Chekhov's Mistress
Two Views of the Sentence: Proust, McCarthy
Lydia Davis on Proust’s writing:
“Proust felt that a long sentence contained a whole, complex thought. The shape of the sentence was the shape of the thought, and every word was necessary to the thought. When he used a deliberate effect like alliteration, it was there not as an empty flourish, but to tie two similar elements or contrasting elements together in one’s mind. He despised empty flourishes. He categorically rejected sentences that were artificially amplified, that were overly abstract or that groped, arriving at a sentence by a succession of approximations. Great length was not desirable in itself. As he proceeded from draft to draft, he not only added material but also condensed. ‘I prefer concentration,’ he said, ‘even in length. I really have to weave these long silks as I spin them,’ he said. ‘If I shortened my sentences, it would make little pieces of sentences, not sentences.’”
After just reading a Cormac McCarthy novel (No Country for Old Men – about which more soon) I long for something Proust-like. McCarthy’s sentences are the opposite: little thought expressed, description comes in terse clauses or is usually provided so late it’s beside the point by the time you read it, or, occasionally he’ll offer up two or three words meant to evoke a scene. No doubt, he’s a master of his laconic style and given that I’m sleeping like a baby these days (that is, waking every 2-3 hours) the simplicity of propulsive little sentences is welcome. In the long run though? I know what side of the fence I fall on.
comments
I’m a huge McCarthy fan, but No Country for Old Men is my least favorite of his novels, for many of the reasons you state here. It is almost as if he changed his prior writing style completely in preparation for The Road, in which he did get the change right. Here’s a link to one of my posts on NCforOM: http://smgct.typepad.com/spinning/2006/11/literature_no_c_3.html
– susan (10/30 at 07:22 PM)
Ah, Susan, now you’re going to make me go and read Blood Meridian just to have some perspective - although I have to tell you that the ONLY reason I read NCFOM was the Coen brothers’ film, which made me (wrongly) assume it must be great.
– Bud Parr (10/30 at 08:07 PM)
Funnily enough, McCarthy cannot stand Proust. He even declared that it “not literature.”
– Marlon James (10/30 at 09:27 PM)
I imagine, Marlon, that if Proust had read No Country for Old Men, he would have had a similar comment toward McCarthy. To my mind though, they are merely two approaches, so I think it’s arrogant of McCarthy to declare In Search of Lost Time not to even be literature. But of course, Proust never made it on to Oprah!
– Bud Parr (10/31 at 09:11 AM)
This is an issue that often brings my wife and I to loggerheads. She is my first, and toughest, editor. And also a writer which doesn’t help. In fact I have an up-and-coming blog about this very subject and the one I am working on at the moment is on the related issue of the average reading age in the UK and how it affect readers’ ability/willingness to tackle involved prose.
Two books I have just finished reading are, Passacaglia by Robert Pinget and Gerald Murnane’s, The Plains, stylistically very different though both use lengthy sentences. The general effect is essentially the same: the reader needs to slow down and maybe that’s half the problem with people today, there’s so much going on that they rush through what they’re doing to get on with the next thing. Is the verb ‘to savour’ becoming defunct?
Interesting quote. I have no doubt that I will refer to it at some time in the future.
– Jim Murdoch (11/03 at 09:57 AM)
Being a longtime fan of McCarthy’s, and a new and ardent admirer of Proust’s, I wanted to add that No Country for Old Men, as Susan indicates, cannot solely acquaint a reader with the remarkable, freewheeling lyricism upon which McCarthy built his career from 1965 to 1998 (and which pervades eight of his ten novels—or everything prior to No Country). McCarthy’s new readers—and longtime admirers, for that matter—might be interested in my recent essay from Poets & Writers magazine, exploring McCarthy’s whole corpus from a reader’s perspective. The entire piece can be found here: The Art of Reading McCarthy
– M. Allen Cunningham (11/27 at 02:56 PM)
god, i first thought you were speaking of Mary McCarthy, well i know none of the McCarthys, but i would probably chose Proust anyway, these long sentences are a matter of long breath, ciceronean style, as i am tempted to call it, can be found in Faulkner too. It is just rigthly stated above, not length in itself but concentration is what matters and if it can be written in short sentences that’s ok too. But that would bring a different book.
– antonia (11/27 at 04:37 PM)
Since I wrote this post I’ve read Blood Meridian (thanks Susan). Based on Mark’s article (thanks for the heads up on that) that would be a more representative book, about which I’ll mention on the blog. Still, it seems to me that McCarthy has merely eschewed commas and replaced them with the word “and.”
– Bud Parr (11/28 at 07:03 PM)
McCarthy’s style evolves from book to book. I can see why he would not like Proust. Where McCarthy’s sentences are visceral and elemental, Proust is cerebral. Elemental, as in Earth, Air, Water and Fire, from water in Suttre to air in The Road. The opening pages of Suttre (which owes much to Faulkner), are serpentine, flowing, winding in tight eddies, unfurling into long currents of words like the river he seems more to emulates than describe.
If all you’ve read of McCarthy is The Road, or No Country for Old Men--even before you take up Blood Meridian, read those opening pages from Suttre and compare.
– Jacob Russell (12/20 at 07:37 AM)
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: October 30, 2007
- Filed Under:
Solitary Refinement: On Writing
- Comments:9
- Links to this Post: Technorati
