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Old 02-18-2009, 12:33 AM   #21
MikeWaters
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Of course, if you consider yourself a noted critic, you have to only give kudos grudgingly. Nothing could be worse than rashly proclaiming a work of genius, only to later find out that Beverly Cleary is not quite the giant you thought.

I still remember Peter Travers calling "The Truman Show" the movie of the decade. Idiot.

When you are the greatest critic in the land, you are actually more important than the artists, and therefore you have to be very careful that you hand out plaudits wisely and stingily. They will forgive you for not liking a great work. But they will never forgive you for loving trash.
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Old 02-18-2009, 12:58 AM   #22
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All I have read is "Horses" which I thought was good to very good, but nothing to jump up and down about. The second book of the trilogy, I have said before, I couldn't finish. His temptation to wax philosophical at the expense of bringing the reader with him, got the best of him, and I could not continue on that journey.
I seem to recall the third book being better. But it's been a long time. I enjoyed all three.

Have you read Blood Meridian?
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Old 02-18-2009, 12:59 AM   #23
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I loved The Road. I have no complaints. I've read all of McCarthy's southwesterns and The Road at least once. I need to read the less well known earlier fiction set in the Deep South. I've got them all. Have you read any of those?
I have Suttree on the shelf. It'll get to the front of the queue eventually.
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Old 02-18-2009, 03:23 AM   #24
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Mike -- I watched that Oprah interview of McCarthy you mentioned. Did you know McCarthy wrote The Road over the course of a "few weeks"? Amazing. He said he'd been writing the book in his subconcious for four years (since he had his vision of the the post-apocalyptic world in San Antonio with fires burning on the hillside). The Muses do not speak so clearly to the rest of us.

I also agree with Mike on the Wood review. Placing a book in context, and being able to do so, says more about the critic than it does about the book itself. To forsake an analysis of the book on its own terms for "it's like Hardy, look at this Hopkins-like paragraph, blah, blah blah" is cheap and narcisstic.

And Wood's focus on the divine "is there, or isn't there" question shows he missed the mirror McCarthy was holding up for parents who give a damn about what happens in between the ingress and egress of the world.
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Old 02-18-2009, 04:41 AM   #25
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All I have read is "Horses" which I thought was good to very good, but nothing to jump up and down about. The second book of the trilogy, I have said before, I couldn't finish. His temptation to wax philosophical at the expense of bringing the reader with him, got the best of him, and I could not continue on that journey.
Horses is his next to weakest novel (I agree with Wood that No Country for Old Men is not in the class of any of the others). The Crossing is magnificent. I've quoted some material from it in the companion thread, those clips from the exmormon's monologue. Altogether I'd definitely call the Border Trilogy (Horses, The Crossing, and Cities of the Plain) a more impressive work than The Road, which is really just a novella. The Crossing is the work that makes The Border Tilogy truly special. Horses and Cities of the Plain (maybe his saddest novel) bookend it. Together they make a truly great epic, a vastly underappreciated work (even though the NYT called it one of the ten best novels in the last 25 years).

Mike, you're really cheating yourself not finishing The Border Trilogy. It's got Mike Waters written all over it. The mourning of a vanishing American frontier landscape and ethos, survivalism, ranching/horses, theology and theodicity, war, star crossed love, complicated and intense filial love (a tragically bad ass younger brother), guns & knives, unrmitting cruelty punctuated by simple inexplicable acts of kindness, all amid breathtaking natural beauty. I think he uses Mexico as his canvas because the country is like a medieval time capsul in a lot of ways. The knife fights are out of this world.

Of course Blood Meridian really is his masterwork. A miraculous accomplishment.
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Old 02-18-2009, 04:44 AM   #26
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I have Suttree on the shelf. It'll get to the front of the queue eventually.
Yeah, I thought I'd start with that.
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Old 02-18-2009, 09:30 PM   #27
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Does Wood review poetry? If not, that may explain why he was flummoxed by The Road.

I think in review of poetry, you are much more likely to deal with the thing that is directly before you.

You don't spend time second-guessing particular words, or poem endings. You look at what it is. You don't imagine the poems that are not there. You consider the poem that is there.

You want a different poem? Go write your own.
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Old 02-19-2009, 04:11 AM   #28
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Does Wood review poetry? If not, that may explain why he was flummoxed by The Road.

I think in review of poetry, you are much more likely to deal with the thing that is directly before you.

You don't spend time second-guessing particular words, or poem endings. You look at what it is. You don't imagine the poems that are not there. You consider the poem that is there.

You want a different poem? Go write your own.
Maybe you would imagine a different poem if it had a plot. I always the Aeneid ended abruptly--probably does since Virgil hadn't finished it when he died.

Of course your post made me google James Wood and poetry. (What did we do without the Internet!) The linked review of Wood's recent book about the art of fiction (I have it; a slight but tough read) gives some quotations concerning Wood's opinions of poetry and poetry vs. the novel. I don't think he's talking about the Iliad or the Aeneid.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008...iction.reviews
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