hm broken by periodic periods. I realize that my explanation of this makes no sense. A more definable and arguable position is with the themes that lie in Faulkner's work. Particularly when we view LIA, we see characters living on the "borderlands" of society. Joe Christmas, Lena Grove, Byron Bunch, Gail Hightower, Johanna Burden--all of them are characters who (like Rinthy and Lester Ballard and all the rest of them jake legged melon *censored*ing necrophiliac sons of bitches) exist on the borderlands. And there is certainly a mirroring of Faulkner's treatment of Joe Christmas and McCarthy's treatment of Lester Ballard, not to mention the Rinthy Holme / Lena Grove parallels. Both Faulkner and McCarthy like to play with Christian imagery (as characters with more than one father ala Christ and all the other Biblical imagery in LIA among others). This is all to say that Faulkner is certainly an influence on McCarthy. True that scholars are perhaps beating that influence to death at the expense of looking at other influences but that doesn't mean that it's not there--any such argument smacks of a knee jerk reaction. From: Anonymous As you can see, there's a good case to be made for McCarthy as an inheritor of Faulkner and as a new breed, more closely akin to O'Connor or (it pains me slightly to agree with Mr. Wallach) even Hemingway. My own opinion is that critics tend to lump McCarthy into the Faulknerian school primarily because he's prone to using long, viny sentences. Secondarily, the fact that both authors usually address characters and situations which are outcast, marginalized, etc., makes for easy categorization. While these similarities are substantial, there is a difference in method (rather than style) which, I think, distinguishes the McC's approach from Faulkner's. At the core of this difference is the fact that Faulkner's prose takes place, and is generally constructed around, the internal environments of his characters. To s...
