The sense I get from reading Cormack McCarthy is one of reporting, sparse but with rich, lyrical sections that are apt—sections in which there is still the accuracy of aesthetic precision even with intense and abundant emotion. To write like he does, one thinks—considering, laughing at all one’s vain efforts—is to desire to know places and experiences and things as they are: with their mood and their qualities, their atmospheres and their feelings clear absolutely.

Perhaps it is fatuous to conclude that McCarthy is a literary impressionist, but I have concluded it—now that at last I am achieving some sympathy for their painting (never really understood it, which is strange considering I have always been fond of qualities of light. In painting, I suppose, I had no eyes to see it. But they are opening, and I am enjoying a Pissarro a day on the wide expanse of my second monitor. I love the sky-reflecting surfaces. I love his leafless trees on the right side).