The Writing Style of Cormac McCarthy: Pretentious or Genius?!

Cormac McCarthy is perhaps America's greatest literary export since Hemingway. Deemed pretentious by some, his style goes without question. He is a man who wrote, published, and lived on his own terms. He did things exactly how he wanted to.
In today's video, we will be discussing a common debate regarding Corrmac McCarthy: Is he a stylistic genius, or merely a pretentious lit bro wanting to prove he's smarter than everybody else?
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[@colemandennis9103]

You're going to love Suttree

[@afnanbogey]

C-Mac just needs speechmarks and he’s golden.
The point of punctuation is clarity. His flouting of excessive marks shapes the writing itself (for the good), but ultimately his choice is arbitrary and stylistic. Why bother with periods and capital letters?
Original arabic script didnt even have dots or vowels, if he was so bothered by unnecessary notations.

[@theliterarynomad]

This is a largely pointless hypothetical, but I often wonder what the initial reading experience of his works would have been if he formatted them "correctly". Would it be better? Worse? Exactly the same? Impossible to know, obviously, but interesting to think about.
I personally love his stylistic formatting, but it very well could be that I just love it because he's an incredible, once-in-a-generation writer. Maybe it's just as simple as anything a writer as talented as he does is, well, good.

[@afnanbogey]

@@theliterarynomad yeah I’m inclined to agree. I personally dont take too much stock in his stylistic choices wrt punctuation in itself. The gold comes from the mindset that led to those choices, and how those choices demand clarity of his authorial voice.
If nothing else, they’re a fun dated postmodern aesthetic quirk.

[@hexesandsoldiers6032]

Neither?