A barren spot, bright in the moonwash, mercurial and luminescent as a sea

I dropped The Orchard Keeper for about 3/4 days and picking up where I left off, I feel like I should be re-reading it completely... it took me about 78 pages in to finally grasp the fact that McCarthy's change of perspectives was inclusive of the animal kingdom... which of course complicates matters further... Oh, it's so confusing. The latter McCarthy books are definitely easier to understand. Just found out that the James Tait Black Prize went to Angela Carter instead of McCarthy... argh well.

Anyhow, here are the quotes I collected from my last read -

From a lightwire overhead, dangling head downward and hollowed to the weight of ashened feathers and fluted bones, a small owl hung in an attitude of forlorn exhortation, its wizened talons locked about the single strand of wire. It stared down from dark and empty sockets, penduluming softly in the bitter wind.

'hollowed to the weight,' 'fluted bowns,' 'forlorn exhortation, 'wizened talons' 'penduluming softly' ... only McCarthy, truly.

A warm wind on the mountain and the sky darkening, the clouds looping black underbellies until a huge ulcer folded out of the mass and a crack like the earth’s core rending rattled panes from Winkle Hollow to Bay’s Mountain. And the wind rising and gone colder until the trees bent as if borne forward on some violent acceleration of the earth’s turning and then that too ceased and with a clatter and hiss out of the still air a plague of ice.

This reminds me of the 'narrowing eye' quote from Cities of the Plains. The quote is an acid incision to the heart.

Inside they struck matches and Warn took a candlestub from a crevice and lit it, the calcined rock taking shape, tonsiled roof and flowing concavity, like something gone partly to liquid and frozen back again misshapen and awry, their shadows curling threatfully up the walls among the dried and mounded bat droppings. They studied the inscriptions etched in the soft and curdcolored stone, hearts and names, archaic dates, crudely erotic hieroglyphs--the bulbed phallus and strange centipedal vulva of small boys' imaginations.

Reading McCarthy definitely boosts my vocabulary by 12%.

Anyhow, I'm off to continue pursuing The Orchard Keeper, goodnight, all.