What is the importance of literary criticism?

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

I can't believe I read that entire review. Preening moron. When you get to the last paragraph were Wood calls the novel "magnificent", you are somewhat taken back.



This is the fancy way of saying, just like Oprah's fans surely did, HOW DOES IT END????

Fail.

I think you're still sore at Wood for talking about Joseph Smith's fraudulence, especially the offhanded way he did it, like everyone knows this.

I think what he's saying in your quote is that McCarthy copped out by giving their journey some personal redemption, a glimmer of a hollywood ending to apeal to the Oprah types. He suggests that McCarthy should have killed father and son off and ended with a fourish of poetic abstraction sort of like he did in Blood Meridian and Cities of the Plain. I'm not saying I agree with him.

[MikeWaters]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

I think you're still sore at Wood for talking about Joseph Smith's fraudulence, especially the offhanded way he did it, like everyone knows this.

I think what he's saying there is that McCarthy copped out by giving their journey some personal redemption, a glimmer of a hollywood ending to apeal to the Oprah types. He suggests that McCarthy should have killed father and son off and ended with a fourish of poetic abstract sort of like he did in Blood Meridian and Cities of the Plain.

Screw Wood.

First off, I have no memory of a connection between Wood and Joseph Smith.

Second, for him to have the gall to tell McCarthy how he SHOULD have ended the book, is like saying, if I were DaVinci, I would have touched up the corner of her mouth a bit with some rouge. Screw him. Or, I would like Mt. Everest better, if the peak was more symmetrical. WTF?

Honestly, like Oprah readers, Wood has overthought the ending, trying to interpret it. Do you know what that means? He doesn't get it.

I'm very disappointed, if this is the greatest literary critic of the last 40 odd years or so, and this is all he has to say. What a pile of doo-doo.

You are going to get a lot of credit from a lot of people, if you have read the 200,000 previous important posts, and can formulate your response in the context of them, as well as the thousands of other conversations of other works. I will grant that someone like Wood is infinitely more capable of doing this--of placing this book in the context of other books and conversations.

But in the sense of taking this work, and examining it in terms of the human experience, in and by itself, he fails.

If this book is truly important, this review is not among those reviews that will be remembered as important.

[SeattleUte]

Or maybe just killed the son off and ended with the father, the last man, raging at Jehova in some fashion.

[MikeWaters]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

Or maybe just killed the son off and ended with the father, the last man, raging at Jehova in some fashion.

yes pounding his fists in the ashes.

or how about being roasted alive on a spit.

blah, blah, blah.

What if this, what if that.

Are we going to rewrite Frost's poetry next?

I don't know if I've ever read a book, that was so technically adept and also so free of artifice.

If you want to make the argument that the ending was artifice, that they were false steps, then make that argument. But I feel pretty safe saying that the argument will not hold. The work speaks for itself.

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

yes pounding his fists in the ashes.

or how about being roasted alive on a spit.

blah, blah, blah.

What if this, what if that.

Are we going to rewrite Frost's poetry next?

I don't know if I've ever read a book, that was so technically adept and also so free of artifice.

If you want to make the argument that the ending was artifice, that they were false steps, then make that argument. But I feel pretty safe saying that the argument will not hold. The work speaks for itself.

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?

[MikeWaters]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

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?

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.

[MikeWaters]

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.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

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?

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by MikeWaters

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.

[Jeff Lebowski]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

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.