Such things definitely are connected.
Both are signs of the world moving on.
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Despite the duh-comment, Cormac is a great writer. I don't know what he's like personally. But he does have a 1,000-page-plus book to his credit. The Everyman's Library edition of The Border Trilogy (an omnibus collection of three novels) is 1040 pages.
It's not as if he's written a 1,000 page book by itself but rather three seperate novels that when combined amount to 1,000 pages.
But yeah, his comment is a bit silly. As long as the author is good enough people will read it.
Although I will admit if your name isn't J. K. Rowling or Stephen King, it might be harder to sell such a huge book to the publishers.
or promoted by oprah the way cormac was:beat:
Spoiler: 11-18-2009 12:26 PMBriceI think we should all get together and throw all our thousand plus page books at Cormac. :grouphug:
Edit: I have MANY. :D I'll be the one in the front row shouting USE PUNCTUATION BITCH to the beat of each book hitting him. :evil: 11-18-2009 12:34 PMJohn Blazeand I won't say hate, because I have read one or two, but I dislike mysteries. They're just a notch up from romance novels. 11-18-2009 12:36 PMBriceHmmm.... I like real gothics which when properly done are often both mysteries and romances. 11-18-2009 12:38 PMJohn Blaze 11-18-2009 12:52 PMmaeYeah, what's up with him and punctuation. Is there an interview where he expounds on that perhaps? 11-18-2009 01:33 PMChristineB 11-18-2009 01:39 PMBriceI have two complete encyclopedias including Britannica, Every version of the bible, and more novels then I can list that are 1,000+ pages... In short I have a library that will make our dear punctuation deficient friend VERY unhappy.
:) 11-18-2009 04:24 PMjohnsmith87I have a lot of respect for Cormac, but I disagree with him here. Mainly because it doesn't matter how long a book is, if it's good, I'll read it. If it isn't, I won't. Not much more too it than that.
As for why he doesn't use traditional punctuation, I know he's addressed it on a few occasions but I can't really remember his exact reasoning. Something about how commas, quotation marks, etc. distract from the words and are unnecessary. It's definitely a unique way of looking at things. McCarthy has proved that he knows what he's doing, so it's really not that big of a deal, for me at least. 11-18-2009 06:54 PMBROWNINGS CHILDEI am just finishing The Road, and the lack of quotation marked bothers me as well. And, its the only book that I have EVER read that seemed to have this glaring omission. (other McCarthy books excluded) Also, there is an overabundance of sentence fragments. I am all about poetic license, but sheesh, some of the stuff is downright unreadable.
Edit: And, I am pretty sure he made up a good deal of the vocabulary. 11-21-2009 04:52 PMPatrickLoved:
THE ROAD
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN
ALL THE PRETTY HORSES
First, I take his statement to be a generalization, not meaning the "nobody" as literal.
Second, this is a fan website dedicated to a writer of some long books, and the site is specifically dedicated to a series of seven novels that tell one long story. We're not a representative sample of readers from the general populace. Therefore I do not believe that we, in and of ourselves, disprove his statement. 11-21-2009 05:13 PMSteveI'll play the Devil's Advocate for McCarthy and say that I can understand what he's trying to say. Modern readers have evolved (or devolved) in the last century, and the onset of Faulkner and Hemingway paved the way for more mainstream authors (like Stephen King). Most writers nowadays don't employ the flowery, almost turgid prose of, say, Nathaniel Hawthorne... and if they do, they don't write a 1000-page work in it. McCarthy's right, at least in the fact that people's patience has changed radically when it comes to literature. 11-23-2009 07:22 PMjack12k6The only book I read of Cormac's was The Road and I was disapointed by his writing style. However, he is probably right as it relates to sales of long novels. As far as the punctuation issue, I'm currently reading The Handmaid's Tale by Margret Atwood, and its told from a narrator's standpoint and no quotes are used. 11-23-2009 10:46 PMRuthfulI don't think he actually means no one. He's generalizing about the readers of mass-market and trade paperback fiction, i.e. most of the literate public, and to a large extent, I agree. This is the same class of people-albeit more affluent-that novelists like Dickens & Co. were writing for in their day, but the culture they inhabited has been completely eradicated.
I don't know if you've read Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, but it essentially states that the linear, rational society we once had has been completely obliterated in the post-industrial age. Communication is no longer dependent upon the construction of linear, rational, persuasive arguments, but by the conveyance of a series of episodic, dramatic images and sounds. It was written a decade before the Internet Age so I'd imagine his conclusions were only reinforced by subsequent events.
I explained the plot of The Dark Tower to a friend of mine online a while back, and after a while she discovered that it was over 2,500 pages-long. If her reaction can be distilled into a few snippets of Internet jargon it would be, "OMG, WTF??!" 11-23-2009 11:28 PMPatrick 11-24-2009 04:05 AMBricePatrick: :rofl: 11-24-2009 04:19 AMJean 11-24-2009 05:40 PMBROWNINGS CHILDE:wtf: 03-09-2022 07:18 AMRichardXTwo new books coming this Fall. Wow. 03-09-2022 08:22 AMLookwhoitisall those people in 2009 who wanted to throw 1000 page books at Cormac McCarthy?
Just looking at his picture on a dustjacket makes me think he could whip all of their asses! 03-09-2022 11:50 AMRichardXNot to judge a book by its cover, but I really don't care for the version being shown by B&N which I assume is the final version. Seems more appropriate for a Murakami-type novel. The plot doesn't sound all that intriguing, but I guess we will see. Hope springs eternal. 03-11-2022 12:46 PMKrakenI’m looking forward to these books it’s been a long time coming.
Though I’m having some trouble finding a site to pre order the US editions.
My usual is book depository but they don’t seem to be listed. Maybe I’m too impatient.
If anyone knows of a site who can deliver to the UK with adequate packaging I’d appreciate it.