Cormac McCarthy Is On Twitter!

OK, I finally did it: I signed up for Twitter. Actually, I discovered that I had signed up previously, without remembering; maybe I was quite drunk, er, awesome at the time.

As readers of this blog know, I have been not only a Twitter holdout but a resolute Twitter-phobe. I decided to get with the Twitter program because a) certain executives at Virgo Publishing believe it could be a dynamic way to broaden our reach and deepen our connection to our audience, and b) I read this story, on Slate, by Farhad Manjoo.

Like me, Manjoo is a Twitter skeptic: He punctures the delusional pronouncements of Biz Stone, a Twitter co-founder, who continues to utter Maoisms like “Twitter is not a triumph of technology -- it's a triumph of humanity." And he notes that many consider Twitter “a cesspool of banality that is destroying civilization.”

But he got me when he acknowledged that, while Twitter is not going to eliminate nuclear arms or world poverty, it is a terrific way to waste a few hours while convincing yourself that you’re broadening your reach and deepening your connection to your audience (ahem). Stone’s grandiosity “obscures Twitter’s main selling point -- that it's a lot of fun,” asserts Manjoo. “Twitter has become the best way to find interesting things or people online at any given instant.”

So, as if I need another online time-suck in my life, I (re-)signed up and then thought, hmm, whom would I be interested in following? Naturally I thought of America’s most verbose living author, Cormac McCarthy. And, voila! There’s a tweet-stream (is that what you call it?) by “therealcormac,” complete with a dust-jacket photo. Must be genuine, right?

Well, maybe not, but it’s still brilliant.

Dec. 7, 1:21 p.m.: “Just had lunch with my agent Amanda. My next book will be about vampires.”

Dec. 9, 10:09 a.m.: “I think I just saw a snake on my property! A real snake! How cool is that?”

Jan. 23, 10:06 p.m.: “Turns out it wasn’t a real snake. It was a stick.”

April 5, 5:55 p.m.: “The man who can teach a goat to talk, that man would be a rich man.”

And so on. I immediately hit the “Follow” link. Alas, the tweets seem to have tapered off in the last few months. Plus, there’s no mention of the supposedly upcoming film version of Blood Meridian, which is one of the great (and least filmable) 20th-century American novels.

Oh well -- maybe Thomas Pynchon’s got a Twitter feed!