Barbelith Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing

No, seriously. I mean, when you say that Stephen King is a tight writer and that McCarthy's prose is sloppy and uncontrolled, then I have to presume that either you're being wilfully perverse or you seriously have no idea what you're reading.

Let me be straight: I like Stephen King okay, and I think his prose is perfectly serviceable—and he has no illusions and is making no claims otherwise. I don't think his voice is particularly controlled—in fact, I think the loosey-goosey, what-the-hell quality of it is what keeps the stories rocketing along. Because that's what Stephen King's work is all about: story.

McCarthy, on the other hand, is less about story than he is about ideas and (especially) language. The narrative voice of Blood Meridian, in particular, sounded the way it did because of where and when it was set, the same reason that, say, DEADWOOD has that weird patois of Victorian elegance veneered onto almost pre-social crudity; it is a book made to be read aloud—so many of its characters are illiterate—emotionally muted because its characters are dulled by whiskey and inurement to the horrors around them; linguistically skewed because the American language was in the process of reinventing itself as truly American, rather than English, with its Spanish influences still only half-digested. The idea is the idea of the West—of how the West was "won" and at what price—and the language is the West's language.

I literally cannot conceive how anyone could read Cormac McCarthy and not come away with the impression that every word has been painstakingly chosen, every sentence written and rewritten to within an inch of its life. Sometimes it comes off stiff, or mannered: but sloppy? The craftsmanship, the meticulousness, is screamingly evident in every paragraph.

(Further, I would suggest that if Stephen King's narrative voice is particularly tight in the Gunslinger books, that it may be in part because he is consciously imitating McCarthy—whose work King is on record as having long admired.)

But yeah. Story on one hand, ideas on the other. The Gunslinger is about Roland Deschain and what happens to him: The Road is about whether the idea of kindness still has any meaning at the End of the World.

Oh, and this to Alas, waaaaaay upthread:

As a scholar of the 19th century, I'm not convinced that he's really got any sort of a grip on the period.

As a scholar of the 19th Century, you're surely aware that the vast majority of the events and persons portrayed in Blood Meridian—even in the passing, throwaway references—are based on real persons and events, and largely drawn from eyewitness accounts and other primary sources, yes? If your contention is that McCarthy hasn't done his research, I think it's fair to say that you, too, are flat-out Wrong.

If you disagree with the conclusions to which his research led him—that is, if you think that, even though he's got his facts right, he has misconstrued the meaning underlying those facts—well, then, I'd like to hear your argument.