A Cormac McCarthy List

A few years ago, I was contemplating teaching Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, but I felt like teenagers would find it boring. I could see them complaining and rolling their eyes almost unanimously. I love McCarthy and The Road, but let’s face it—most of the time not much happens. Page after page, the boy and his dad have variations of the same conversation and the same experiences. A colleague went ahead and taught it—and the kids have loved it! Many of them have raved about it to me.

I thought back on my original approach to teaching it the other day when she told me she had a student complaining that he didn’t understand what was going on in it. If this were an early McCarthy book, I would understand the complaint, but The Road? Every day is more or less the same, and every day the boy is going to ask the same questions, and the dad is going to deal with them in the same way. I’m intentionally making it sound boring or static, because the reasons I love McCarthy have nothing to do with plot. I love the way he uses words and makes sentences. In fact, when I read him, I underline all the words I don’t know and the phrases that blow me out of the water. The words he chooses are lyrical, archaic, earthy, rich. Here’s my list from The Road (with page numbers):

Gryke (11)
Collet (16)
Batboard (17)
Bulldrums (17)
Pipeclayed (18)
Breakfront (21)
Chifforobe (22)
Discalced (24)
Shoddy (as a noun, 28)
Creedless (28)
Feverland (28)
Firedrake (31)
Godspoke (32)
Disclets (38)
Mayapple (39)
Pipissewa (39)
Mastic (48)
Cheroot (56)
Advents (59)
Bracken (61)
Stakebed (61)
Rachitic (63)
Colliculus (64)
Temporal gyrus (64)
Siwash (68)
Truckgarden (68)
Billets (of wood, 70)
Claggy (75)
Skifts (76)
Quoits (76)
Cowled (77)
Catamites (92)
Sedge (94)
Kerfs (98)
Port cochere (105)
Sleavings (106)
Dentil (107)
Haspstaple (109)
Tang (as part of a shovel, 109)
Illucid (116)
Swag (123)
Duff (124)
Chert (129)
Coolingboard (130)
Cakebell (184)
Envacuuming (191)
Slagpools (192)
Lightwires (192)
Loggia (204)
Knurled (209)
Scud (as a noun, 221)
Seacrawl (221)
Isocline (222)
Davits (223)
Turnbuckles (223)
Mae west (uncapitalized, 225)
Gimbaled (230)
Bindle (230)
Pampooties (243)
Salitter (261)
Entabled (261)
Bollards (262)
Gantry (262)
Scarpbolts (271)
Bloomery (271)
Uncalendared (273)
Incinerate (as an adjective, 273)
Ensepulchred (273)
Crozzled (273)
Hagmoss (274)
Counterspectacle (274)
Hydroptic (274)
Wimpled (286)
Torsional (287)

Line of the Week

"I may have been a gerund in a previous life."
—Avrom Schwartz

Line of the Week

"Heaven's where you find it."

—Townes Van Zandt

Line of the Week

"Pops wasn't looking too good. I think he's dead but still talking."
—Padgett Powell

For a Good Time . . .

. . . get a Burmese Mountain Dog!

New Lynx!

Clearly, someone has been taking a virtual vacation from his blog: three posts in the past two months—for shame! Fortunately, other bloggers have been picking up the slack for me. I've added two that have caught my attention recently to my Lynx! list, both of them with aesthetic bents: The Book Design Review and Strange Maps. Enjoy!

Horse Sense

• horsing around / horseplay

• healthy as a horse

• so hungry I could eat a horse

• pee like a racehorse

• hung like a horse

• horse-trading

• changing horses in the middle of a stream

• straight from the horse's mouth

• a horse of a different color

• dark horse

• clothes horse

• beating a dead horse

• dog & pony show

• putting the cart before the horse

• horsepower

• back in the saddle again

• get right back on the horse that threw you

• feel like I've been rode hard and put up wet