So with my new job I have to take the subway downtown. This has pros and cons, but I am going to focus on the pros, today. I am reading a lot more than I used to. Its a great way to kill time. It has the added bonus of allowing you to ignore the hobbled grandmother standing in front of you, eyes just begging for a seat. Win-win.
I started with Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses. Now, I'll be the first to admit that I am late to the McCarthy party and I am reading him, I've noticed, in reverse. I started with The Road a few years ago and then No Country For Old Men and now I've turned to his Border Trilogy. First things first, I love everything I've read by him so far, with All the Pretty Horses rapidly shooting up my all time favorites list. I am a pretty huge sucker for honorable protagonists. I look at John Grady Cole as like an Atticus Finch in training (To Kill a Mockingbird is my favorite book in part because of Atticus and in part because when I read it, I can almost feel the humid summer days where the story unfolds.).
That paranthetical also perfectly describes McCarthy's book. I love John Grady Cole. But I also feel like I'm part of the book, experiencing everything with him. That, to me, is the sign of a great story teller. McCarthy has become one of my favorite authors.
I am certain that I absolutely hate him. I just know that if I ever met him I would be instantly turned off. In the limited press and biographical information about him, these feelings are confirmed. Like this story about his typewriter. Ugh. Come on. And his friend bought him the same model for under 20 bucks. It just annoys the hell out of me.
This brings me back to the title of this post, which happens to be a line from West Wing. It's actually from episode where two characters are discussing Schubert and the Ave Maria. The line is offered (with "crazy" where I have substituted "annoying"), but never really answered.
The irony of choosing an Aaron Sorkin quote to discuss this topic is not lost on me. He's another writer who's work I love, but I find personally annoying as shit. So, do you have to be annoying to create something powerful? Or beautiful?
I think so. One of the traits I find most annoying in other people is self involvement. However, to create anything of worth, I think you probably have to be pretty self-involved. What drives a person to create anything good is that, at it's most base, the creation is a reflection of its creator. Michelangelo's David. "McCarthy's book." Schubert's Ave Maria.
I personally struggle with not wanting to be perceived as egotistical and concerned with what others think of me and so I view it as a repugnant trait in others. But I can't help but wonder if it holds me back from being really good at something. Or anything. You can't half ass something great. You have to be totally committed and indulge in yourself.
There's also an element of jealousy probably. I find the McCarthy books so good, and know that I could never do anything as well, that I have to find something, anything, to make myself feel a little bit better about that. "Oh, he's probably super annoying, that's how he does it." Some people are just different, though. Some people look at and approach things in a way I never would. That also feeds the "annoying" feeling. Just like anything else, your instinct is to reject that which is different.
As I sit here writing this, stream of consciously, I realize what really annoys me. The different approach for the sake of being different, as opposed to just a genuinely different perspective. There are people who make a show of the fact that "Well, that's just the way I think. I'm wacky!" Kill yourselves. For some, the different perspective is the end, for the good ones it's the means.
I'm hoping for McCarthy that its the means, because I really do like reading him.
