Throwing out a lasso and missing by a mile
While I’m on the topic of the cartoons of Ruben Bolling, which I usually enjoy, here’s one where he misses by a mile. For the Village Voice he recently did this strip, which purports to be “Toy Story 3,” but written by Cormac McCarthy. While Bolling does get McCarthy right a couple of times, as with Woody’s line “I aim to,” for the most part he’s clueless about what distinguishes McCarthy. The abundant presence of commas is an immediate tipoff. McCarthy largely ellides them. Because he doesn’t use them he must find other ways to write sentences for clarity and it is this which gives him his rhythm. (Which I’ve just attempted to emulate, with limited success.) It is the spareness of the writing, the lack of reflection in narration, the surgical skill in selecting precisely the right word, the narrative drive unblocked by commas, and the wide-open spaces he uses for setting that make McCarthy’s writing seem existentialist. It’s not directly about God. Either Bolling doesn’t know anything about McCarthy (perhaps because he hasn’t read him), or in this case he’s got poor judgment.
(If you can’t see the strip below, click here.)
September 23rd, 2007 at 11:43 am
You’ll have another chance to see Cormac adapted. The Coen Brothers made a movie. It’s called “No Country for Old Men.” You should see it. I aim to.
September 23rd, 2007 at 11:50 am
The book passed before my eyes in a single day stretching as far and wide as the ends of everything we know and further. To miss the movie would be unforgivable even if I harbor a fear that afterward my experience of the book will be forever entangled with the images of actors who later moved on to other projects.
September 28th, 2007 at 4:21 am
Oh, I get it, it’s a theme.