Christine Granados thinks despite what he has said, plenty of writers before Cormac McCarthy had written about this region, and many did so a lot better. An excerpt:
Had George Sessions Perry or Leslie Marmon Silko been quoted as saying, “I moved to the north-east because I knew no one had ever written about it,” the literary establishment would have laughed and rained intellectual expletives upon them. However, when Rhode Island-born and Tennessee-reared McCarthy stated last year in the Wall Street Journal that he moved to the south-west because “he knew no one had ever written about it”, not one voice was raised. McCarthy’s misinformation was treated as fact and as if writers such as Perry, Katherine Anne Porter, O Henry, J Frank Dobie, John Graves, Larry McMurtry, and Elmer Kelton did not exist.
His misstatement in the Journal took me back to a college course I took where All The Pretty Horses was touted as one of the best works of south-western US literature. But I didn’t understand what was so special about the stereotypical John Grady Cole, a silent 16-year-old ranch-hand orphan from Texas who spoke Spanish and fell in love with the Mexican Americans and Mexicans he encountered on both sides of the border – yet treated them as colourful props and scenery by relegating them to the role of minor characters in the novel. I won’t discuss the stereotypes and archetypes he used for “them darkies” in his book.
Oh HALLELUJAH! Sweet glorious Christine Granados saying what I’ve been saying for YEARS! And getting blank stares, derision, and people thinking me an idiot in return.
Cormac McCarthy’s work is, at best, uninteresting, and at worst, as Granados says…wrong.
I read 1/3 of All The Pretty Horses and then got up, got in my car, and dropped it in the donation slot at my library. (I’m not kidding)
By the by, I just excitedly sent that link to my best friend in Las Cruces, a High School English lit teacher (and head of her department) who won’t teach McCarthy, but does teach Rudolfo Anaya.