These Days host Tom Fudge is a Cormac McCarthy fan and here he tells Culture Lust readers why.....

A Cognac for Cormac 
By Tom Fudge

I didn’t spend much time watching the Academy Awards on Sunday, but I watched enough to hear the news that No Country for Old Men won the award for best picture. I enjoyed the movie, and I’m sure the Coen brothers deserve a lot of credit for making it. But the person most responsible for that movie was the man who wrote the novel, Cormac McCarthy.

Cormac McCarthy has become my favorite writer. It’s rare to pick up a novel and be immediately blown away by the quality of the prose. But that’s what happens when you read McCarthy. And if you’ve seen the movie, No Country for Old Men, get a copy of the novel. You’ll be struck by how much the scenes in the movie owe to the book. I don’t think this happened because Joel and Ethan Coen revere McCarthy. They simply realized there was no way to improve on McCarthy’s dialogue and descriptions.

One of the first things you notice, when reading McCarthy, is that he doesn’t use quotation marks when he’s writing dialogue. Here’s one example, from No Country, in which the killer, Chigurh, interrogates the owner of a gas station. If you saw the movie, you’ll remember this scene. Chigurh hears the owner say he goes to bed at about 9:30, then he says:

I could come back then.
We’ll be closed then.
That’s all right.
Well why would you be comin back? We’ll be closed.
You said that.
Well we will.
You live in that house behind the store?
Yes I do.
You’ve lived here all your life?
The proprietor took a while to answer. This was my wife’s father’s place, he said. Originally.
You married into it.
If that’s the way you want to put it.
I don’t have some way to put it. That’s the way it is.
Well I need to close now.

I’ve often thought writing is a visual medium because you see the written words. When your eyes pass over dialogue like McCarthy’s, you’re struck by how perfectly it captures the essence of the words and the drama of the situation. His method of leaving out punctuation is one way he does that.

McCarthy also wrote All the Pretty Horses. I loved the book but refused to see the movie made from it. I just couldn’t accept the idea of Matt Damon playing a Cormac McCarthy hero. The book skillfully combines the sounds of Texas with the sounds of Spanish. In one scene, the main character is drinking in a Mexican bar with his buddy, Rawlins. Their stumbling acquaintance falls out of his chair and a man says to him:

Está bien?
He’s all right, said Rawlins. You caint hurt a fool.

The stories of Cormac McCarthy thrive on the violence of daily life. Some critics have been appalled at the conclusion of No Country for Old Men, as Chigurh, the devil’s embodiment, walks away from his murders with every indication that he’ll continue. Maybe you have to steel yourself a bit when you approach McCarthy.

About a month ago I finished The Road, a novel for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. It’s a story of how a man and his small son travel through a hellish landscape that’s been ravaged by some apocalyptic military or environmental disaster. As the father of a seven-year-old, it was tough for me to read. Yet I can assure readers who may want to pick it up, it does end with hope.

Let me end with one last sample from Cormac McCarthy. Here, Sheriff Bell reflects on the meaning of truth in No Country for Old Men. He says:

The stories get passed on and the truth gets passed over. As the sayin goes. Which I reckon some would take as meanin that the truth cant compete. But I don’t believe that. I think that when the lies are all told and forgot the truth will be there yet. It dont move about from place to place and it don’t change from time to time. You cant corrupt it any more than you can salt salt. You cant corrupt it because that’s what it is. It’s the thing you’re talking about. I’ve heard it compared to the rock – maybe in the bible—and I wouldn’t disagree with that. But it’ll be here even when the rock is gone. 

Dammit. I wish I could write like that! I’d even move to Texas if that’s what it took.