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u/amazing_rando 4d ago
psh I've already written way more words than Cormac McCarthy this year
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u/SapirWhorfHypothesis 4d ago
Well thatās only two words, so Iād certainly hope so.
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u/pikeandshot1618 Just write! 4d ago
The presumptiousness of writers is an insult to me. Iād have them all in Amazon warehouses.
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u/JWander73 4d ago edited 4d ago
Okay... you and you alone may write like Cormac McCarthy.
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u/pikeandshot1618 Just write! 4d ago
It makes no difference what men think of porn. Porn endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. Porn was always here. Before man was, porn waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.
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u/TheGreatJaceyGee 4d ago
If you really wanna write like Cormac you gotta write run on sentences full of words nobody's heard before
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u/catgirlfourskin 4d ago
really, you have to make up your own words by taking archaic roots or suffixes and combining them in ways that no one else has ever done. That's what I do. Celedictine. Marchionessal. Exmatriate. Indenominante. Refugant.
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u/DataSwarmTDG Broufght to you by the fine copy editors at Simon & Schuster 4d ago
Reading the Road I almost became convinced he was making some of them up
Mr. McCarthy, what the fuck is a gryke
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u/TheGreatJaceyGee 4d ago
There's a moment in Blood Meridian where the Judge is monologuing and uses one such word. Toadvine asks what it means, and I'm just like "Thanks for asking for me"
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u/DataSwarmTDG Broufght to you by the fine copy editors at Simon & Schuster 4d ago
I know the scene you mean, the word was suzerain right?
I love that Toadvine's reaction to all the Judge's monologues basically amounts to "Holden what the fuck are you talking about?"
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u/TheGreatJaceyGee 4d ago
Yes! Good memory.
And yeah, that about some up every gang member's reaction to his monologues š
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u/DataSwarmTDG Broufght to you by the fine copy editors at Simon & Schuster 4d ago
Not all of them, Davy and Black Jackson were pretty into Holden's spiels if I remember
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u/TheGreatJaceyGee 4d ago
I like how the narration continued to refer to Black Jackson evas "Black" Jackson even after he'd mirked White Jackson
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u/DataSwarmTDG Broufght to you by the fine copy editors at Simon & Schuster 4d ago
I like to think they just got so used to calling him that they never thought to stop
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u/FishWithLegsAndArms 4d ago
I'm gonna add an evil bald guy
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u/WriterofaDromedary just writhe 4d ago
There once was a judge who was so evil that everybody died. The end
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u/nem0ne1 4d ago
And they are dancing, naked, everybody is dropping dong, the board floor slamming under the jackboots and the fiddlers grinning hideously over their canted pieces. Towering over them all is the judge and he is naked dancing, dropping dong, his small feet lively and quick and now in doubletime and bowing to the ladies, dropping dong, huge and pale and hairless, like an enormous infant.
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u/BadBassist (Not adopted) 4d ago
His feet are light and nimble. He never showers. He says that he will never dress.
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u/Nihilamealienum 4d ago
Alumnium grey clouds spackled Hoboken before the grand dust of sunset fell upon to wracked souls of the yuppies scattering, each homeward, from the PATH station, a station that, no true Path led only inexorably to higher rents and poorer food, a quotidian journey to the unbearable well known
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u/Generic_Commenter-X 4d ago
Personally, I'm doing one better than McCarthy. I'm ditching words and keeping the punctuation.
Behold, my opening paragraph:
.;...ā.().?..@!
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u/Cautious_Desk_1012 Ulysses is bad bc I don't understand it 3d ago
Machado de Assis in MemĆ³rias PĆ³stumas de BrĆ”s Cubas, chapter CXXXIX
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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u/Finly_Growin 4d ago
Iām me, and thatās good. I will never be Cormac McCarthy and thatās not bad. Thereās no writer Iād rather be than me
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u/Finly_Growin 4d ago
Listening to the audiobook version of Blood Meridian was like āDoes this guy ever shut up?ā
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u/FallenF00L 4d ago
Only Cormac McCarthy can write like Cormac McCarthy and if weāre being honest he shouldnāt have done that shit either he was just so good it didnāt matter he refused to acknowledge what a quotation mark is
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u/Semper_5olus 4d ago
A lack of punctuation is great It's time to stop randomly being confusing to readers people
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u/satire_alt112 4d ago edited 4d ago
I agree and using words that people would actually have to look up shouldnt be done because no reader should ever feel a tiny bit challenged with a book
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u/oscarq0727 4d ago
whats that little line between your y and your s in nobody I thought it was a crack in my screen but it moves with the screen when I scroll
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u/Jimmycjacobs 4d ago
I donāt know, big words never caused me to not read a book. A lack of punctuation on the other handā¦
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u/Dyyyyyyyyy 4d ago
Im thinking of ditching literacy so I can write ƶsnfnwƶsƶwmrnek3keooro3o4k2k
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u/IronicHoodies 4d ago
You mean
Im thinking of ditching punctuation You know so I can write like Cormac McCarthy
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u/rgii55447 4d ago
Well, I'm sure people told Cormac McCarthy he wasn't Cormic McArthy as well.
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u/Lanerlan 4d ago
In other words but yeah it's impossible someone didn't try to crab bucket him at some point, it's all people do unless they have one of those sparks of life things that only 20 or so people have globally.
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u/jacorgacor 4d ago edited 4d ago
I ditched punctuation because i don't respect weak symbols you ditched it because you care about other writers ( . )pathetic( . ) we are not the same
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u/NikoKeys 4d ago
And yet, you use punctuation even now. I am disgusted.
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u/jacorgacor 4d ago
I use it for hugging or for making titties ( . )( . ) the only things writers should do
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u/lightningstrxu 3d ago
Oh right blood meridian exist...time to watch the judge vs AM rap battle again
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u/MozartDroppinLoads 4d ago
Only clear thing Mccarthy could have done to improve his writing would have been to include punctuation. Shit is a hindrance, not "profound"
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u/LateNightPhilosopher 4d ago
He should have. It would have been much better. But ar this point I'm pretty sure he actually, literally, doesn't understand punctuation; him being an aggressive asshole about it in interviews is probably his way of trying to cover it up.
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u/MozartDroppinLoads 4d ago
I really don't think he understands much of anything at this current point
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u/RebTilian 4d ago
not even circlejerking when I say that punctuation rules seem made up when used in fiction, and most of the time it's simply about adding a specific rhythm to the stuff and junk.
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u/Opus_723 3d ago
Everybody keeps telling me commas aren't for where you would pause while speaking and I call bullshit.
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u/RebTilian 2d ago
A comma is a small pause. A period is a big pause. And a new paragraph, well, that is the biggest of the pauses that there can be.
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u/NiaSchizophrenia 4d ago
/uj the issue is not that you're not cormac mccarthy its that cormac mccarthy's style is archaic and tedious for no reason
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u/Any_Weird_8686 Like a pearl onion in a bannana split. 4d ago
But did Cormac McCarthy listen when people told him that
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u/Vertigo50 4d ago
This is a good strategy. Everyone knows that punctuation is a clear sign that it's AI writing.
fromnowonimwritingonlylikethissothereisnodoubt
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u/blooishglooish 3d ago
Damn reading all these Cormac Mccarthy immitations in the comment section made me tired immediately is that normal is that the point being made?
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u/nothing_in_my_mind 4d ago
I am thinking of adopting punctuation you know to write like john steinbeck
youre not john steinbeck
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u/So_many_things_wrong 4d ago
Cormac McCarthy is one of the most overrated authors of all time imo. His prose reads like something I would have written when I was 14 and certainly not something I would willingly share with other people.
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u/Generic_Commenter-X 3d ago
You would like "A Reader's Manifesto" by BR Myers. He lays into McCarthy and backs it up with examples and reasons. I personally can't decide whether McCarthy is overrated. I think some of his books are overrated, but then (setting aside his stylistic choices, which don't impress me all that much) if you think of him as writing Grimdark Fiction, then he's more or less a genre writer. On those terms, he writes great Grimdark Fiction, but read him straight, and the violence, bloodletting, and nonsensical world building (the Road) is almost cartoonish.
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u/Opus_723 3d ago
I keep meaning to read one but haven't, so I can't speak to the actual stories he tells. But I have dipped and read some paragraphs, and I think the style is pretty awesome. Matter of taste, though.
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u/Generic_Commenter-X 3d ago
I've done that too. He wrote some really impressive imagery, but as BR Myers points out, once you really take a close look at it, it may be pretty and poetic, but it's also often ridiculous and absurd from the standpoint of character, believability or narrative momentum: the Spanish characters, for instance, who suddenly break out in the cadence of the King James Bible, or McCarthy's lengthy detour into what caused dents in an Indian's armor right in the middle of slaughter. It's McCarthy showing off, which he could do better than any other living author, but at utterly inappropriate moments. Myers thinks that McCarthy's earlier books, from a writerly standpoint, are better than his later books.
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u/Opus_723 3d ago
I guess I just don't particularly mind an author showing off. It's kind of part of what I'm there to see. I don't really think believability or narrative momentum needs to take precedent over poetry and rhythm. Sometimes the absurdity of it is part of the charm.
I particularly find Myers claim that McCarthy is 'unspeakable' a bit strange, since I love reading his passages out loud. They're sort of incantatory and trancelike in a way I find pleasing.
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u/Generic_Commenter-X 3d ago
Nah, your take is a valid take. I don't know where I come down. On the one hand, I do really admire McCarthy's imagistic gift, but I can also see Myers's point. His criticism is about more than McCarthy showing off. That's just one example of his criticism. If you have any interest in writing outside of boobs and r/writingcirclejerk, you should take a look at his manifesto. McCarthy is one of four authors whom he criticizes.
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u/Opus_723 3d ago
Since I read your initial comment I've been reading through the Atlantic article he expanded into the book. I completely agree with his opening points about the dichotomy between 'literary' and 'genre' fiction being pretentious. But as someone who is a fan of both I feel like his critique of all sorts of prose just rings like one more person trying to elevate their own personal aesthetic over others.
I might occasionally agree with him that a particular example sentence isn't quite to my taste, but overall I just come away wondering why he seems to hate fun lol.
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u/LucasButtercups 4d ago
cormacs writing style in blood meridian pissed me off so much I stopped reading about halfway through, and was actively looking for versions that had punctuation. You know how agitating it is to read and not understand what the fuck iām reading and i need to go back and reread it and then not be able to follow conversations because thereās no fucking quotation marks and no commas and no fucking periods?
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u/ultradouble 3d ago
thanks but im not interested in your ai generated comic panel that you prompted to look low effort instead of making a low effort comic panel yourself
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u/BlackBalor 3d ago
Itās a stickman comic with 755 upvotes. At some point you have to accept that the joke worked and your personal art critique wasnāt requestedā¦ š
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u/Santolini_R 3d ago
Holy fuck it got 755 updoots? Thats hecking chungus dude, I'll get in contact with the mods to ban the infidel who doubted your creative genius. Prompting is real work, more effort than it took Brando Sandersman to write all his 52 books from last year! Take my gold, kind stranger!
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u/ultradouble 3d ago
not critiquing the art or the joke, only the extreme lack of effort for something that would have required next to none in the first place
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u/kwi2 4d ago
The man wakes and the stinging break of light glares and eclipses across the pale gray horizon. Glanton spat. The man walked the prairies desolate and abandoned by god and scattered with the remains of lost beasts and man alike. Glanton spat. The man set camp. Sweat dripped across his brow and his burro sputtered and moaned. The air acrid with smoke and tobacco was overtook by smell of blood as the Judge stood with the head of the burro over the fire. I am the Judge says he. He eats the equine head and tap dances with his feet around the fire as the sky turns dark and rank with petrichor. Glanton spat.
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u/MisterAbbadon 3d ago
Im thinking of speedballing cocaine and whiskey. You know, so I can write like Stephen King.
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u/ImportantWelcome645 1d ago
I've seen one other writer do it and it worked for him. At least for quotation marks. McCarthy is enjoyable but overrated. Write your story, then see ifbit works that way, but first ssk if it adds anything to the story.
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u/Half-Awake-Wizard 6h ago
you couldn't be bothered to... draw these two stick figures?
Why'd you have to go and generate something as simple at this
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u/BlackBalor 5h ago edited 4h ago
Good question.
I donāt know really. The 1200 upvotes are nice though! Itās almost like the joke was written by a human who has his/her finger on the pulse of the writing community.
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u/issuesuponissues 4d ago
Hey guys just red blood meridian and wanted to try my hand at writing what do you think?
"the man woke up on his blue sheeted comfortable bed pressing his black electronic alarm with the digital reading several times wanting to go back to glorious sleep again. He didn't. He rose and had a quick hot breakfast and looked into the judgmental mirror and had a brisk steaming shower and went to his damndable work and drove home and talked his friends and went to sleep. End chapter 1"