From: firstinitiallastname@texas.net   
      
   Di Monbak wrote:   
      
   > Here is an example of a writer who knows his   
   > landscape - he's writing about local terrain -   
   > but who has "invented" something unlike what   
   > he is describing. Cormac McCarthy, in CITIES   
   > OF THE PLAIN, takes liberties with the   
   > so-called ranch that his cowboys are working.   
   > I can't imagine anyone taking issue with his   
   > descriptions of the terrain UNLESS, like me,   
   > you know the terrain about which he writes. For   
   > some reason it detracted from the book for me.   
      
   I wasn't struck by anything too anomalous in McCarthy's Trilogy, not to   
   the degree that it spoiled the work. (The film version, though, was   
   off.) McCarthy had moved to El Paso. I have no idea how much he traveled   
   around the border country. I suspected from first reading them that he   
   had picked up quite a bit of style from Tom Lea. What he didn't much   
   have was a solid familiarity with South Texas ranches.   
      
   I don't think he was going for authenticity. He had stories to tell that   
   suited the country where he set them. Not at all "historical" fiction.   
   Nor, really, was Blood Meridian, for all that he peopled it with   
   historical characters. McCarthy's novels are really about people and   
   very little about people and the land. Lea, who was so thoroughly   
   familiar with the border experience, integrated the landscape more   
   completely.   
      
   --   
                          Gerald Clough   
       "Nothing has any value, unless you know you can give it up."   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)