I started reading another Cormac McCarthy novel today. I've read a couple of his and I find them okay, though I don't love him the way so many apparently do. I think what bothers me about his work is what I perceive as a double standard. Here is an example from the very first page of this novel called The Crossing:
"He pulled his breeches off the footboard of the bed and got his shirt and his blanketlined duckingcoat and got his boots from under the bed and went out to the kitchen and dressed in the dark by the faint warmth of the stove and held the boots to the windowlight to pair them left and right and pulled them on and rose and went to the kitchen door and stepped out and closed the door behind him."
You see, he gets to be called brilliant by writing such run-on sentences with 12 'and's in them, which he does all the time, but if any of us dared to do such a thing, any agent or editor would reject us outright and consider us complete amateurs. It just pisses me off a tad that the very same set of eyes that would read that sentence coming from me and hit the Delete key will foam at the mouth with ecstasy because it is written by a famous author.
Sorry, just had to do a mini-rant about that before I go on reading.