This style has been a source of complaint for some reviewers; in a
New York Times review of McCarthy's
All the Pretty Horses, for example, critic Herbert Mitgang lamented: "This reader was put off at first by the author's all too writerly writing. His joined words, without hyphenation, and his unpunctuated, breathless sentences, call too much attention to themselves." Kurt Tidmore contended in the
Washington Post Book World, however, that "the reader is never confused. Sentences punctuate themselves by the natural rhythm of their words. Everything is perfectly clear. The poetic never overwhelms the realistic." In addition, wrote Madison Smartt Bell in the
New York Times Book Review, McCarthy's "elaborate and elevated" prose is "used effectively to frame realistic dialogue, for which his ear is deadly accurate." Bell continued: "Difficult as [McCarthy's writing] may sometimes be, it is also overwhelmingly seductive."
Throughout his career, McCarthy has actively avoided public attention, refusing to participate in lecture tours and seldom granting interviews. "Of all the subjects I'm interested in [talking about]," the author commented in the New York Times, "writing is way, way down at the bottom of the list." "Until very recently," observed Bell, "he shunned publicity so effectively that he wasn't even famous for it." Instead, he has concentrated upon crafting his unique and powerful fictions, unaffected by the critical acclaim that is heaped upon him with each new book.
This is a free page. This page contains 186 words. This
biography contains 3,802 words (approx. 13 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Biography with our Cormac McCarthy Access Pass.
