Steve wrote:
Have you ever noticed the change in the style of writing over the past 70 or so years? A Russian novelist like a Tolstoy will take a page just to describe what one his characters is wearing. By the 1940's it drops to a paragraph. By the 1960's its a couple lines. The 90's brought as description by brand name. "He wore a Burberry trench coat an a Oyster Rolex. In this book there was almost none.
Yes, amount of description is central to style ...and theme in a way.
I remember reading Victor Hugo's
Les Miserables at school. Or perhaps Balzac is even more charactersitic of the old school: in
Le Pere Goriot, before he introduced the characters, he described everything about where they are, the building where they live, the other tenants in the building... and all those pages were essential to understanding the theme.
Yet, after reading reviewers praising MCCarthy's minimalist style, I found at least three examples of new (postapocalyptic?) motel scene descriptions like this:
p 107: "He (Moss) paid and put the key in his pocket and climbed the stairs and walked down the old hotel corridor. Dead quiet. No light in the transoms. He found the room and put the key in the door and opened it andwent in and shut the door behind him. He set the bags on the bed and went back to the door (..) he went into the bathroom and got a glass of water and sat on the bed again. He took a sip and set the water on the glass top of the wooden bedside table. "
Wells, page 145: "He went on to his own room and set his bag in the chair and got out his shaving kit and and went to the bathroom and turned on the light. He brushed his teeth, and washed his face and went back into the room...".
MCCarthy has the reputation of being a very able writer.
There must be a reason for telling us the characters opened their motels rooms with a key and then actually got into the room, and where they set their bags, but what is it?
As I read such pages I think of the author, who must have an overall plan that escapes me, and is laughing because he knows such passages will irritate people like me.
I read a review by a reader who had to make do with the French translation of
No Country.
She was bewildered because she had read other novels by McCarthy ( which I haven't done) and she couldn't understand the bad writing and was wondering whether the translator should be sacked.
Ophelia.