And how his writing brought me back to books

If you’ve never read a Cormac McCarthy novel, read this first, then go pick up anything he’s written. If you have read a McCarthy book, I hope this brings new light to how you see his work. His writing is not light fodder. His books don’t always leave clear cut, easy to decipher messages. What is the good, what is the bad, or where either came from is not something lightly discerned in his writing. I have not read all of his pieces but I can unequivocally say he accomplishes something every writer needs to aspire to: he is utterly and completely unique in his writing style.

As I understand it, ChatGPT and other AI writing models operate by “reading” basically everything and then spitting out something that makes sense based on what they are programmed to make sense of. They can fairly realistically imitate the writing style of just about any author. But upon closer inspection it is always obvious that the output is a derivation of something else; there is not an original concept. I have not personally tried it, but I cannot imagine even the most advanced AI ever producing anything that would sound truly McCarthy-esque. Yes, there are memes, but his writing is inimitable.

I am not sure if there is a higher compliment that one could ever pay to a writer. I know if anyone told me that something I had written didn’t sound like anything else they’d ever read before, I would be ecstatic.

So often in the course of reading his books I have to stop and reread sentences or entire paragraphs. His writing consistently makes me come to a halt and ask myself, “How did he put these words together in this order? How could anybody think of saying something like that, like that?!” The way he constructs sentences and stories is unrivaled. It’s not just the engrossing level of detail in his descriptions, particularly of landscapes. It’s not just the lack of punctuation or quotation marks. It’s not just the advanced lexicon that requires me as an adult to have a dictionary on hand. It’s not just the profundity in the dialogue or narration of a scene, nor his singular exploration of deep but commonplace ideas. It’s how all of those things happen simultaneously. You cannot just breeze over anything in a McCarthy novel. You have to go through it, piece by piece; like a simultaneously tough yet somehow perfectly cooked and seasoned steak- each paragraph, each sentence, each word forces you to chew it over carefully. Death, despair, love, adventure, violence, regret, existence itself. He writes of all of these things in a way that only he could. It is wholly original. And so, so good.

The reward is totally worth having to slow down.

This admittedly took a period of adjustment on my part. As a child I was an avid reader to say the least. I devoured books. I only tried to excel in other subjects at school so I could spend my free time in class reading. This meant I would often go a bit too fast to completely absorb what I was reading though. I would catch myself skipping almost entire paragraphs at a time to get along in the story if I felt they were “boring” or “useless”, usually descriptions of setting or character. You know, the things authors labor over in order to create an encapsulating world. I didn’t need those things, or so I thought. I just wanted to know “What happens next?” I had to know.

While this greatly increased the volume of literature I read, it did not necessarily make me a better reader, one who could appreciate and understand finer parts of writing and how they were incorporated to improve the story. I, like most other “gifted” kids, stopped reading for pleasure somewhere in my late teens, when the appropriate novels for my reading level seemed to get filled with more and more of the “boring” and “useless” stuff I’d passed over in the books I read as a child. It wasn’t until the last 2 years or so that I started reading consistently again. My attempt at reading Blood Meridian or The Evening Redness in the West was a huge wake up call to that dormant bad habit.

This book finally forced me to slow down, even though I really wanted to know “What happens next??” But because of McCarthy’s singular yet masterful style, I wanted to read the non-action just as much as the action, and had to do so with care and attention. The descriptions alone; I couldn’t understand half of them at first. Then the story itself: gripping and horrific and terrifying and disgusting yet altogether irresistible. Honestly I cannot say I completely understand it either, regardless of how many videos on YouTube I watch for analysis.

I used to feel dumb if I didn’t “get” a book after my first speed read through it. Reading McCarthy has brought to light how much more a book has to offer than just one pass over. I already own too many books I haven’t yet read, but now I feel compelled to go back through many of them that I have completed. What else is there that I potentially skipped over? How much deeper could my understanding of a novel be? One that instantly comes to mind is Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. That is a beast of a book but I can’t help but feel like I need to read it, really read it, again.

Had I not made the decision to start Blood Meridian, I am not sure when or if I ever would have made this realization. I certainly would not have been as aware of the power of great writing without him. Nor would I feel as pulled to try and channel some of that power myself.

He stated in his interview with Oprah the subconscious is older than language. It is that subconscious, that layer beneath our waking thought that is always working and informing us, but isn’t easily communicated with directly, that his writing reaches. Language, when one thinks about it, is a very crude method of communicating thought and feeling. McCarthy manages to bridge that gap in a way I’ve never experienced. He went to that deep place himself, and in turn wrote something that touches that part of the reader’s mind. That part that exists in the self, in being, in the soul. I don’t know how one gets to a place that is so honest, or so singular, or so powerful. I can’t conceive of getting there and wrangling anything into intelligible writing, let alone a story that moves the reader the way his stories do.

I have no idea how far writing will take me or how far I will be willing to go with it. I imagine that by admitting my hesitation I have all but guaranteed I won’t sniff the mastery of someone like McCarthy. His composition style almost makes me want to give up before even attempting. Yet, at the same time, seeing how impactful writing can be makes the endeavor even more alluring. I am drawn to the idea of sitting at a keyboard, day in and day out, going to that place with honesty and earnestness, and producing something that can be so original and so moving to a reader.

I certainly recommend reading his work if you have a strong stomach and don’t mind having to use a thesaurus and Google Translate. The Road should be mandatory reading for any man wanting to embark into fatherhood. His art has spoken to me in a way little else has. It is singular, complicated, verbose, saturnine, complete, and, most of all, compelling. The finality of each ending both grim and uplifting. As far as unique, raw, and undiluted prose goes, McCarthy has no equal. At least not one that I have read yet.

Here are just a few lines from The Passenger, one of McCarthy’s last works published before his death earlier this year, that highlight what I am attempting to describe.

“We would hardly wish to know ourselves again as once we were and yet we mourn the days.”

“In the coming night he thought that men would band together in the hills. Feeding their small fires with the deeds and the covenants and the poetry of their fathers. Documents they’d no gift to read in a cold to loot men of their souls.”

“You would give up your dreams in order to escape your nightmares and I would not. I think it’s a bad bargain.”