McCarthy’s style has evolved over the years from what Edmund White called “classy Southern gothic” to what might be termed, at its best, heightened poetic realism and, at its worst, overheated myth-mongering. In All the Pretty Horses (1992), The Crossing (1994), and Cities of the Plain (1998), McCarthy’s prose is so rich and gravid with metaphor that many have been willing to overlook his shortcomings and excesses.
Not me, and Allen cites a beauty: “For this will to deceive that is in things luminous may manifest itself likewise in retrospect and so by slight of some fixed part of a journey already accomplished may also post men to fraudulent destinies.” Heavy.
I agree 100 percent with Allen, and he puts his finger on exactly why I think McCarthy is overrated.
ReplyDeleteOf course, Annie Proulx's Wyoming stories are also very good Westerns, but they're more laconic than overwritten, so more like McMurtry than McCarthy.