Cormac McCarthy On Oprah: Oh-Tastic!

So last night I abandoned my mandatory work reading an hour early (read: didn't get any done at all because I got home so late) so that I could watch Cormac McCarthy on Oprah. For his first and only television interview, I felt Oprah's questions were a bit soft, but McCarthy came across as a hyper-intelligent, charming, and fascinating man.

He did, however, have some wonderful insight into his writing and my favourite part of the too-short interview was when he spoke about his craft. He explains that sometimes writing is difficult because an author has always got a picture in his/her mind of the perfect thing you want to achieve, and it's frustrating when it doesn't come out quite right. I'm sure everyone who has ever put pen to paper understands exactly what he's saying. As McCarthy continued, he said to Oprah that he believes this interior image is your signpost, your guide, and even though you'll never get there 'without it you'll never get anywhere.'

Some of the problems with how the interview may have come across could have been down to the editing, because the clips on Oprah's site actually bring out a longer, more thoughtful interview. There's one clip where McCarthy speaks about James Joyce as a model for punctuation, and how he uses the tools of language to write sentences that are easy to understand. Now that's a very simple piece of solid advice that probably doesn't need a semicolon. And it might be a sharp insight in terms of rewriting, seeing how you can take punctuation out to clean up your prose rather than punctuate the sense back in.

Fascinating.