Author Spotlight
McCarthy Lives
In a year of many masters dead, today is Cormac McCarthy’s 78th birthday. Tyler Flynn Dorholt started a thread on FB for sharing some favorite lines in celebration. Really it could be most any of his lines in most any of his books. Add your favorites here?
“Friends row by row watched his passing and waved at him with their fingers and whispered among themselves. Who’d spoke of disorders of the soul and news of the night. When you asked for the shop of the heart’s apothecary we thought you mad. We saw you took down to the brainsurgeon’s keep, deep in the cellar, under the street. Where saws sang in stoven skulls and wet bonemeal blew from an airshaft in the alleyway. Out there in the blue moonlight a gray shecorpse being loaded into a truck. It pulled away into the night. Horned minstrels, small dancing dogs in harlequin garb followed after.” – Suttree
Happy bday, big dog.
Tags: cormac mccarthy, suttree
I’ve always loved Child of God most of all his books. I don’t know why completely – I don’t think it’s objectively his magnum opus or anything, it just has a peculiar filthy hold and, to me, its his best. “To watch these things issuing forth from the otherwise mute pastoral morning is a man at the barn door. He is small, unclean, unshaven. He moves in the dry chaff among the dust and slats of sunlight with a constrained truculence. Saxon and Celtic bloods. A Child of God much like yourself perhaps. Wasps pass through the laddered light from the barnslats in a succession of strobic moments, gold and trembling between black and black, like fireflies is the serried upper gloom. The man stands straddlelegged, has made in the dark humus a darker pool wherein swirls pools of foam with bits of straw. Buttoning his jeans he moves along the barn wall, himself fiddlebacked with light, a petty annoyance flickering across the wallward eye.”
Happy birthday to Cormac. Paid the cost to be the boss. From time to time I hear rumors about these three books he’s working on. Hope to see them soon.
From the first page of Blood Meridian:
“The mother dead these fourteen years did incubate in her own bosom the creature who would carry her off…. He can neither read nor write and in him broods already a taste for mindless violence. All history present in that visage, the child the father of the man.”
What is it? she said. What is happening?
I don’t know.
Why are you taking a bath?
I’m not.
nice.
Agreed, we should just quote the entire CM catalogue.
This is from “Outer Dark”
“When he crashed into the glade among the cottonwoods he fell headlong and lay there with his cheek to the earth. And as he lay there a far crack of lightning went bluely down the sky and bequeathed him in an embryonic bird’s first fissured vision of the world and transpiring instant and outrageous from dark to dark a final view of the grotto and the shapeless white plasm struggling upon the rich and incunabular moss like a lank swamp hare. He would have taken it for some boneless cognate of his heart’s dread had the child not cried.”
“It howled execration upon the dim camarine world of its nativity wail on wail while he lay there gibbering with palsied jawhasps, his hands putting back the night like some witless paraclete beleaguered with all limbo’s clamor.”
older than god and twice as nice. insane to me how he writes five manuscripts at a time. wasn’t there news recently that something new was on its way? i tried to google it just now but apparently people love making comparisons between lebron james and the kid in ‘the road.’
when No Country came out i remember hearing that he had gone into his agent’s office with 3-5 completed booklength manuscripts and told the agent to pick one.
man, now i want to reread Child of God again.
Loved Child of God. Lester Ballard evokes a simple, twisted sympathy even at his most vile.
My uni library bought McCarthy’s papers. They ain’t all gems. Thank god no one made Men and Whales into a film.%Pr
Apparently he used to work in places where I now sometimes work (in Las Cruces, NM). Sadly this doesn’t seem to have given me relevant super powers.
Last year, he said that he was working on a new book, “mostly set in New Orleans around 1980. It has to do with a brother and sister. When the book opens she’s already committed suicide, and it’s about how he deals with it. She’s an interesting girl.”
via http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704576204574529703577274572.html
“Dear friend now in the dusty clockless hours of the town when the streets lie black and steaming in the wake of the watertrucks and now when the drunk and the homeless have washed up in the lee of walls in alleys or abandoned lots and cats go forth highshouldered and lean in the grim perimeters about, now in these sootblacked brick or cobbled corridors where likewire shadows make a gothic harp of cellar doors no soul shall walk save you.”
I would happily die (or more accurately be scalped and raped) within the pages of Blood Meridian.
“The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a patch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.”
He announced his retirement on July 2nd: http://www.rbs.com/media/news/press-releases/2010-press-releases/2010-07-02-cormac.ashx
Would you mind expanding on that a bit? Or on any other little interesting thing about his papers?
I’ve always loved Child of God most of all his books. I don’t know why completely – I don’t think it’s objectively his magnum opus or anything, it just has a peculiar filthy hold and, to me, its his best. “To watch these things issuing forth from the otherwise mute pastoral morning is a man at the barn door. He is small, unclean, unshaven. He moves in the dry chaff among the dust and slats of sunlight with a constrained truculence. Saxon and Celtic bloods. A Child of God much like yourself perhaps. Wasps pass through the laddered light from the barnslats in a succession of strobic moments, gold and trembling between black and black, like fireflies is the serried upper gloom. The man stands straddlelegged, has made in the dark humus a darker pool wherein swirls pools of foam with bits of straw. Buttoning his jeans he moves along the barn wall, himself fiddlebacked with light, a petty annoyance flickering across the wallward eye.”
This whole section, yes! I’m not at home now to look it up, but a few paragraphs later there’s something about the street’s architecture being a ‘delineation of the aberrant, mad and somethingsomething’.
Happy birthday to Cormac. Paid the cost to be the boss. From time to time I hear rumors about these three books he’s working on. Hope to see them soon.
From the first page of Blood Meridian:
“The mother dead these fourteen years did incubate in her own bosom the creature who would carry her off…. He can neither read nor write and in him broods already a taste for mindless violence. All history present in that visage, the child the father of the man.”
“Really it could be most any of his lines in most any of his books.”
Let’s test this. Anyone have his oeuvre handy?
Randomly, I’ll pick the first full five sentences, page 186, any McCarthy book.
When McCarthy wrote about picking a bullet out of your leg and cauterizing it by a campfire. I can’t get the sound out of my head, and I read it years ago. But I do find some of his vocabulary challenging, which isn’t a bad thing. I don’t know if I’m alone in that. Try out this quiz to see how you rank:
http://theopenend.com/2009/03/24/a-vocabulary-quiz-from-cormac-mccarthys-suttree/
What is it? she said. What is happening?
I don’t know.
Why are you taking a bath?
I’m not.
how do you fucking retire from writing?
nice.
You take all your pencils, and you start a great big fire and then you throw those goddamned pencils into that fucking fire and then you tear off your chest and start pounding it with your fists as you stare up at the sky, shouting, “I retire! I shall never write again.”
Simple enough.
Agreed, we should just quote the entire CM catalogue.
This is from “Outer Dark”
“When he crashed into the glade among the cottonwoods he fell headlong and lay there with his cheek to the earth. And as he lay there a far crack of lightning went bluely down the sky and bequeathed him in an embryonic bird’s first fissured vision of the world and transpiring instant and outrageous from dark to dark a final view of the grotto and the shapeless white plasm struggling upon the rich and incunabular moss like a lank swamp hare. He would have taken it for some boneless cognate of his heart’s dread had the child not cried.”
“It howled execration upon the dim camarine world of its nativity wail on wail while he lay there gibbering with palsied jawhasps, his hands putting back the night like some witless paraclete beleaguered with all limbo’s clamor.”
older than god and twice as nice. insane to me how he writes five manuscripts at a time. wasn’t there news recently that something new was on its way? i tried to google it just now but apparently people love making comparisons between lebron james and the kid in ‘the road.’
when No Country came out i remember hearing that he had gone into his agent’s office with 3-5 completed booklength manuscripts and told the agent to pick one.
man, now i want to reread Child of God again.
Loved Child of God. Lester Ballard evokes a simple, twisted sympathy even at his most vile.
My uni library bought McCarthy’s papers. They ain’t all gems. Thank god no one made Men and Whales into a film.%Pr
Apparently he used to work in places where I now sometimes work (in Las Cruces, NM). Sadly this doesn’t seem to have given me relevant super powers.
“McCarthy Lives.” Certainly cause for celebration, but so does Thomas (Little Big Man) Berger, lest we forget.
Last year, he said that he was working on a new book, “mostly set in New Orleans around 1980. It has to do with a brother and sister. When the book opens she’s already committed suicide, and it’s about how he deals with it. She’s an interesting girl.”
via http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704576204574529703577274572.html
See the child.
“Dear friend now in the dusty clockless hours of the town when the streets lie black and steaming in the wake of the watertrucks and now when the drunk and the homeless have washed up in the lee of walls in alleys or abandoned lots and cats go forth highshouldered and lean in the grim perimeters about, now in these sootblacked brick or cobbled corridors where likewire shadows make a gothic harp of cellar doors no soul shall walk save you.”
Andy, here you go:
–First five sentences of Blood Meridian on page 186:
“All to the north the rain had dragged black tendrils down from the thunderclouds like tracings of lampblack fallen in a beaker and in the night they could hear the drum of rain miles away on the prairie. They ascended through a rocky pass and lightning shaped out the distant shivering mountains and lightning rang the stones about and tufts of blue fire clung to the horses like incandescent elementals that would not be driven off. Soft smelterlights advanced upon the metal of the harness, lights ran blue and liquid on the barrels of the guns. Mad jackhares started and checked in the blue glare and high among those clanging crags jokin rosehawks crouched in their feathers or cracked a yellow eye at the thunder underfoot.”
and from “Suttree”
“Get that little fucker, Red, called McCulley.
Callahan was standing bloodyheaded in the middle of a pile of fallen bodies looking about. He reached and took the boy by the shoulder almost gently. Pow, he said. Suttree turned his head.”
Tough to do, I thought BM would take me ten pages with five sentences.
I would happily die (or more accurately be scalped and raped) within the pages of Blood Meridian.
“The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a patch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.”
p.186, THE ROAD, hardcover
It’s people who walk along the beach looking for things of value that might have washed up.
What kind of things?
Any kind of things. Anything that you might be able to use.
Do you think we’ll find anything?
I dont know. We’ll take a look.
Take a look, the boy said.
I need to read more. Have only read THE ROAD and OUTER DARK. Looks like SUTTREE or BLOOD MERIDIAN should be next. Or CHILD OF GOD.
He announced his retirement on July 2nd: http://www.rbs.com/media/news/press-releases/2010-press-releases/2010-07-02-cormac.ashx
Would you mind expanding on that a bit? Or on any other little interesting thing about his papers?
This whole section, yes! I’m not at home now to look it up, but a few paragraphs later there’s something about the street’s architecture being a ‘delineation of the aberrant, mad and somethingsomething’.
hahaha are pencils still being made these days?
a writer announcing his retirement feels glib and arrogant to me.
a factory worker retires.
an accountant retires.
a dmv manager retires.
a writer wakes up in his silk pajamas, sips his irish coffee and quits.
“Really it could be most any of his lines in most any of his books.”
Let’s test this. Anyone have his oeuvre handy?
Randomly, I’ll pick the first full five sentences, page 186, any McCarthy book.
When McCarthy wrote about picking a bullet out of your leg and cauterizing it by a campfire. I can’t get the sound out of my head, and I read it years ago. But I do find some of his vocabulary challenging, which isn’t a bad thing. I don’t know if I’m alone in that. Try out this quiz to see how you rank:
http://theopenend.com/2009/03/24/a-vocabulary-quiz-from-cormac-mccarthys-suttree/
it’s someone else with the name cormac mccarthy
how do you fucking retire from writing?
You take all your pencils, and you start a great big fire and then you throw those goddamned pencils into that fucking fire and then you tear off your chest and start pounding it with your fists as you stare up at the sky, shouting, “I retire! I shall never write again.”
Simple enough.
All The Pretty Horses
John Grady grinned. You see that big old boy standin yonder that’s been watching us?
I see the son of a bitch.
See him lookin over here?
I see him.
The Crossing
He said that to follow a false map was to invite disaster. He gestured at the sketching in the dirt. As if to invite them to behold its futility. The second man on the bench nodded his agreement in this and said that the map in question was a folly and that the dogs in the street would piss upon it. But the man on the right only smiled and said that for that matter the dogs would piss upon their graves as well and how was this an argument?
Cities of the Plain
I hope so.
Do you think I ought to get married?
Hell, son. how would I know?
You never did.
That dont mean I didnt try.
6, I know, but y’all deserved the punchline. From the bundled-up trilogy.Picador.
Thanks!
But, I’m Adam.
The caption for “All 11” is funny, but there should be captions for the others, too.
Someone should appoint Cormac McCarthy education czar and put him in charge of all standardized tests.
if someone’s “papers” are bought, they’re not supposed to be gems anyway, otherwise we’d have heard of them, correct? don’t “papers” usually include throw-aways, notes, drafts, grocery lists. not to be judged solely on, but rather round out the picture. show glimpses of the process.
soymilk, what do you mean soymilk, mccarthy?
“McCarthy Lives.” Certainly cause for celebration, but so does Thomas (Little Big Man) Berger, lest we forget.
lol, that makes more sense mike.
i didn’t click on the link. just was sort of like, “wow, cormac isn’t supposed to be an asshat like that.”
glad he is not.
See the child.
yeah tho it is actually really funny to imagine cormac mccarthy in silk pajamas =)
Andy, here you go:
–First five sentences of Blood Meridian on page 186:
“All to the north the rain had dragged black tendrils down from the thunderclouds like tracings of lampblack fallen in a beaker and in the night they could hear the drum of rain miles away on the prairie. They ascended through a rocky pass and lightning shaped out the distant shivering mountains and lightning rang the stones about and tufts of blue fire clung to the horses like incandescent elementals that would not be driven off. Soft smelterlights advanced upon the metal of the harness, lights ran blue and liquid on the barrels of the guns. Mad jackhares started and checked in the blue glare and high among those clanging crags jokin rosehawks crouched in their feathers or cracked a yellow eye at the thunder underfoot.”
and from “Suttree”
“Get that little fucker, Red, called McCulley.
Callahan was standing bloodyheaded in the middle of a pile of fallen bodies looking about. He reached and took the boy by the shoulder almost gently. Pow, he said. Suttree turned his head.”
Tough to do, I thought BM would take me ten pages with five sentences.
Title is Whales and Men, not Men and Whales:
http://www.cormacmccarthy.com/works/whalesandmen.htm
Yeah, but this is a completed script. Not notes. If you want to see notes and revisions of McCarthy’s work the Wittliff Collection has on display the opening of The Road next to an earlier draft of the novel. It’s completely different, yet amazing in its own right. I’ll see if I can snag an image to share.
p.186, THE ROAD, hardcover
It’s people who walk along the beach looking for things of value that might have washed up.
What kind of things?
Any kind of things. Anything that you might be able to use.
Do you think we’ll find anything?
I dont know. We’ll take a look.
Take a look, the boy said.
I need to read more. Have only read THE ROAD and OUTER DARK. Looks like SUTTREE or BLOOD MERIDIAN should be next. Or CHILD OF GOD.
hahaha are pencils still being made these days?
a writer announcing his retirement feels glib and arrogant to me.
a factory worker retires.
an accountant retires.
a dmv manager retires.
a writer wakes up in his silk pajamas, sips his irish coffee and quits.
it’s someone else with the name cormac mccarthy
All The Pretty Horses
John Grady grinned. You see that big old boy standin yonder that’s been watching us?
I see the son of a bitch.
See him lookin over here?
I see him.
The Crossing
He said that to follow a false map was to invite disaster. He gestured at the sketching in the dirt. As if to invite them to behold its futility. The second man on the bench nodded his agreement in this and said that the map in question was a folly and that the dogs in the street would piss upon it. But the man on the right only smiled and said that for that matter the dogs would piss upon their graves as well and how was this an argument?
Cities of the Plain
I hope so.
Do you think I ought to get married?
Hell, son. how would I know?
You never did.
That dont mean I didnt try.
6, I know, but y’all deserved the punchline. From the bundled-up trilogy.Picador.
Thanks!
But, I’m Adam.
The caption for “All 11” is funny, but there should be captions for the others, too.
Someone should appoint Cormac McCarthy education czar and put him in charge of all standardized tests.
if someone’s “papers” are bought, they’re not supposed to be gems anyway, otherwise we’d have heard of them, correct? don’t “papers” usually include throw-aways, notes, drafts, grocery lists. not to be judged solely on, but rather round out the picture. show glimpses of the process.
soymilk, what do you mean soymilk, mccarthy?
lol, that makes more sense mike.
i didn’t click on the link. just was sort of like, “wow, cormac isn’t supposed to be an asshat like that.”
glad he is not.
yeah tho it is actually really funny to imagine cormac mccarthy in silk pajamas =)
“Lemme see them titties,” said Ballad hoarsely.
Title is Whales and Men, not Men and Whales:
http://www.cormacmccarthy.com/works/whalesandmen.htm
Yeah, but this is a completed script. Not notes. If you want to see notes and revisions of McCarthy’s work the Wittliff Collection has on display the opening of The Road next to an earlier draft of the novel. It’s completely different, yet amazing in its own right. I’ll see if I can snag an image to share.
“Lemme see them titties,” said Ballad hoarsely.
That randomly selected passage from Blood Meridian is actually one that I remember quite vividly, specifically those tufts of blue fire and those lights that ran blue and liquid.
I could also pick almost any descriptive passage for the stylistic acrobatics, but one different sort of passage that’s always stood out to me is Suttree’s father’s letter to Suttree – something about how the life of the streets in Knoxville is a mad show of imbeciles (a position which Suttree of course rejects).
That randomly selected passage from Blood Meridian is actually one that I remember quite vividly, specifically those tufts of blue fire and those lights that ran blue and liquid.
I could also pick almost any descriptive passage for the stylistic acrobatics, but one different sort of passage that’s always stood out to me is Suttree’s father’s letter to Suttree – something about how the life of the streets in Knoxville is a mad show of imbeciles (a position which Suttree of course rejects).
Sorry Adam, Sorry Adam, Sorry Adam. Now no more mistakes self, no no more.
Sorry Adam, Sorry Adam, Sorry Adam. Now no more mistakes self, no no more.