[Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!]

On Apr 28, 8:42*pm, Boon wrote:
On Apr 28, 7:11*pm, "Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!"

I read "No Country For Old Men" last fall. I found the style he used
in that book distracting.

How so? *(Big fan of the movie, BTW.)

How can you not like a Cohn Brothers movie?

To me a good author somehow fades into the background. Even
Shakespeare with the Olde English somehow fades away and the
characters come to life and take over.

"No Country for Old Men" had punctuation so screwed up and quotes
without quotation marks or any attribution so that to me it ended up
seeming to be an exercise in "how different can I write" versus "how
can I bring the story to life and fade into the background". The other
thing about McCarthy is that he seems to try to be as dark as he can
at all times. So I ended up never being able to forget about the
author. He was always center stage to me. So I wasn't too impressed
with him.

I liked "The Road" because the spare style, heavy on dialogue,
reminded me of Hemingway.

Could you tell who was talking without having to trace the
conversation back?

I don't know. He's gotten acclaim and all and who am I to criticize
but that book left me unimpressed. It could have just been my frame of
mind at the time.