Dan Rather is a national treasure. Cormac McCarthy was not. 

Cormac McCarthy

A quintessential American voice

[No, he was not. He was a sick, voyeuristic fraud of a writer.]

 

I woke up this morning focused on the sad and deadly serious spectacle of a former president facing grave charges in federal court. It is a drama of sweeping import that could, once resolved in some fashion, shape the course of history. 

But as the news day unfolded, another bulletin hit the headlines that stopped me in my tracks. A long life coming to an end isn't surprising. But what an end this one represents — the silencing of a uniquely American voice that for decades has touched countless readers deeply. I was one of them. 

[He was not a uniquely American voice, he was a uniquely amoral, atavistic writer, the Felini of the Snuff Film. He debased the American writing tradition.]

It is a testimony to Cormac McCarthy’s exalted place in the pantheon of great American writers that his death at age 89 is a major news event. Obituaries are rightly recognizing him as an author of exceptional skill and influence. Over the years, I devoured his books, even as I sometimes wrestled with their meanings. 

[His writings had no meaning: they were violence for the sake of violence, cruelty for cruelty's sake. There was nothing meaningful about his writing. I have read a little ahead of Mr. Rather's encomium of Charles McCarthy and it nauseates me, as McCarthy did. I don't wish death on many people and I don't on McCarthy but I am relieved that his death means that he will never win the Nobel Prize that he wanted so desperately and which I feared he would get. American letters is improved with the removal of the canker Cormac McCarthy.]