Well, if you really think Cormac's prose and style is bad, I don't have much to say to you besides pretty much everyone with an opinion that matters when it comes to literature disagrees.

And second, there's no way you could make a judgment on the story of Blood Meridian after 20 pages. You haven't even really met the Judge yet.

But if you seriously couldn't get by that far, you should put the book down. Maybe Twilight or non-fiction are more up your alley. I don't mean to sound like a condescending prick, but it's kinda truthful in this case. You dissed Cormac McCarthy, man!

Dunno. "Bad" might not be the word I'd use, but he has a thick slow style that can be a drag to try to wade through if it's not what you want that day.

It's not for everyone, and that's not because everyone who doesn't enjoy it is stupid, and I feel that it is condescending to imply that. Similar arguments can be had about Faulkner, Joyce, Proust, Pynchon, DeLillo, and (I guess!) DFW just off the top of my head.

I think people do way too much continuing to read books they aren't enjoying thinking that it's somehow intelligent or cultured to press on.

Ortho, you named some giants in your list of "thick, slow, drag on and wade through" and "somehow intelligent or cultured" writers there.

Yeah, I agree. I'm not sure if I'm doing a great job of articulating what I mean, but I, for example, had to wade through everything that Faulkner wrote, and it ruined me. I am sure Faulkner is a great writer because, as you say, all the people who love books that I know, everyone at university etc says so and I respect their opinions and agree with them on almost everything else.

But even now, 15 years later, I still can't read more than 20 pages of Faulkner without wondering when it's going to be over, while I've run through everything that DFW ever wrote without even noticing that hours had passed because it just turns me on. Same with most of others on that list--some of it I forced myself through and got nothing, some (like Ulysses) I revisted years later and quite enjoyed.

One thing that I can say specifically about Cormac--I had difficulty 10 years or so ago getting through his books and picked up some audiobooks of the Border Trilogy ready by Frank Muller and realised how incredible they were. But it took the amazing reading by Muller for me to really connect with the stuff. I think that this is because I don't "read out loud in my head" or I tend to "read for content" a bit too much and so stuff that has more description or wordplay tends to start running together for me. Oddly, DFW stuff doesn't, but I don't know why.

I also had great luck with an audiobook version of Ulysses for the same reason.

Well, I guess some people prefer CSI to The Wire as well.

Maybe. For me, long descriptions of stuff and scenes, no matter how artfully written, almost always feel like surplus. I don't think Raymond Carver's stuff is stupid because he doesn't spend 10 pages describing the knobs on a dresser.

I agree. My favorite thing is when an author uses one or two concise details about an ancillary character or inanimate object, and a light bulb goes off and you say, "I got it!."

I am reading Carter Beats the Devil (I am roadblocked at page 50 due to childhood flashbacks...such a drag), but the author does a great job of describing something with one or two simple details.

read Ender's Game a while back but never any of the others

I was going to recommend Hunger Games. But that's more of an enjoyable dessert series (three books) than a meat and potatoes meal.

Yea I don't think anyone can be faulted for this. Hemingway was very popular for a reason (not necessarily only this reason, but it was one of them).

You nailed it, here. If the 'experts' like it, then you have to like it, too, or you're not 'cultured' or whatever. <insert jerk-off motion here>

What one likes in their reading is subjective. Some of the things the so-called 'experts' like I also like, namely, Tolstoy, but, too me, he's just a good writer, although War and Peace is ridiculously over-rated.

I had a problem with the style of writing, not the story itself. I read a summary of the story once and it looked good, which is why I picked up the book.

A columnist in the Toronto Globe and Mail recently described her "50 page rule"--which meant that she stayed with whatever she started reading until page 50. Then, no matter how well-reputed it was, if she wasn't enjoying herself or didn't feel like reading on, she put the book away.

She said there were some books that she simply hadn't been ready for, and that she later came back to them and found that she now loved them. And there some that she realized that she had been reading because they were in vogue and she later found that she didn't really need to read them.

She also said that now that she was over 50 she'd changed it to a 40-page rule ...

Having a dislike for certain (big) authors seems completely normal to me. For instance, I can't stand Melville or Hawthorne (did anyone here enjoy, say, Bartleby the Scrivener or The Blithedale Romance?), and nearly every time I read something that Nabokov has said on the theory of literature (especially translation though) I want to punch him in the face.

Canons aren't worth anything. If you cannot cope with an author's style/subject matter, then you don't have to read him and it makes you no less of an educated person, although of course I do consider it worthwhile to read something other than Dan Brown and the Twilight Series. Honestly, there is so much good literature to choose from, you're never going to read even half of what you would highly enjoy in one lifetime anyway.

I owe an apology to JulesDeane. If McCarthy's style isn't your thing, I get that. But as so many authors "drag things out" and are long-winded, it just seems you're going to miss a helluva lot of good books if you can't do that sort of writing.

McCarthy is my favorite writer, and I so rarely hear him criticized, I just kinda lost it for a second.

Um, yes.

Well done. I just gave those as examples because I thought it would be obvious to those that have read them why someone might not have enjoyed them.

I can see that. But "Bartleby" is such a classic of its kind. Who can ever forget the man who said to the world, "I prefer not to"?

This question got posted a while back but I got to thinking about it again recently, and it occurred to me that one of the most readable and engaging long novels I've ever read is Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove. It's not Cormac McCarthy's West but it is a terrific western in its own right.

While I'm at it, Neil Stephenson's Cryptonomicon at around 1000 pages is great and also the quickest long novel I ever read.

I have nothing against the characters and the story in general, which has some interesting stuff in it (especially if you know some historical context). I also enjoyed the opposition of the other employees (can't remember their names right now. one's unbearable in the morning and one in the afternoon or something along those lines).

It's just a problem I have with Melville in general - I don't like his writing style.

War and Peace on my Kindle so my arms dont break

I liked his Baroque Triology even better. After a slow first hundred pages or two, it picks up and never lets up for another 2500 pages. Brilliant stuff.

Yes, my wife felt the same way. I'm waiting for some clear space to allow me to dig in. (But I have such a big stack of things waiting for that clear space ...)

Have you read his Anathem yet? I haven't heard much about it but it looks interesting.

Just started reading Unger's House of Bush House of Saud...

Just finished Schindler's Ark, by Thomas Keneally. Basis of the movie of almost the same name, which I have not seen.

Extraordinary describes this book quite well, and also disturbing, as this story is as truthful as history can probable be.

Now plan on reading Six Characters in Search of an Author and Other Plays , by Luigi Pirandello [ "I am a child of Chaos and not only allegorically," ].

Luigi received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934; deserved I will presume, whatever that means.

-Zeno