I'll put him on my "must read" list, then.

I'm not sure of you'd prefer this thread kept focused on McCarthy or thrown open to other works, but if it won't irk you, I recommend Robert McKee's book, "Story."

Amazon link --> http://tinyurl.com/3dr5ct

While it's a manual on screenwriting, 90% of what he says is germane to fiction writing. He clearly demonstrates and explains the dynamics of structure and setting, theme, character, plot, compostition, scene analysis and design, et al--all necessary to the fiction writer.

For example:

The function of structure is to provide progressively building pressures the force characters into more and more difficult dilemmas where they must make more and more difficult risk-taking choices and actions, gradually revealing their true natures, even down to the unconscious self.

A story without a sense of progression tends to stumble from one scene to the next. It has little continuity because nothing links its events.

First ask, who drives the scene, motivates it, and makes it happen? Any character or force might drive a scene, even an inanimate object or act of nature. Then look into both the text and subtext of this character or force, and ask, 'What does he or it want?' Desire is always the key.

"Story" is a powerful aid in my fiction writing, regardless of genre.

KenWritez et al,

By all means if any of you have recently been stirred by a wonderful book please feel free to share. The bar is: the work surprised you, the writing was both effective and imaginative, you were altered, briefly and in some small way, for having read the book - the way we sometimes feel after leaving a particularly powerful film... blinking and disoriented as we return to the "real" world.