>He took out the plastic bottle of water and unscrewed the cap and held it out and the boy came and took it and stood drinking. He lowered the bottle and got his breath and he sat in the road and crossed his legs and drank again. Then he handed the bottle back and the man drank and screwed the cap back on and rummaged through the pack. The ate a can of white beans, passing it between them, and he threw the empty tin into the woods.Can someone explain what's great about prose like this? To me it reads like it was written by someone with special needs
>>24727688It's not great. Welcome to mass appeal.Writing for so many and yet to do it still greatly. Few have ever accomplished this. Hemingway did pretty good that communist rat bastard.
it’s rhythmic
>>24727704Good catch it sort of is. Rythm it has but alas. It sounds as if a child made this. Tip tapping away. Simple words make simple song. I could write as such pages twenty thousand or more. But OP pray tell, why have you posted this poor old souls picture? Surely a man in such a state as he, deserveth not to be shown for pithy sport?
has anyone else noticed that the paintings from Picasso’s blue period use a lot of blue?
>>24727688guess he got the last laugh
>>24727688It’s a minimalistic, simple passage of his, more strictly functional and meant to move the plot along.Along with this, he has a higher, more poetic register. And then there’s his dialogue. Usually the praise of his style refers to the parts in a higher register.McCarthy is notable as a stylist, in one way, because he has both this minimalistic register (very similar to Hemingway, down to the use of polysyndeton, or many conjunctions instead of commas, “and…and…and…” as you say), and a more baroque register.
Polysyndeton bro. I haven't read The Road but I've heard it's not great. Really liked The Passenger and Stella Maris, though that was more because of the conceptual underpinnings and the abstractions grappled with than the prose. There were a couple pretty passages here and there, and great conversations. There's one moving dialog where the guy who always calls the protagonist squire talks about the similarities between the two, how they both preferred worlds made of paper over the real one as children, holding in their hearts the words of men long gone. There's also some great stuff about the breakdown of language up to the "judas hole" in Stella Maris. Again, more engaging because of the concepts than the form, which as far as I can tell isn't doing anything super novel or interesting.
