t even have an agent.” I think that’s crazy, but pretty cool at the same time. In a way it solidifies the fact that you don’t need money or a long list of experience to be a good, natural writer. The interview also talks about McCarthy’s language as seen in his books like we had just recently been talking about in the previous blog, and here, it too, talks about McCarthy writing with his pages “minimally punctuated, without quotation marks, avoiding apostrophes, colons or semicolons, in order to magnify the force and precision of his words.” I thought this was especially interesting because I agreed one hundred percent with exactly what the interview was saying about McCarthy’s word choice and style.
Cormac McCarthy is a very interesting character. Having read the beginning of the Road, I feel that Cormac truly fits the awkward style that he writes. The Road is a very awkwardly written book with many words that in my opinion don't really exist. In the interview, I found it very interesting how McCarthy is a very outdoors type of man. He is a guy who truly appreciates the wilderness. I find it intriguing how The Road is written with a setting like the wilderness, but a different kind. He is a very interesting person indeed.
-John Cummings
I really find it interesting that McCarthy does not like to talk about his books. He doesn't even really like to do interviews about his books. He says that he would rather talk about anything other than him and his books. He said "Writing is way, way down at the bottom of the list." That definately sounds strange considering the use of his descriptive language and his story telling ability. He would rather continue to learn about and study the things he thinks are interesting. H owns thousands of books because he is constantly indulging himself in somthing other than writing his stories most of the time.
-Keith Kelleher
As I read the interview, I found it interesting that Cormac McCarthy doesn't have more renown. He hasn't been extremely successful in sales and he didn't have an agent for the majority of his career. The fact hat he has been somewhat isolated from the literary world is unique, which mirrors his unique writing style. I think that it is interesting that he has such a distinctive writing style and has followed an even more different career path than most authors. Overall, I found the interview very intriguing and it gave me some insight to McCarthy's work.
Brianna Cote
I agree when others say that McCarthy’s interview was just like his book. The way he spoke was just like the dialect in The Road. In the novel the characters are portrayed as being poor and trying to find there way to California. McCarthy was never wealthy and never really wanted to have a lot of money. He would always turn down jobs and his family would go hungry for another week. He also wouldn’t speak at schools or other events because he tried to explain all of his words or stories were already on the page. I found that his life was very interesting because it relates to the book a lot.
Alyssa Ruta
After reading a good chunk of The Road, and the interview with Cormac McCarthy, I really got a sense of what McCarthy is really like. McCarthy's interview delves into his love of nature, and his knack for being able to tell it how it is. In both The Road and his interview, McCarthy shows you the dangers of the outdoors. Not only does he reveal these dangers to you, but he shows that they are possible to over come. Also, in his interview he doesn't stray far from his unique diction, which makes his novels much different from other authors. McCarthy uses his knowledge of life and language, to educate others with his novels.
-Katie Adler
I think that it's very modest that McCarthy doesnt talk about his books. It draws you in more and makes you more interested in him and his novels. He is definetly an eccentric individual and has the ability to describe surroundings in great detail. Sometimes i think he even goes overboard with the details in describing the setting of the novel and it gets dull at times and also quite repetitive.
-Melissa Graham
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