Talk:Cormac McCarthy

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'But Gell-Mann was too rushed and disorganized'- can we have a reference here, please?


Anyone with the skills to sort the infobox out, it looks a bit odd on this page? Frainc 02:00 05 July 2006

Infobox sorted out, also got a new image after I e-mailed Random House. LilDice 16:28, 18 July 2006 (UTC)


Contents

[edit] What to do?

This article is quite small, what do you think is the most important thing to add next? Criticism, writing style? LilDice 13:00, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I've added a bunch of early biography stuff, I stopped around Blood Meridian time. More could be added there. LilDice 03:30, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

It is a bit odd - Is it not?- That Mccarthy chose to entitle one of his novels, to wit, Cities of The Plain, after one of the long sections of Proust's Remenbrance of Things Past-His supposed nemesis.(Myersdtm 17:21, 6 June 2007 (UTC))

I think Cities of the Plain is a reference to Sodom and Gomorrah rather than Proust. The ranch is being bought out for nuclear testing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.143.189.0 (talk) 03:50, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Opening section

Who is "Literary critic Adam Stoltz"? I can't find this guy anywhere on google so I think this sentence should be removed. (At the least there should be a citation.) Of course McCarthy is one of the most important American novelists of his (or any) time, but can we say this a bit less weasel-y? --Sam

User Peripatic changed it to Adam Stoltz, I changed it back to Bloom. Feel free to find your own quote and cite it though.


[edit] The Road

Finished it last night. Cried like a baby. Don't know if I should push others to read it or beg that they not. It is powerful, raw, gut wrenching and beautiful. If you are a father you need to go into this book with a silent mantra...it's not real...it's only a book... The author, as usual, has created a materpiece out of thin air and his ridiculously advanced brain. This is an instant classic - John Hubbard

Holy shit! I didnt know there was a new McCarthy book, I'm half way through a huge George RR Martin fantasy book right now too, what to do what to do...LilDice 14:31, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Science Fiction (?)

I see that someone has described some of McCarthy's works (without specifying which ones) as science fiction. I have read most but not all of them. I've never seen this term applied to his work before. Remove the term? Can anyone suggest to me which of his books qualify as science fiction? Does it just apply to The Road? Mr Frosty 15:48, 6 October 2006 (UTC)

The only novel that you could say is science fiction would be the Road, but just judging from the description of the book (I haven't read it yet) I think that's a bit of a stretch. I'd just remove it.LilDice 18:29, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
I changed it to "speculative fiction". I think this is more appropriate, as the book does not posit the existence of any new "science", nor does it even dwell for more than a few sentences on the presumably technological basis of the apocalyptic event. - kennn
That's fine with me. McCarthy's a lot of things but a Sci-Fi writer, that just doesn't fit. LilDice 23:15, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
I beg to differ, as I believe that although CMC's book may be informed by the genre codes of speculative fiction, it is nevertheless more than that. Can we agree on inserting post-apocalyptic fiction rather than speculative fiction? --Kleiner Junge 22:49, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Fair 'nuff. LilDice 23:37, 13 November 2006 (UTC)


[edit] In Portuguese

Just to say that there is already a portuguese entry for "Cormac McCarthy",
but that is not being added to the "other languages" column.

[edit] Appalachia?

The article states that the setting of Outer Dark is Appalachia. This is an assumption, as the setting is never specifically mentioned. Moreover, I'm not so sure that that it is a safe assumption; the South, yes, but Appalachia specifically, no. The reason I say this is because there is a passage in the novel that mentions alligators in the distance. I suppose there is the possibility of alligators existing somewhere in Appalachia (I don't actually know the full extent of their territory during the time period of the novel), but it seems unlikely. A small problem (if it is a problem, I await your input), but one that should be fixed. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.11.83.250 (talk) 05:42, 29 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] remark on removals

If being attacked by B.R. Myers is "excessively unimportant trivia", then there's no reason for any book title to appear more than once in the text. --VKokielov 15:27, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

While I agree with you, I conclude that the proper is course is not to exclude the rest but to include a Myers reference. I think most McCarthy fans knew about the Myers article, and I certainly don't think this McCarthy article has gotten so long and unwieldly that the "importance" hurdle is yet high enough to exclude the "incident." I have reinserted the prior language, which could certainly use improvement. Cka3n 22:52, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
By itself it's harmless, but seeing as it's the only piece of "criticism", I think it should be removed or replaced with a more robust discussion. All by its lonesome, it's a rather ridiculous bit of trivia on an important author.

[edit] Oprah stole our article!

Oprah's Book Club Meet the Author

Pretty close to this article probably not 1 for 1 though, I wrote a bulk of it and I recognize some key phrases there, ah well... Lil' Dice (yeah, I said it!) - talk 17:23, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

All of this material was previously available either in print or at cormacmccarthy.com, so nobody "stole" anything.Josh a brewer 23:20, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

The 'stole' part was tongue-in-cheek, but there are some duplicate phrases. Lil' Dice (yeah, I said it!) - talk 00:23, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Religious beliefs?

I see that McCarthy is included in the categories "Christian writers" and "Roman Catholic writers." Does anyone know if this is verifiable? He certainly packs his books with Christian themes but that doesn't necessarily make him a practicing Christian. Breadhat 20:14, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Influences

I've added Ernest Hemingway as an influence in the info box. This can be sourced to the introductory essay to the Modern Library edition of Blood Meridian. The essay, written by Harold Bloom, says that McCarthy disproved the until-then widely-held belief that a writer could be influenced "either by Faulkner or by Hemingway, but not by both." Also, in regards to the inclusion of Dostoevsky as an influence, I don't disagree, but I'm wondering if there is a source as I've never read anything to that effect before. 74.73.191.197 01:58, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

As far as Dostoevsky goes, McCarthy has an interview from 1992 with the New York Times where he referred to Faulkner, Dostoevsky, and Melville as "the greats." In the December 20 issue of Rolling Stone, they have a profile of McCarthy that says his favorite novels are Ulysses, The Sound and the Fury, Moby-Dick, and The Brothers Karamazov. In that same profile, they link his recent Hemingwayish spareness to his involvement with the Santa Fe Institute and his interest in the precision/rigors of scientists. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.143.189.0 (talk) 03:46, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Child of God publication date

There's a unexplained discrepacy in the Biography section and later in the article: Child of God's publication date is both 1973 and 1974. Kpjas (talk) 11:51, 15 March 2008 (UTC)