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I will never claim to be an expert as an undergrad at anything, but in my personal opinion, McCarthy is not the son of Faulkner in the Southern Literary Renaissance. McCarthy and Faulkner share common view in the complexities of nature and its subsequent weave with the human condition. The psychological complexity of Faulkner also stems from his desire to explore the true heart of people and not their surfaces (note his Nobel Prize Speech). While McCarthy exposes personalities and creates unbelievable characterizations (the Judge) I don't personally feel that sometimes a true soul is left out. I do not believe that this takes away from his writing, but he would probably focus on distancing himself as far from the Faulkner stigma southern writers are labeled with in order to produce a distinct new form of literature (which in some realms he has). The violence stems from human nature and has been a part of literature for centuries. Most notably, the Victorians may have influenced McCarthy with depressing yet duty bound works as Hardy's Jude the Obscure and Browning's poetry of destruction and desolation. Then again, this is just my unqualified position dashed out at a first response. Thank you for your time and would like to r
But if not "cause," how then does "influence" operate? How do you prove that the mere fact of a sequence of two authors' preoccupation with similar themes represents "influence" as opposed to mere observation of comparable phenomena in the world around both of them? Are we justified in using the term "influence" when what we observe is the dialogue between an author and a predecessor? Is one author's deliberate parody of a situation or a character in an earlier author's work...ie, the Rinthy Holme / Lena Grove correlation...a form of "influence" ? I'm not sure about that...such broad-form recourse to a term like "influence" empties it of specificity and makes a cliche out of it. I submit, however, that the only time McCarthy actually "sounds" anything like Faulkner is in The Crossing, where his sentences tend to get away from him and unravel like a dropped string ball, in an incidental mimicry of Absalom, Absalom's torturously synthetic diction. What in God's name are you talking about? You're sounding as logical as Fat Freddie Freak after a long speed binge. How can you possibly say that Faulkner is not an influence on McCarthy's fiction? It doesn't make sense. I will agree with you that there are certainly other influences and these are as pervasive (perhaps) as Faulkner, but Faulkner is all through McCarthy's work. This is all to say that Faulkner is certainly an influence on McCarthy. True that scholars are perhaps beating that influence to death at the expense of looking at other influences but that doesn't mean that it's not there--any such argument smacks of a knee jerk reaction. Probably it offends lots of s
Some common words found in the essay are:
McCarthy Faulknerian, Speech McCarthy, HL Mencken, Wallach Probably, McCarthy True, Christian Heretic, Blood Meridian, Child God, Lena Grove, McCarthy Faulkner, lena grove, / lena grove, faulkner influence, internal makeup, makes sense, outside world, joe christmas, term influence, lester ballard, rinthy holme /, holme / lena, holme /, rinthy holme,
Approximate Word count = 1100
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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