Said Anne DeLisle, the English pop singer who married Cormac McCarthy in 1966 and lived with him for "nearly 8 years in a dairy barn outside Knoxville."
McCarthy told Oprah Winfrey “I don’t think it’s good for your head” to be interviewed:
“You spend a lot of time thinking about how to write a book, you probably shouldn’t be talking about it. You probably should be doing it.”
In 2009, "the Olivetti typewriter on which he’d written each of his novels sold at auction for $254,500. He immediately began working on a new Olivetti, the same model, purchased for less than $20."
Posts
26 comments:
Say what you will about his eccentricity, that old boy could write a sentence.
Writing is much better than speaking. I cringe when I hear myself.
When someone dies at 89, its hard to be sad about it. I'm just glad that McCormac lived a long, successful life, and hopefully had an easy exit.
As for his writings. I thought he was very, very good writer, and an average novelist. Blood Meridian is Full of excellent, almost poetic descriptions of action and landscapes. And "No Country for Old Men" has some riveting action. But Blood Meridian' story is a comic book story in novel form. Go read the REAL history of the Gang tht McCormac writes about. He makes the Americanos into Spagetti Western heroes. I'm shocked that Eastwood didn't make the movie!
IRC, No country was actually a novelization of a script. But I could be getting that mixed up with Kennedy's Ironweed.
Some of his more serious books on Western life/Cowboys strike me as overwritten and fake. Like someone a writer from New England trying to make a cowboy's life and horses into a complex tale of meaning and change. And... Blah blah.
When alls said and done the only novel I really liked was "The Road".
Obviously, I'm in the minority. Maybe I just can't appreciate a great writer.
This guy could really write, he could put you right in the moment. He could make your skin crawl and still want more. There is nothing like him today!
In the first batch of what's now 1111 MacArthur fellows. Money well spent.
The only book of his I've read is THE ROAD, and it is magnificent, if bleak. I actually had tears in my eyes reading the last page or two of the book. I don't think I've ever read anything else that impelled that reaction in me. (I've never seen the movie. I'm somewhat apprehensive how bleak it may be if it is faithful to the novel.)
Great artists are often eccentrics; their focus is on their art. Such eccentrics are not concerned, for the most part, with either their own lives or other people in their lives.
When the group around good artists becomes insufferable (not enough readers and critics, and too many people looking for meaning, reputation, money and ideas) it's probably best to just avoid the whole lot.
Artists tend their gardens, then burn them down and put them into the work. What they have to say is what they do and don't say in the work.
Such a great talent. Read Blood Meridian, if you haven't. Or, if you can take it, Outer Darkness. Fuck, he's gone and Martin Amis just awhile ago. Two of my favorite authors.
I had no idea he had two novels come out in 2022. I feel like a complete idiot for not knowing that.
That's just every summer vacation in the Adirondacks.
"No Country for Old Men" is a favorite book and movie of mine.
My favorite line goes something like this; as recited by Tommy Lee Jones, "If Satan was sittin' around and thinkin' about a way to bring mankind to its knees, he'd come up with narcotics."
One of the greatest of our time. And as great as his later novels were, and...they were, I still love his earlier works more, for some reason. Either way, we all lose when we lose a great storyteller, a great writer. RIP to one of the greatest.
I read The Road and came to the conclusion that its author would not be an ideal dinner guest.
Good to see that a writer who remained true to himself ended up rich.
He sold his papers to a Texas University for millions.
The type writer sale is awesome. What a capital gain.
I hope his sons sell his last typewriter for $1 million.
Cormac also wrote “The Counsler” which I really liked. Great cast with Javier Badem, Brad Pitt and two top female actresses.
Michael Fassbinder plays a lawyer.
Great story. Great dialogue. I gave it a 9, but IMDB has it as 5.4.
In the future....no one will care about selfing a vintage word processor!!
The only book of his that I have read is Blood Meridian, and while it was very well written, ticks all of the boxes on that score that I know of, it was just so depressing I couldn't finish it. Huck Finn grows up and turns into what Huck Finn probably turned into after he "lit out for the territories." But it sounds like I am missing out, so I will have to dig into more. No Country for Old Men is a great movie, but I can't bring myself to watch it ia second time, even though I can watch movies a dozen times if I like them; it's just too dark.
My favorite line from No Country for Old Men...
"Do you have any idea how crazy you are?"
It seems like a very relevant question these days...
“Far out on the desert to the north dustspouts rose wobbling and augered the earth and some said they'd heard of pilgrims borne aloft like dervishes in those mindless coils to be dropped broken and bleeding upon the desert again and there perhaps to watch the thing that had destroyed them lurch onward like some drunken djinn and resolve itself once more into the elements from which it sprang. Out of that whirlwind no voice spoke and the pilgrim lying in his broken bones may cry out and in his anguish he may rage, but rage at what? And if the dried and blackened shell of him is found among the sands by travelers to come yet who can discover the engine of his ruin?”
Friendo mentioned Blood Meridian… that book made an impression on me, one helluva read! And my son tells me he’s read they’re making a movie of it. I’m looking forward to seeing it.
Saw the movies mad of "The Road" and "No Country." Did not feel like reading his books after that.
I read “The Road” back when my son was about 7 years old. Didn’t sleep well for a couple weeks afterward.
Too often in his later years his writing drifted into the self-parodic
The first four Southern novels. Suttree is the one that will endure as his masterwork.
I corresponded with Cormac when he was still living in El Paso, and working on the Border Trilogy. He was very gracious. I framed a letter he wrote to me and it hangs on the wall above my desk. I imagine it might be worth something now that he's gone. But I will never sell it.
Post a Comment