Stories: Ventures into Unknown Territory 37:70

Posted on the 12 January 2012 by Polycarp55 @polycarp55

A Drowning Incident by Cormac McCarthy (1960)


Genre: Southern Gothic, Western, modernistLength: Two PagesNon Spoiler Summary:
A walk in nature reveals the story to be written; a life and death drama is played out.
My Notes on the Writer's Craft:
Cormac looks at the unnoticed things around and about this landscape.  One gets the idea that their are countless stories that can be told by just taking a walk in your garden.  The life and death struggle held within a spider web. The shoe of mystery left in a pool of water.  He explains to me that by mowing a lawn, or going for a walk, all I need to do is look around and their will be something to write about.  But how you write it is what the author must master.  
Quote from Story:
In one pool an inexplicable shoe sat solemnly. 
Tidbit: 
  1. The story was written for his school newspaper the Phoenix, published in 1960 while he was attending the University of Tennessee.
  2.  An adaptation of McCarthy's 2006 play The Sunset Limited aired on HBO in February 2011. It stars Tommy Lee Jones (who also directs) and Samuel L. Jackson.
  3. Cormac McCarthy was born Charles McCarthy;[1] on July 20, 1933.
Click here to read the story.