All the Pretty Horses

It just doesn't get much better than this. Listen to the Faulkner in McCarthy's opening par:

"The candleflame and the image of the candleflame caught in the pierglass twisted and righted when he entered the hall and again when he shut the door. He took off his hat and came slowly forward. The floorboards creaked under his boots. In his black suit he stood in the dark glass where the lilies leaned so palely from their waisted cutglass vase. Along the cold hallway behind him hung the portraits of forebears only dimly known to him all framed in glass and dimly lit above the narrow wainscotting. He looked down in at the guttered candlestub. He pressed his thumbprint in the warm wax pooled on the oak veneer. Lastly he looked at the face so caved and drawn among the folds of funeral cloth, the yellowed moustache, the eyelids paper thin. That was not sleeping. That was not sleeping."

This guy is the master of the prepositional phrase, and I mean that as a high compliment. I read this to my students yesterday and asked them to write the rest of the story. They came up with such imaginative plots. According to one student, the dead person in above passage also has a solid gold arm.