What a relief! Halfway through Cormac McCarthy’s “All the Pretty Horses” I Googled some online reviews. HA! I’m not the only one in the world that has trouble with run-on sentences, incomplete phrases, lack of punctuation, and indistinct dialogue attribution (forcing backtracks to find out who is speaking…). I don’t mind all the non-translated Spanish, as it lets me work on my second language skills. Others, it appears, aren’t so forgiving. Without question, McCarthy is a great story teller, but it might work much more effectively if he were in the room narrating, putting on different voices for the characters. Perhaps not. I keep thinking – gimmick, like the Artist-Formerly-Known-As-Prince and his language usage (I Would Die 4 U, et al). It is wonderful when an artist can create a masterpiece, but how much better might it be if, instead of using the heel of an old shoe, he worked with a paintbrush? (Overheard at the art gallery: “Can you believe he actually painted that using an old shoe? What talent!)
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