Writing Like Cormac McCarthy

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Writing LikeCormac McCarthy

• Katy Glemser
• ENG217
• Honors Project

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Brief Bio

• Originally named Charles, but renamed himself
  after Cormac the Irish King
• Born in 1933 in Rhode Island
• Raised Roman Catholic
• Majored in liberal arts
• Married 3 times
• Lives in El Paso, Texas

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Novels

• All the Pretty Horses was first to become a
  public sensation when published in 1992
• Part of the Border Trilogy, which chronicles two
  young men and their coming of age in the
  Southwest and Mexico
• Child of God
• Blood Meridian
• The Road
• No Country for Old Men

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What makes his writing so unique?

• Some readers are alienated by his novels
  punctual appointments with blood-soaked
  violenceOthers think his work bombastic,
  pretentious, or claustrophobically male-locked
  McCarthy has a tendency to omit half the human
  race from serious scrutiny

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But

• Surely no one disputes McCarthys talent. He
  has written extraordinarily beautiful proseHe is
  also a wonderfully delicate noticer of nature.
• -James Wood

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Polysyndeton

• Definition the repetition of conjunctions in
  close succession for rhetorical effect
• (pol-ee-sin-di-ton)
• The dogs swarmed wildly over the road and
  Rawlins horse stood and twisted and shook its
  head and the big bay turned a complete circle and
  there were three pistol shots from somewhere in
  the dark all evenly spaced that went pop pop pop
  (83).

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• McCarthy is tasteful in his use of it
• Poetic-prose
• Often in scenes of action
• Contributes to rushed sense of anticipation and
  anxiety
• Establishes realistic feel of the characters
  thought process

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Warm-Up Exercise

• For 3 minutes, write your thoughts in your
  journal. Use polysyndeton and just keep writing
  until the time is up.
• It may make sense, or is may sound like
  gibberish. Thats ok!

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Dialogue

• NO quotations!
• Distract from attempted verisimilitude in
  storytelling
• What is said is just said
• McCarthy delves straight into the heart of the
  spoken word
• Rarely any tags (i.e., he said)
• Action is accelerated much quicker and the
  narrative is set to a speedier pace

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• What are you doin? he said.
• Nothin.
• Why dont you come back inside.
• Im all right.
• Theyve offered us to spend the night.
• Go ahead.
• What do you aim to do?
• Im all right.
• page 55

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Unorthodox, yet effective

• Many writers try too hard to sound majestic and
  professional by deforming their writing with a
  lot of ornamentation
• Cormac McCarthy instead strips away all nuisances
  (commas, quotations, etc.), thus exposing words
  in their
• bare beauty.

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Sources

• McCarthy, Cormac. All the Pretty Horses.
• New York Random House, 1992.
• Wood, James. The Sanguinary Sublime of Cormac
  McCarthy. The New Yorker. 25 July 2005. 18
  Feb 2008 http//www.newyorker.com.