Although its subject and approach are superficially more palatable, the essence of his unusual vision also persists. Novels, though it certainly preserves all his stylistic strength. 'All the Pretty Horses,' the comparatively brief first volume of a planned trilogy, is probably the most accessible of Mr. Novels so brilliantly depict can seem, on casual inspection, to be senseless. Itself as it unfolds, resembling Elizabethan language in its flux of remarkable possibilities.Īll these qualities make 'Suttree' (1979) and 'Blood Meridian' (1985), the two long novels that precede his latest book, more than a little challenging to the uninitiated, and the world of violence that these and his earlier, shorter His diction and phrasing come from all over the evolutionary history of English and combine into a prose that seems to invent He's noted for ar chaisms so unfamiliar they appear to be neologisms. This mixture builds on Faulkner's work, yet, more than Faulkner ever did, Mr. Is elaborate and elevated, but also used effectively to frame realistic dialogue, for which his ear is deadly accurate. Powered by long, tumbling many-stranded sentences, his descriptive style McCarthy's fiction comes first from the extraordinary quality of his prose difficult as it may sometimes be, it is also overwhelmingly seductive.

Work itself repays the tight focus of his attention with its finely wrought craftsmanship and its ferocious energy. By his single-minded commitment to his work and his apparent indifference to the rewards and aggrandizements quite openly pursued by the rest of us, he puts most other American writers to shame. May 17, 1992, Sunday, Late Edition - FinalĬORMAC MCCARTHY has practiced the Joycean virtues of silence, exile and cunning more faithfully than any other contemporary author until very recently, he shunned publicity so effectively that

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Mccarthy all the pretty horses