Great talent, and yet ...

 A friend and I have been sharing notes on writers we like. At points in our lives, we both read Cormac McCarthy with real pleasure. Now, both of us have had second thoughts.

My friend put it this way: “When you're reading it, you're never allowed to forget that you're reading a Cormac McCarthy novel.”

It’s a criticism of the use of talent, not of the lack of talent. The talent can be evident and enormous. And yet …

Here is Virginia Woolf making a similar observation about Henry James:

I have finished The Wings of the Dove, and make this comment. His manipulation becomes so elaborate towards the end that instead of feeling the artist you merely feel the man who is posing the subject. And then I think he loses the power to feel the crisis. He becomes merely excessively ingenious.