I could literally listen to this man talk all day. And not just because he's one of the greatest writers of all time, but also just because his voice is so damn soothing. XD
His thoughts on the subconscious remind me of Carl Jung's writings on the collective unconscious. I truly get the same type of dark isolated feeling when I read the works of both men.
Not sure why everyone feels so damn isolated reading Jung he’s talking about a collective universal experience available to everyone who wants to engage with his work.
I think Oprah’s sheer presence liberated McCarthy in this interview. Her beauty humility and gentle humour, encouraging him to expand. So for those critics saying ‘ I wish it was c X…’ interviewing, don’t underestimate her presence for drawing him out.
@@jon8004 indeed I'm not saying I like her as a person but she is a communicative genius; She literally became a billionaire due to her ability to speak, listen, and persuade people to open up about things they've never told anyone else. Furthermore she actually allows her guests to speak instead of talking over them or trying to make the conversation about her which sadly has become all too popular today.
Why writing can be hard is you can't keep up with the subconscious flow. Channeling it's speed into word is difficult. But as justice Holmes called it like pissing. You open a vein and it flows.
After 20 years of studying, it came to him in a dream. When asked about it, Kekule gave one of the best quotes ever...."Visions come to prepared spirits".
Oprah isn't as knowledgeable on writing, the subconscious, or the history of language as Cormac McCarthy, a Pulitzer Prize winning author who spends his free time among scientists and others at an interdisciplinary scientific research organization (Santa Fe Institute, mentioned by McCarthy in this interview)? Well, of course. There's nothing embarrassing about that. Her money and clout allowed this interview to happen. It is silly to criticize her. McCarthy wasn't remotely condescending.
These topics don't automatically come to you because you have scientists as friends or have more direct access to a research organization. It is neither necessary nor really beneficial in a lot of cases. They are also not solved or solvable and readily available. What matters here is the choice to take the time to reflect and engage with such topics in the first place. Yes, today it is no miracle that someone like Oprah is unable to participate in this dialogue and nobody asks of her to be McCarthy's equal in that moment, ... regardless - her being absolutely unable to participate at all (apart from seemingly poorly acted utterances of "oh" and "whoah") does say something about the shallowness of her and the culture that made her big.
Some people's comments on here are hilarious for the reasons that they are exaggerated. The man is merely making theoretical points about the subconscious. Some of which are subjective even. Lol
A man can arrive at truthful conclusions subjectively just like it can arrive at wrongful conclusions objectively. Because when it comes ti subconscious understanding and personal development man can subjectively understand what is truly right or wrong, there is no way of piggybacking on someone else's subjective understanding.
Why drag Cavett into this? Don't let your dislikes govern what the rest of us are actually enjoying. That's so selfish and typical of you...but not unexpected!
@@BL-mf3jp Uggggh. No. Charlie is a bland human being who asked bland questions. And oh yeah, he was pals with Jeffrey Epstein who scouted interns for him.....
@@Neat0_o you'd be whining if it was somebody talking to McCarthy as much as him and claim they weren't letting him speak. you elitists can't let anyone win
I can't believe people are shitting on Oprah for this in the commets. She is doing a perfectly fine job, she's giving him room to answer the question and develop his thoughts. This isn't supposed to be a discussion or debate, she's hear to ask him questions and let him answer.
They're snobs who only think academic white men are worthy of respect. They're threatened by her. She invalidates their illusory superiority which they project through the realm of literary culture, academia and so called western high culture. Oprah is a threat to all that.
Subconscious is a "committee" and they have "meetings"? Is it just me, or was Pixar inspired to make "Inside Out" after watching this interview? Cormac McCarthy has something else to add to his resume.
How the hell do you read "a destroyed mind" out of someone saying 'yes'! Unless you're looking for the worst in people who, for some reason, you deem inferior.
Amazing how many of these ideas are in The Passenger/Stella Maris. Almost verbatim. Goes to show how long he’s been asking these questions, only to find more questions. Rest in peace, Cormac.
I've learned so much from this comment section. Comments sections give a glimpse of the collective unconscious. Here, we see how threatened old white elitist academic men are by someone like Oprah. This is very much in the collective unconscious, but people will rarely voice it in the open.
you’re inferring the meaning you want from these comments. The remarks would be the same if McCarthy was interviewed by a white, male TV personality that typically panders to low-brow audiences, like Jerry Springer. And who are these “old white elitists” in academia? It’s abundantly clear that academia is rife all the way to the top with progressives and their anti-White ideology.
I would die if I could just have one hour with this man. I feel like we would be great friends. I need to talk about the conscious and subconscious literature its meanings its teachings and life.
Never thought a day would come when I would be defending Oprah, but I think most people in the comments are being too harsh. Not the smartest person in the room by any stretch of the imagination, but not as dumb as people seem to think she is. Her demeanour and comments show she is a thoughtful listener at least (as well as a fairly diligent reader of McCarthy), well ahead of most interviewers these days. Even the fact that she actually read his books before interviewing him puts her ahead of most.
So....could my subconscious mind solve all my "problems"? I have pleaded with myself to fix these problems. I think my problem is that It is my conscious mind that is pleading with my conscious mind to "fix" my problems that my subconscious maybe doesn't even accept as problems? How do I communicate with my subconscious mind consciously?
Oprah was like: "Hell, we usually don't discuss these things with Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber and Angelina Jolie." Way above her level. Embarrassing to watch.
i don't know what it is like for other ppl but whatever your eyes register ears note down nose catches is stored and given back to you when you want it depending if you know how to retrive the files and if your intelligences level is on par with your subconscious what is given back to you will be of higher level then what you put in minus all the bugs . I understand why he would rather hang out with engineers and scientists for the simple reson their inputs are of much higher quality then the rest of humanity. and that is in no way a attempt to diss the contributions of others because no one can fuction on high level all the time without cracking couple of fart jokes to give space for everything to be filed and processed in it's rightful place balance is the key to everything .
nothing against Oprah, but Cormac is playing three dimensional chess to Oprah's checkers. First time I have paid any attention to Cormac McCarthy's words and thoughts.
Oprah is smarter than 99.9999% of people in the world. Hopefully we will all catch up to Cormac one day. Absolute gift of a writer. Human. We are blessed
Io, caro signor cormac, glielo dico che lei é un maledetto da Dio perché non sono nessuno. Sono una qualunque. Peró ho un dettaglio che lei i suoi figli e figlie non aveste, non avete e non avrete mai. Io sono la luce dei giorno e gloria di Dio e ho con lui rapporti indissolubili e privilegiati.
Caro signor cormac. Io vorrei le pervenissero alcuni filmati direttamente da Dio quanto al pensiero e al giudizio di Dio. Risulta che Lei ha sbagliato e fallito tutto. Un totale e grossolano errore, il male assoluto e mai perdonabile. Lei é il male che ha portato al male tanta di quella gente da meritare lei e i suoi figli e figlie l'inferno che non finisce mai.
Cormac is a fine writer but he's misusing subconscious. What he means is unconscious, which is accessible to conscious mind, whereas the unconscious is not. For example, you can't recall a word, and then ten minutes later you do, because it was available in the subconscious. Content in the unconscious is never accessible except perhaps in dreams in a symbolic form. Childhood traumas deeply repressed are not available, thus the difficulty faced by therapists when treating trouble patients.
This conversation reminds me of a story the singer-songwriter Townes Van Zandt used to tell. He said that he had a bad flu and he took some narcotic cough syrup and went to sleep. In the middle of the night he had a very lucid dream of being onstage singing a song. In the dream he heard the words, the melody and all and he woke up and turned on the lamp and scratched the words down and went back to sleep. In the morning he woke up and still remembered the melody and went and played the complete song to Guy and Susanna Clark-his best friends. He didn’t have to change anything the song stayed just like he’d dreamt it. The song was “If I Needed You”, a beautiful, beautiful song. Another example is Tom Petty spoke of sitting in his little home recording studio one day messing around and he started playing some chords and hit record and in real time his song “Wildflowers” just came out of him onto the tape. He didn’t “write” or “craft” the song, it just came out of him without him thinking about what he was singing. He said for a week or two afterward he kept listening the song over and over certain that it couldn’t be any good or that there must be something wrong with it but it was in fact almost perfect just the way it came out. And that ended up being one of the best songs from a guy who wrote a pile of great songs. So what Cormac is talking about here is really true…our subconscious can do amazing things and it really is a complete mystery how it works. Where does it come from? What the hell even is it?
@@strongbongus You're Kidding right?! Oprah can handle any interview effortlessly. Cormac is a difficult person to interview, if you know how sad his life was, you'd understand why. Anyway Please subscribe to my channel 💚
Such a wise and worldly perspective, exactly what made his writing so unique. I love how whenever I read a McCarthy novel there’s a fusion of primal feeling with worldly understanding. Even the books I didn’t particularly care for were clearly written by a master storyteller
Wow.. Unbelievable dream solving. With Russel Crowes character at that 😂. Real life is crazier then any fiction. Sad how many views Cormacs interviews have on RU-vid. He is a brilliant man. Brilliant and inspiring. 💡
Things that seem difficult for mundane people just seem so easy for those with true capability. He talks about writing as if it were making a sandwich. Which, to him, it probably was.
Really. And that's after she's already been in the presence of hour after hour of the brilliance of her interview subjects. Osmosis is most certainly not how people learn to think.
I did a little writing and I always figured the subconscious did the writing cuz the next day when I reread the text I previously wrote, I was reading it for the first time and very curious to know what happened next...
After reading a lot of books about the lives of authors and musicians, I think Cormac's fascination with the subconscious and his implicit trust in its guiding direction is spot on. Nearly every author of some renown has said they have absolutely no idea where their stories come from, absent any real life experience or research that might serve as the basis for their novel. But for completely fictional works it really does seem like these ideas just suddenly hit them and they're never at a complete loss for where to take them. From beginning to end their subconscious is producing the material and they feel like scribes writing down words and ideas that don't entirely feel like they're their own thoughts. It's as if they're a medium for something else. Musicians seem to be the same way. Keith Richards, in his autobiography "Life" said something about how when he's writing his guitar riffs, it's almost as if they're emerging from some subconscious ether, and he just has to be determined enough to keep chasing this thing that he knows already exists somewhere else, but he has to bring it into existence here. Michael Jackson had the same spooky experience writing his music. It just comes from someplace beyond their own ability to think or feel, as if they've been bestowed with a gift from the beyond.
Watching this made me realize that Cormac Mcarthy is as articulate as he is brilliant. And that I miss Oprah, people don't realize what it means to be a great interviewer, she is so disarming, that she allows Cormac to go on about these elegant stories. She is us, a collective vessel for the audience.
Us? Yea, she’s definitely my truck driving buddy, Lester, from West Virginia. The two of them have sooo much in common. Give me a break with this Oprah worship BS! It’s puke-worthy.
The way he talks about the subconscious is like that SpongeBob episode where he dumps everything for fine dining. 😂 The office of cubicle worker spongebobs frantically searching through files for his name. 😂
