The Orchard Keeper by Cormac McCarthy

It's one thing for one author to be influenced by another who has come before; that sort of thing is common. It's quite another thing for one author to duplicate so exactly another writer's distinctive style and prose mannerisms, as Cormac McCarthy does here in his first published novel. It's as if he is directly channeling William Faulkner. We have the pronouns without antecedents, so that a reader has to look for clues as to who is being discussed. We have the abrupt shifts without transition in characters and times. We have pages-long lyrical descriptions of the sights and sounds and smells of landscape. We have unfamiliar and seemingly made up words in abundance. We have meandering sentences that sometimes require a second or third reading to make any sense.

What we don't have is a story.

The three central characters--an old cantankerous hermit, a young whiskey runner, and a fatherless boy--have intersecting lives, but each has his own separate drama, even though any sense of conflict is absent. Instead of being about people, the book seems to tell the story of a fast-vanishing landscape and time in American history, before government and industrialization took control of lives.

I would have appreciated this novel much more if I had never read any Faulkner. I was constantly aware of the similarities and constantly being critical, because as hard as he tries McCarthy never quite catches the cadence and richness of language that makes Faulkner hypnotic. And all the beautiful and evocative descriptions in the universe seem pointless without some character growth and/or some suspense about what happens next.

The good news is that Cormac McCarthy developed a style more distinctively his own, and has produced an impressive body of work. Particularly notable are Blood Meridian and The Border Trilogy.