Okay, now for another one of my favorite authors: Cormac McCarthy. I've read a fair number of his books. All the Pretty Horses (New York: Random House, 1992). How I can like Richard Russo and this guy, I have no idea. They're as far apart in style as you can be and still be on the same planet. This book is the first volume of a trilogy, the second two I read but was not that thrilled about so didn't keep.
Here goes:
The candleflame and the image of the candleflame caught in the pierglass twisted and righted with he entered the hall and again when he shut the door.This first sentence announces that you're in for a world which is grayer than most. Where images change and transform themselves before your eyes in ways over which you have no control. Where words run together and you're not sure what is really happening so you have to take it as it comes.
This guy takes a little getting used to. First of all, don't count on quotation marks or clear speaker attribution. Don't count on a lot of commas and semicolons. Faulkner used them all up, I think. Just spare, staunt prose, and haunting narrative and compelling characters. Just thinking about this makes me want to read him again.
Take this sentence from later on page 1.
It was dark outside and no wind. In the distance a calf bawled. He stood with his hat in his hand. You never combed your hair that way in your life, he said.How could you not love that writing, even if you're a Virginia Woolf devotee?
I would like some quotation marks, though. I also don't like writers who don't identify who they're characterizing before they refer to them as "he". Tony Morrison does that too, and it used to drive me nuts.
Somebody once complained about a famous writer because he used bad grammar. The writer said something like, "They give Pulitzers for writing not for grammar."
What do you think? Tell me. Post a comment. I'd like to know. And follow me on Twitter.com
Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my ideas on entrepreneurship, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for my ideas on writing and publishing, go to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com.
Ian Kearney, the director of the Kearney Music School, an elite musical training school in Philadelphia, dies after a fall from a balcony during a recital. World-famous cellist, Henry Harrier, recently forced from the faculty, returns to investigate Ian's death when his prized former student is arrested. Henry shows through his brilliant and single-minded pursuit of the truth that, as usual, they have it all wrong. This Sherlock Holmes-type mystery leads the reader through the world of classical music and lays bare the conflicts which dominate the lives of talented adolescents when placed under the pressure of studying for a demanding, stressful, and often elusive career as a classical music performer. Henry Harrier is part John Le Carre's George Smiley, part Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes, and part Orlando Cole the beloved teacher, renowned chamber musician, and until his own retirement, the premier cellist of the Curtis Institute.
Tim was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on January 30, 1946. In 1951 he moved with his family to Schenectady, New York, where he lived through high school. He attended Baldwin-Wallace College, Berea, Ohio, from 1964 to 1968. He graduated in 1968 with a B.A. in history and philosophy. He received his Ph. D. in history in U.S. history in 1980 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison after spending 2.5 years in the U. S. Army. Most of his army service was completed in Wuerzburg, Germany, from 1969-1971. In 1972 he returned to Madison to complete his doctoral study. His dissertation, Those Who Moved; Internal Migrants in American 1607-1840, combined the statistical analysis of genealogical and biographical data with the study of traditional literary diaries, letters, and journals.
