Saturday, August 30, 2003
An Old Item: The Influence of Cormac McCarthyWill Blythe, in an article in the June 9, 2002 New York Times Book Review, discusses the influence of Cormac McCarthy on several young writers....
Like cigarette packs, the books of certain writers should come with warning labels: Danger: May cause excessive imitation. And these days, no American writer has produced fiction that more merits those cautionary tags than Cormac McCarthy. His work has spawned a legion of imitators, most significantly Charles Frazier, whose best-selling Civil War novel of 1997, Cold Mountain, is a masterly act of ventriloquism, the best McCarthy novel McCarthy never wrote. For a writer, to read fiction such as Child of God (the greatest necrophiliac novel ever, slender though that category may be), Suttree, Blood Meridian and the Border Trilogy is to risk being turned into a McCarthy clone, and may require the kind of evasive maneuvers Odysseus took when the sirens called. Aspiring authors, tie yourselves to the mast and plug up those ears!I found that passage long ago, and it's been sitting here waiting for the new site to be completed. As I think it's a nice quote, it stays.
posted by mp
8/30/2003
Thursday, August 21, 2003
New Novel NewsWish I had better news with which to kick off the newly-redesigned Web site. Rick Wallach posts the following note today in the Forum.
I received an email from Alfred A. Knopf VP and editor Gary Fisketjon today saying that he doesn't expect that they'll publish the new novel much before 2005. He still hasn't got a manuscript, and it doesn't sound like he's counting on receiving one in the immediate future.This news disappoints; consider, however, that McCarthy's Cities of the Plain was published in 1998, while the first two volumes of The Border Trilogy appeared in 1992 and 1994. In the 90s, we saw three novels from McCarthy in rapid succession and have likely been spoiled — especially with the appearance of books like The Gardener's Son and The Stonemason.
Looking at the dates of publication of the books reveals an interesting pattern:
- From The Orchard Keeper to Outer Dark: 3 years.
- From Outer Dark to Child of God: 6 years.
- From Child of God to Suttree: 5 years.
- From Suttree to Blood Meridian: 6 years.
- From Blood Meridian to All the Pretty Horses: 7 years.
- From All the Pretty Horses to The Crossing: 2 years.
- From The Crossing to Cities of the Plain: 4 years.
From Cities of the Plain to the new book: right now, it's been five years. If the new novel is published sometime next year, it will have been six.
McCarthy is not a writer concerned with publishing quickly; rather, he's about quality, and longer spans between books are not abnormal in light of McCarthy's previous career. The '90s were the fluke.
Finally, looking at that list one more time reveals that when more than five years elapsed between the publication of one novel and the next, the results were:
- Child of God
- Blood Meridian
- All the Pretty Horses
I'm not sure, therefore, that another delay is a bad thing. I am, of course, anxious to read the new novel. But I'd rather wait if waiting means a better book.
Welcome to the new Web site.
posted by mp
8/21/2003
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