Quote:
Originally Posted by Penforhire
I think he's a great author in spite of how he distorts the English language (for the record, James Joyce can bite me, lol). Some people admire his inventive use of language. I found that distracting. You can write lean and spare with punctuation.
Queentess was harsh but that opinion is not unique (as Bill agreed). Some people have no time for poetry or slow movies and that's my perspective on why opinions vary so strongly. Not saying The Road is poetry but it has some aspects in common. For example, a surface reading is not as obviously enjoyable as mulling over the themes. Some of what McCarthy writes just sets a mood with very little dramatic action.
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Lack of proper punctuation is just part of it. Another part of it for me is that the world is too barren. Note, I am not talking about depressing; I have read other even more depressing apocalyptic novels and did not have the same reaction (On the Beach being most prominent). All vegetation is gone, all animals are gone.. there is just humans remaining? How are humans surviving at all with out the first two. Even aside from the food issue (I figure if you rely exclusively on cannibilism for food, the human population would be extinct in a year or so.), the planet should be rapidly running out of oxygen. McCarthy's unwillingness to tell us anything about how the world got this way, the all but complete lack of others who are trying to do the right thing outside the protagonists (and spoiler warning..... a handful at the end of the book)...it just seemed to me like McCarthy was trying to write a pointless nightmare, than try to create a real world or real characters. For me, if a writer fails to do that, I don't care how great his prose is, he has failed to write a good novel.
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Bill