Daniel Tidcombe’s Reviews > Nazi Literature in the Americas > Status Update

I am an adamant Cormac McCarthy non fan, I just find his gimmick annoying.

Also his shtick without punctuation makes him use nonsense words to avoid contractions like "dont" which like at that point why bother. I will say it makes it interesting for dialogue, but other than that it really is annoying to read. I don't get the hype

The dialogue scenes were the most interesting parts of the half of the book that I read, but even then the lack of punctuation overstayed its welcome. And I grew to hate the nonsense words. Strangely enough the instances of contractions like dont didn’t bother me as much but it was the lack of hyphens in hyphenated words that really grated on me (the one in particular that bothered me the most is “parkinglot” instead of “parking-lot” but also “parking-lot” is not a hyphenated word, just use “parking lot”). Reading through this half plus (I made it to midway thru chapter 7 out of 10 but never logged that on here) I couldn’t help thinking about how McCarthy spoke at length about how he didn’t ever meet with or converse with other writers or artists, instead preferring the company of scientists and I can’t help but see my lack of enjoyment as a result of a possible lack of interest in the craft at large — as in McCarthy believed that his style and approach was the only correct way and doesn’t allow himself to remain open to further innovations in style.

My one positive note (besides his dialogue) was the surprisingly nuanced and positive portrayal of a trans character that the male protagonist dates. Considering that McCarthy has become the author of choice that the alt-right performatively reads to appear smarter than they are (mostly due to his reputation as a cold, distant, and misanthropic author due to the subject matter of his two most well known works “Blood Meridian” and “No Country for Old Men”), I was genuinely surprised at the depth, humanity, and empathy with which McCarthy wrote her. Was sad that she doesn’t show up more as the novel progressed (although then again I still had 1/3rd to go.