Mesmerizing read that explores the complexities of desire and emotional dependency. Beyond the undeniable power imbalances, this story soars for its descriptions of landscapes and longings. Thank you for this still unfinished and fascinating story of survival.
I just read the story in Vanity Fair and I found it fascinating, and still I’m surprised that I’m surprised by all the hate you’ve received. I’m a champion of women and girls against sexual abuse, but I don’t think things can always be reduced to their simplest denominator. McCarthy was a great writer and an imperfect person, but I take Augusta Britt at her word that she would have died—and soon—if he hadn’t saved her. It’s clear they were the love of each other’s lives—that has to count for something. She strikes me as a very admirable woman, one who has persevered through horrible things that would have defeated a person of lesser backbone. She seems to me to be kind of person about whom Joan Didion was thinking when she wrote her famous essay “On Self Respect,” a person who knows exactly who she is and who accepts responsibility for who she is and what she does and has done. I’m sorry that some readers are reacting so negatively to these revelations and aren’t able to treat them with the complexity and nuance they deserve.
I think it's the writer's romanticized fanboy vision, insertion of himself and his florid show-off storytelling that many people find troublesome. good writing says: "look at this world." bad writing screams: "look at me!" so loudly that it clouds out the world. i think this quote from this excellent critique says it best:
"I am begging someone, anyone, to publish a normal narrative of Augusta Britt's life. Simply write and edit a story about her, in a normal fashion, and publish it. Do not make her into a doomed teen cowpoke, or a doomed adult cowpoke's doomed teen mate; do not refract her through your own thoughts about the nature of evil or whatever; do not make her perfectly sufficient life story alternate paragraphs with your efforts to conjure a description of weather that will cause a reader to wonder whether you have ever seen any. Do not add to the story any mentions—not even one! I'm watching your ass!—of "that artistic wiggle room between frisson and fission," which is gibberish.
Just publish a story about her! And her life! And what she thinks about it! It seems like a pretty good story!"
This is one of the worst pieces I've ever read; you were so busy fapping off in terrible prose to the thought of Cormac McCarthy that you ignored the woman struggling with being groomed in front of you.
What do you think you're accomplishing here? What is the moral valence of your engagement? Or do you think this is 2018 and this is going to get you a staff writer job somewhere?
No it is briefly mentioned in this film at the beginning but if you know of anyone that has fundamentally suffered because of being cancelled please feel free to list them, it is a very common trope for conservative comedians to get attention mostly at this point
Jesus Christ, man. My brother's depression was significantly exacerbated by the culture these people embraced for years before he killed himself. I'm in contact with somebody who's brother's suicide was even more directly related to the whims of the cancel mob. Go fuck yourself. You've found exactly the wrong person to spout this reality denying nonsense at.
Imagine being so much more concerned about the faux societal consequences for groomers and rapists than their actual victims, that you're willing to write about it publicly. Wow.
A convicted rapist just got elected President. Vanity Fair published an entire article that attempts to paint grooming and statutory rape as "romantic" by some male fanboi author whose first priority was clearly cosplaying their literary cowboy fantasies.
I've said it once, I'd say it again. If those quickest to defend my work held these kinds of beliefs, I'd stop writing completely. Is this really who you want your core audience to be, VB? Not sure if Incels have their own version of the Pulitzer or whatever, but godspeed I guess?
"I'm going to stand up for those defending the normalization of the grooming and statutory rape of a highly vulnerable young woman by portraying it as a great love story" really makes you a martyr of the people.
I mean, he's completely right. But I suspect it's important that you ignore the realities of grooming for personal reasons, so I get why you're so embarrassingly defensive in your reply.
This is an astounding whataboutism and we should also make an equally important whataboutism like what about this low value comment by a person with the default pfp but reading about the actual topic is probably more productive https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_China
"I'm so proud that I wrote a fawning piece about Cormac McCarthy trafficking a child to Mexico for sex"
Man I know it's a piece in vanity fair but a) this being published was editorial malpractice b) you having an entire book of this is editorial malpractice c) you should have donated the kill fee that Vanity Fair should have offered you to a rape crisis charity, good christ
What do you think you're accomplishing here? What is the moral valence of your engagement? Or do you think this is 2018 and this is going to get you a staff writer job somewhere?
"staff writer job" says Freddie fucking deBoer. You're a professional writer, why are you deigning to engage with a random on the internet?
The moral valence of my argument is that there has been a shift in how we view 40-year-old men trafficking teenage girls over the Mexican border for sex in recent years. You are fully aware that this is the case, and you are being reflexively contrarian because the substack ecosystem has broken your brain. There was actually an interesting story there about this woman and Cormac McCarthy but it was drowned in Barney's uncritical fanboying. The editing decisions that went into publishing this piece were both aesthetically offensive (seriously, read the damn thing) and a gross mishandling of a sensitive topic.
Again, you are aware of all of this, but you have seen that the lefty internet is mad at this piece, so you are jumping in to defend it, because I assume ol CMC has more hereditable intelligence than Britt does, and Vincenzo, since he went to Bennington, oh, he must be filled with the stuff
I did find deBoer expanding on this concept of not going after the dead and it was something about bringing down their legacy accomplishes nothing, but, I mean, the legacy of these people has already been brought down by these dead people by the actions of what they did when they were alive, so it seems like the confusion is the term "beating a dead horse" suggesting that the problem is that you can't make the horse any more dead, which while a nice idiom, isn't what other people are talking about... Sure, don't beat a dead horse, but that's not what is happening here. We're beating the normalization of abuse in the hopes that it will die.
It inadvertently normalizes techniques of abusers. It also doesn't really matter how the people involved see it, as often victims of this specific kind of abuse have either found a personal way to forgive, haven't forgiven but given up, or more insidious, have accepted the abuser's rationalization... and their reasons for any of that can be actively harmful to efforts to prevent abuse. Because they are also still trying to protect themselves, too.
Has any woman in your life ever talked with you about her experience of sexual assault? If no, statistics indicate they don’t trust you to discuss it. Your comment is nauseating.
Working with survivors of sexual assault has been my career for over 25 years, so let me be clear. The author of this piece chose to frame the story of a highly vulnerable 16 year old girl being groomed and statutorily raped by a powerful 42 year old man, as 'romantic.'
And since I do work with this population, I can tell you that far more survivors of grooming still love and want to protect their groomers than don't. THAT IS LITERALLY PART OF GROOMING. You are psychologically conditioned starting at a vulnerable age.
Augusta's inability to completely condemn McCarthy's actions isn't a signal that this situation was ok, or as the author wants to frame it, romantic. It just means she's still expressing the behaviors of a person sexually groomed from adolescence and through their adult life. And the only person allowed to define her experience for herself is Augusta, whose voice was completely overshadowed in this article. The moments where she *did* express discomfort with what happened, are left glossed over and unexamined by the author.
It's not lost on me that the majority of highly defensive comments here are from posters who appear to have male names, and that the author is liking all of them. Much like as what happened in this article, men are speaking for and over women, transposing their voice and point of views onto our stories.
sorry. but i do feel like your "raw exuberance" comment sounds like you're getting off on the writer getting off on this story, and you're romanticizing the whole naive discovery thing in a way that just feels gross, considering the gravity of the deeper issues.
I enjoyed your story and narration on Apple News. Ms. Brit explains herself well. She has had a long time to process her relationship. It’s her story. She is not asking anyone to defend her. A lot of you sound so vitriolic. Easy.
There's a difference between vitriol and legitimate critique and here, Barney comes off as just another exploiter which is why the reactions have been so intense. He *chose* to frame this as a love story and have that take priority over the reality of the situation.
Barney's choice to write in such a distinct, over the top style, only served to double stamp his own voice on the entire piece. And it never should have been his voice that was the loudest here. It should have been Augusta's.
This was *his* story, not hers, and for that, he's no better than McCarthy.
Absolutely gross depiction of a very typical "42-year-old grooms 16 year old" story. "You're so mature for your age" is used by every predator ever. He was a grown ass man literally old enough to be her father and she was a vulnerable child being failed by every other adult around her. A decent human being would not sleep with her for God's sake. I'll bet you still think Woody Allen is pretty cool too.
This is such a bizarre response. We don’t discuss the past? We don’t learn from history? We don’t use the behavior of people, present and past, as instructive examples? Was Cormac McCarthy your dad?
Vanity Fair should not have published this, and they used everyone involved when they did. The entire approach is unethical and flawed from the start. This is a Me Too article covered by a revenant worshipper of the abuser. It is worse than hagiography. It is culty. The language in this post alone is crazy.
There are plenty of books published in this style such as those about Trump or Musk but those writers are often just hacks for hire and not true believers. No doubt that a publisher will capitalize on this situation the same way Vanity Fair did and force the book version into the marketplace. If the media world were fair it would take the writer a decade of training and reflection before he had proven himself enough if at all to be hired anywhere to write again over other writers and that’s putting things kindly. Given the amount of talent and experience in the USA, this article should be a career killer for both the editor and the writer.
I found you here to tell you how brilliant I thought that piece was. It was so conflicted with the obvious grooming that happened and yet how much salvation his presence in her life brought to her. My book group and I are blowing up our Signal chat talking about it.
what is it with this tendency for men, many times genius artists,to be attracted to young women? It feels like the relationships seem to hit one of two targets: straight on parasitical, destroying the host, or the more rare symbiotic one, where the host receives benefits. What would have been worse for Augusta? To be left in the horrifying situation she was in, or to be groomed and loved by McCarthy. God, what a thought.
You've made me want to read his books, but I can't. I know they would destroy me emotionally. But you've made inroads where I didn't think they could happen.
"what is it with this tendency for men, many times genius artists, to be attracted to young women?"
It's because these men exist in a society where they're allowed to frame grooming and statutory rape between a highly vulnerable teenager and a man in his 40's as 'romantic' and then get paid and praise for it, as we're seeing here with the VF author.
I'm sorry, but this interview was an atrocity and in no way does it meet the seriousness of the subject matter. It IS an unbelievably complex topic that deserves thoughtful and unbiased examination. But not from a vulture like Barney.
She wasn't legal, man. She was a minor in every single state in the US. The portrayal of their "relationship" here is gross. She's not a muse, she's a sexual abuse survivor, even if she has been conditioned not to see it. Deeply disturbed by this piece.
I read some of the other material you wrote on the topic. When someone presses charges, they are letting the state know about a crime that has been committed. Someone can say they want the charges dropped, but the crime was not against the victim, the crime was against the state, or rather, us a society who have given the state the power to be offended. Prosecutions happen in spite of victim's wishes constantly. I hope you can find a way to see the problems with excusing dead abusers.
The victim DOES NOT explicitly dispute the position, and if that was your takeaway, you need to take a reading comprehension class and give it another go.
Throughout this article, Augusta covers every difficult question about her relationship with CM, with a laugh and a joke. She seems uncomfortable acknowledging the content of letters she hasn't reread in decades. A better author would have examined this more deeply, but Barney made a conscious choice to first and foremost frame this as a great love story. *He's* the main character in this article, not Augusta. From his obnoxiously self-satisfied prose, to the quite frankly embarrassing fanboi POV he writes from, there is no objectivity here, for a topic that requires it.
In no way did this come across as Augusta's story. It came across as another male writer exploiting her life for their own narrative. And yes, her POV on what happened to her IS deeply, deeply complex and confusing. She doesn't see herself as a victim, so it's not the authors job to paint her as one. But it's also most certainly not the authors job to turn it into a romantic love story, as Barney felt compelled to do.
It's also true that many adult victims of grooming are unable to ever think badly about their groomers. And that's what Cormac McCarthy was. He was a groomer. Legally. So, keep trying to defend this as some impassioned stance against wokeness, but you can't exactly change the key facts of what transpired. Attempts to mitigate that truth just come across as doubling down on trying to justify a crime.
Hi Vincent, I read your VF piece and was deeply moved by it. You write beautifully about Augusta’s pain and her understanding of her relationship with McCarthy. And of stained glass sunset. Readers who want to see her as a victim while she feels and thinks otherwise, are revictimizing her, her experience belongs to her. I’m much more interested in her than him, her pain is one that I understand too well. Walk on.
If she didn't want the judgement of the public, she should not have agreed to have an biographical article published in one of the most widely read magazines in the world.
There *is* important nuance here but the author completely failed to properly address it, instead favoring overwrought prose that framed it as a love story.
Readers are fully entitled to draw their own conclusions from this article. If she feels "revictimized" by our responses, then there's clearly a truth there she's not yet comfortable examining.
She never said that she felt « revictimized » ! You are putting words in her mouth that she didn’t used. It’s some of the readers who have seen her as a victim. I stand by my original comment. The author did a good job giving her a voice.
I was literally responding to what you wrote, which was "Readers who want to see her as a victim while she feels and thinks otherwise, are revictimizing her..."
I feel confident in how this essay was written. You can see how the trust and faith Britt has given Barney animates this piece; you can see that she is practiced at this.
We are instantly convinced of how strong in character Britt is. The interview quotes are well selected and her idiosyncrasies are made available to us (if one should ask, why is Blevins also considered an expression of her, look no further than the description of Britt making the bed.) By virtue of his being a private person, the appearance of McCarthy weightily extends the project of biography to include him. What Barney does, that is critical and does a service to both Britt and McCarthy, is make it felt to the reader that this is symmetrical to his portrait of her, accumulated over decades of writing and decades of close friendship. That she was just as much a “witness to his life” as he was to her. Their expressions are cross-leveraged. This story is not reducible to merely one or the other.
Barney asks the audience to read between the lines – McCarthy never rode a horse, or shot a gun. These are strong motifs across all of his writing. You could start psychoanalyzing this, but you’ll miss out on how passionate, kinetic and revealing Britt herself is. She is a muse in the truest sense.
I would be beyond satisfied if this is the only biography we get of McCarthy – one in her voice. It feels right for many reasons, bolstered by McCarthy’s prediction of the value of these letters and the request for a dedicated and shared lockbox for them. I am very rarely moved by biographies, but I felt the warm company of both McCarthy and Britt for many days after reading.
Unfortunately the lack of fact checking has already called the validity of this story into question. Add on top of that the author's personal decision to frame this as a great love story, I don't see how you could possibly trust his integrity. He comes across as just one more exploiter, who believes their poor intentions are well-hid behind walls of overwrought prose.
Are people really this mean on Substack? Remind me to never write a newsletter. 😵💫
I think the story is impeccably written, I relate to Britt, Im a bit older but had similar feelings and experiences in the 1970s after a violent childhood, older men, etc. Do tell Britt that writing about it, whether for herself or the world will change her life for the better.
Yeah, I too came of age in the '70s. People here seem to think the past is a place just like now. Back then my brother (in his 20s) married his girlfriend a few weeks after she turned 18 when she no longer needed to get permission from her parents.
Of course they're still together and with a bunch of grandkids. Maybe those expressing outrage here are in reality seething with envy.
I'm glad your anecdotal story of your brother absolved you from any negative feelings reading this piece. You obviously need reminding that Augusta was a highly vulnerable 16 year old and Cormac McCarthy was a successful 42 year old man. So the power dynamics aren't remotely comparable.
If you think "envy" is the only way someone could be disturbed by a 'journalist' choosing to portray this story as romantic and focusing more on their own navel gazing prose than Augusta's voice, that's a reflection on you and your values.
I see you have commented throughout this thread. That does seem over-the-top. It's clear you believe your moral judgement is better than both Augusta's and Cormac McCarthy's. Stop being so presumptious.
Oh and if you read through my comments, you saw me mention that my entire career has been spent working with sexual assault survivors. So what you're perceiving as presumption is actually expertise and a deep well of experience working with people like Augusta over the course of many years.
But I get it. This author went to literary cowboy fantasy camp and that was all the time that was needed to write the truth of this story.
Yes, how dare I comment on public opinions on a public forum. How gauche.
You're the one choosing to view the story of grooming as romantic and pull some half-assed anecdote as a reason its justified. So I understand why you're being hyper defensive. It's not exactly a pretty truth to have reflected back on you.
This isn't a morality judgement. This was an actual, legally defined, crime.
Well when an author makes a choice to frame grooming and statutory rape as one of the great love stories of our time, they should probably expect some serious pushback.
Augusta, first and foremost, needs to write for herself and find a female editor. Not another man that seeks to exploit her under the guise of great literature.
Mesmerizing read that explores the complexities of desire and emotional dependency. Beyond the undeniable power imbalances, this story soars for its descriptions of landscapes and longings. Thank you for this still unfinished and fascinating story of survival.
I just read the story in Vanity Fair and I found it fascinating, and still I’m surprised that I’m surprised by all the hate you’ve received. I’m a champion of women and girls against sexual abuse, but I don’t think things can always be reduced to their simplest denominator. McCarthy was a great writer and an imperfect person, but I take Augusta Britt at her word that she would have died—and soon—if he hadn’t saved her. It’s clear they were the love of each other’s lives—that has to count for something. She strikes me as a very admirable woman, one who has persevered through horrible things that would have defeated a person of lesser backbone. She seems to me to be kind of person about whom Joan Didion was thinking when she wrote her famous essay “On Self Respect,” a person who knows exactly who she is and who accepts responsibility for who she is and what she does and has done. I’m sorry that some readers are reacting so negatively to these revelations and aren’t able to treat them with the complexity and nuance they deserve.
I think it's the writer's romanticized fanboy vision, insertion of himself and his florid show-off storytelling that many people find troublesome. good writing says: "look at this world." bad writing screams: "look at me!" so loudly that it clouds out the world. i think this quote from this excellent critique says it best:
https://defector.com/can-someone-please-write-normally-about-this-fascinating-woman
"I am begging someone, anyone, to publish a normal narrative of Augusta Britt's life. Simply write and edit a story about her, in a normal fashion, and publish it. Do not make her into a doomed teen cowpoke, or a doomed adult cowpoke's doomed teen mate; do not refract her through your own thoughts about the nature of evil or whatever; do not make her perfectly sufficient life story alternate paragraphs with your efforts to conjure a description of weather that will cause a reader to wonder whether you have ever seen any. Do not add to the story any mentions—not even one! I'm watching your ass!—of "that artistic wiggle room between frisson and fission," which is gibberish.
Just publish a story about her! And her life! And what she thinks about it! It seems like a pretty good story!"
This is one of the worst pieces I've ever read; you were so busy fapping off in terrible prose to the thought of Cormac McCarthy that you ignored the woman struggling with being groomed in front of you.
Everyone, the Good Ally is here! Bros shudder in his wake! The Good Ally is available for late night discussions, ladies....
What do you think you're accomplishing here? What is the moral valence of your engagement? Or do you think this is 2018 and this is going to get you a staff writer job somewhere?
Lol, awesome. Thanks, Freddie. Somebody has to give these cancel ghouls some well deserved shit.
No one ever gets canceled. It is made up. That never happens.
You're joking, right?
No it is briefly mentioned in this film at the beginning but if you know of anyone that has fundamentally suffered because of being cancelled please feel free to list them, it is a very common trope for conservative comedians to get attention mostly at this point
https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_i0b7ZSvwp/
Jesus Christ, man. My brother's depression was significantly exacerbated by the culture these people embraced for years before he killed himself. I'm in contact with somebody who's brother's suicide was even more directly related to the whims of the cancel mob. Go fuck yourself. You've found exactly the wrong person to spout this reality denying nonsense at.
Imagine being so much more concerned about the faux societal consequences for groomers and rapists than their actual victims, that you're willing to write about it publicly. Wow.
A convicted rapist just got elected President. Vanity Fair published an entire article that attempts to paint grooming and statutory rape as "romantic" by some male fanboi author whose first priority was clearly cosplaying their literary cowboy fantasies.
I've said it once, I'd say it again. If those quickest to defend my work held these kinds of beliefs, I'd stop writing completely. Is this really who you want your core audience to be, VB? Not sure if Incels have their own version of the Pulitzer or whatever, but godspeed I guess?
"I'm going to stand up for those defending the normalization of the grooming and statutory rape of a highly vulnerable young woman by portraying it as a great love story" really makes you a martyr of the people.
I mean, he's completely right. But I suspect it's important that you ignore the realities of grooming for personal reasons, so I get why you're so embarrassingly defensive in your reply.
Great response, Freddie!
Do incel circle jerks give out literary awards? Asking for a friend.
Lol do you even know what they meant ?? Haha
Don’t you have a fake “Uyghur genocide” story to write about James?
This is an astounding whataboutism and we should also make an equally important whataboutism like what about this low value comment by a person with the default pfp but reading about the actual topic is probably more productive https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Uyghurs_in_China
"I'm so proud that I wrote a fawning piece about Cormac McCarthy trafficking a child to Mexico for sex"
Man I know it's a piece in vanity fair but a) this being published was editorial malpractice b) you having an entire book of this is editorial malpractice c) you should have donated the kill fee that Vanity Fair should have offered you to a rape crisis charity, good christ
What do you think you're accomplishing here? What is the moral valence of your engagement? Or do you think this is 2018 and this is going to get you a staff writer job somewhere?
"staff writer job" says Freddie fucking deBoer. You're a professional writer, why are you deigning to engage with a random on the internet?
The moral valence of my argument is that there has been a shift in how we view 40-year-old men trafficking teenage girls over the Mexican border for sex in recent years. You are fully aware that this is the case, and you are being reflexively contrarian because the substack ecosystem has broken your brain. There was actually an interesting story there about this woman and Cormac McCarthy but it was drowned in Barney's uncritical fanboying. The editing decisions that went into publishing this piece were both aesthetically offensive (seriously, read the damn thing) and a gross mishandling of a sensitive topic.
Again, you are aware of all of this, but you have seen that the lefty internet is mad at this piece, so you are jumping in to defend it, because I assume ol CMC has more hereditable intelligence than Britt does, and Vincenzo, since he went to Bennington, oh, he must be filled with the stuff
Why do you keep posting the same reply? Are you protecting an abuser or trying to rationalize the abuse of someone else who died to yourself?
I did find deBoer expanding on this concept of not going after the dead and it was something about bringing down their legacy accomplishes nothing, but, I mean, the legacy of these people has already been brought down by these dead people by the actions of what they did when they were alive, so it seems like the confusion is the term "beating a dead horse" suggesting that the problem is that you can't make the horse any more dead, which while a nice idiom, isn't what other people are talking about... Sure, don't beat a dead horse, but that's not what is happening here. We're beating the normalization of abuse in the hopes that it will die.
Point out where OP was incorrect in their statement, please. They stated, quite literally, what transpired, and you can't even handle that.
It inadvertently normalizes techniques of abusers. It also doesn't really matter how the people involved see it, as often victims of this specific kind of abuse have either found a personal way to forgive, haven't forgiven but given up, or more insidious, have accepted the abuser's rationalization... and their reasons for any of that can be actively harmful to efforts to prevent abuse. Because they are also still trying to protect themselves, too.
Has any woman in your life ever talked with you about her experience of sexual assault? If no, statistics indicate they don’t trust you to discuss it. Your comment is nauseating.
Working with survivors of sexual assault has been my career for over 25 years, so let me be clear. The author of this piece chose to frame the story of a highly vulnerable 16 year old girl being groomed and statutorily raped by a powerful 42 year old man, as 'romantic.'
And since I do work with this population, I can tell you that far more survivors of grooming still love and want to protect their groomers than don't. THAT IS LITERALLY PART OF GROOMING. You are psychologically conditioned starting at a vulnerable age.
Augusta's inability to completely condemn McCarthy's actions isn't a signal that this situation was ok, or as the author wants to frame it, romantic. It just means she's still expressing the behaviors of a person sexually groomed from adolescence and through their adult life. And the only person allowed to define her experience for herself is Augusta, whose voice was completely overshadowed in this article. The moments where she *did* express discomfort with what happened, are left glossed over and unexamined by the author.
It's not lost on me that the majority of highly defensive comments here are from posters who appear to have male names, and that the author is liking all of them. Much like as what happened in this article, men are speaking for and over women, transposing their voice and point of views onto our stories.
sorry. but i do feel like your "raw exuberance" comment sounds like you're getting off on the writer getting off on this story, and you're romanticizing the whole naive discovery thing in a way that just feels gross, considering the gravity of the deeper issues.
I enjoyed your story and narration on Apple News. Ms. Brit explains herself well. She has had a long time to process her relationship. It’s her story. She is not asking anyone to defend her. A lot of you sound so vitriolic. Easy.
There's a difference between vitriol and legitimate critique and here, Barney comes off as just another exploiter which is why the reactions have been so intense. He *chose* to frame this as a love story and have that take priority over the reality of the situation.
Barney's choice to write in such a distinct, over the top style, only served to double stamp his own voice on the entire piece. And it never should have been his voice that was the loudest here. It should have been Augusta's.
This was *his* story, not hers, and for that, he's no better than McCarthy.
Fascinating story, thank you for sharing it with us.
Absolutely gross depiction of a very typical "42-year-old grooms 16 year old" story. "You're so mature for your age" is used by every predator ever. He was a grown ass man literally old enough to be her father and she was a vulnerable child being failed by every other adult around her. A decent human being would not sleep with her for God's sake. I'll bet you still think Woody Allen is pretty cool too.
He's dead.
This is such a bizarre response. We don’t discuss the past? We don’t learn from history? We don’t use the behavior of people, present and past, as instructive examples? Was Cormac McCarthy your dad?
Jim
It's presented as a love story. Full stop. The author condones the behavior in that moment. It's fucking disgusting.
Vanity Fair should not have published this, and they used everyone involved when they did. The entire approach is unethical and flawed from the start. This is a Me Too article covered by a revenant worshipper of the abuser. It is worse than hagiography. It is culty. The language in this post alone is crazy.
There are plenty of books published in this style such as those about Trump or Musk but those writers are often just hacks for hire and not true believers. No doubt that a publisher will capitalize on this situation the same way Vanity Fair did and force the book version into the marketplace. If the media world were fair it would take the writer a decade of training and reflection before he had proven himself enough if at all to be hired anywhere to write again over other writers and that’s putting things kindly. Given the amount of talent and experience in the USA, this article should be a career killer for both the editor and the writer.
I found you here to tell you how brilliant I thought that piece was. It was so conflicted with the obvious grooming that happened and yet how much salvation his presence in her life brought to her. My book group and I are blowing up our Signal chat talking about it.
what is it with this tendency for men, many times genius artists,to be attracted to young women? It feels like the relationships seem to hit one of two targets: straight on parasitical, destroying the host, or the more rare symbiotic one, where the host receives benefits. What would have been worse for Augusta? To be left in the horrifying situation she was in, or to be groomed and loved by McCarthy. God, what a thought.
You've made me want to read his books, but I can't. I know they would destroy me emotionally. But you've made inroads where I didn't think they could happen.
Well done.
"what is it with this tendency for men, many times genius artists, to be attracted to young women?"
It's because these men exist in a society where they're allowed to frame grooming and statutory rape between a highly vulnerable teenager and a man in his 40's as 'romantic' and then get paid and praise for it, as we're seeing here with the VF author.
I'm sorry, but this interview was an atrocity and in no way does it meet the seriousness of the subject matter. It IS an unbelievably complex topic that deserves thoughtful and unbiased examination. But not from a vulture like Barney.
Don't listen to the retards in the comments. Keep up the good work and congrats on the big break.
Ah! Defending him by using a slur! Great work! 🙄
That's right
Oh wow look at the edgel0rd circle jerk that was totally not predictable in any way.
Did you ever get called John Jaycob Jingleheimer Stancliff
If these were the type of "fans" I had, I'd stop writing.
She wasn't legal, man. She was a minor in every single state in the US. The portrayal of their "relationship" here is gross. She's not a muse, she's a sexual abuse survivor, even if she has been conditioned not to see it. Deeply disturbed by this piece.
Cormac McCarthy is dead and the victim explicitly disputes your position. What is the moral value of what you're attempting here?
What's the moral value of what YOU'RE attempting here?
I read some of the other material you wrote on the topic. When someone presses charges, they are letting the state know about a crime that has been committed. Someone can say they want the charges dropped, but the crime was not against the victim, the crime was against the state, or rather, us a society who have given the state the power to be offended. Prosecutions happen in spite of victim's wishes constantly. I hope you can find a way to see the problems with excusing dead abusers.
The victim DOES NOT explicitly dispute the position, and if that was your takeaway, you need to take a reading comprehension class and give it another go.
Throughout this article, Augusta covers every difficult question about her relationship with CM, with a laugh and a joke. She seems uncomfortable acknowledging the content of letters she hasn't reread in decades. A better author would have examined this more deeply, but Barney made a conscious choice to first and foremost frame this as a great love story. *He's* the main character in this article, not Augusta. From his obnoxiously self-satisfied prose, to the quite frankly embarrassing fanboi POV he writes from, there is no objectivity here, for a topic that requires it.
In no way did this come across as Augusta's story. It came across as another male writer exploiting her life for their own narrative. And yes, her POV on what happened to her IS deeply, deeply complex and confusing. She doesn't see herself as a victim, so it's not the authors job to paint her as one. But it's also most certainly not the authors job to turn it into a romantic love story, as Barney felt compelled to do.
It's also true that many adult victims of grooming are unable to ever think badly about their groomers. And that's what Cormac McCarthy was. He was a groomer. Legally. So, keep trying to defend this as some impassioned stance against wokeness, but you can't exactly change the key facts of what transpired. Attempts to mitigate that truth just come across as doubling down on trying to justify a crime.
Hi Vincent, I read your VF piece and was deeply moved by it. You write beautifully about Augusta’s pain and her understanding of her relationship with McCarthy. And of stained glass sunset. Readers who want to see her as a victim while she feels and thinks otherwise, are revictimizing her, her experience belongs to her. I’m much more interested in her than him, her pain is one that I understand too well. Walk on.
If she didn't want the judgement of the public, she should not have agreed to have an biographical article published in one of the most widely read magazines in the world.
There *is* important nuance here but the author completely failed to properly address it, instead favoring overwrought prose that framed it as a love story.
Readers are fully entitled to draw their own conclusions from this article. If she feels "revictimized" by our responses, then there's clearly a truth there she's not yet comfortable examining.
She never said that she felt « revictimized » ! You are putting words in her mouth that she didn’t used. It’s some of the readers who have seen her as a victim. I stand by my original comment. The author did a good job giving her a voice.
I was literally responding to what you wrote, which was "Readers who want to see her as a victim while she feels and thinks otherwise, are revictimizing her..."
She was an abused child both at home and in foster care. Anyway, have a good holiday.
I feel confident in how this essay was written. You can see how the trust and faith Britt has given Barney animates this piece; you can see that she is practiced at this.
We are instantly convinced of how strong in character Britt is. The interview quotes are well selected and her idiosyncrasies are made available to us (if one should ask, why is Blevins also considered an expression of her, look no further than the description of Britt making the bed.) By virtue of his being a private person, the appearance of McCarthy weightily extends the project of biography to include him. What Barney does, that is critical and does a service to both Britt and McCarthy, is make it felt to the reader that this is symmetrical to his portrait of her, accumulated over decades of writing and decades of close friendship. That she was just as much a “witness to his life” as he was to her. Their expressions are cross-leveraged. This story is not reducible to merely one or the other.
Barney asks the audience to read between the lines – McCarthy never rode a horse, or shot a gun. These are strong motifs across all of his writing. You could start psychoanalyzing this, but you’ll miss out on how passionate, kinetic and revealing Britt herself is. She is a muse in the truest sense.
I would be beyond satisfied if this is the only biography we get of McCarthy – one in her voice. It feels right for many reasons, bolstered by McCarthy’s prediction of the value of these letters and the request for a dedicated and shared lockbox for them. I am very rarely moved by biographies, but I felt the warm company of both McCarthy and Britt for many days after reading.
Much love to everyone,
a
Unfortunately the lack of fact checking has already called the validity of this story into question. Add on top of that the author's personal decision to frame this as a great love story, I don't see how you could possibly trust his integrity. He comes across as just one more exploiter, who believes their poor intentions are well-hid behind walls of overwrought prose.
Are people really this mean on Substack? Remind me to never write a newsletter. 😵💫
I think the story is impeccably written, I relate to Britt, Im a bit older but had similar feelings and experiences in the 1970s after a violent childhood, older men, etc. Do tell Britt that writing about it, whether for herself or the world will change her life for the better.
Thank you for writing the story.
Yeah, I too came of age in the '70s. People here seem to think the past is a place just like now. Back then my brother (in his 20s) married his girlfriend a few weeks after she turned 18 when she no longer needed to get permission from her parents.
Of course they're still together and with a bunch of grandkids. Maybe those expressing outrage here are in reality seething with envy.
I'm glad your anecdotal story of your brother absolved you from any negative feelings reading this piece. You obviously need reminding that Augusta was a highly vulnerable 16 year old and Cormac McCarthy was a successful 42 year old man. So the power dynamics aren't remotely comparable.
If you think "envy" is the only way someone could be disturbed by a 'journalist' choosing to portray this story as romantic and focusing more on their own navel gazing prose than Augusta's voice, that's a reflection on you and your values.
I made no comment on the author's writing style.
I see you have commented throughout this thread. That does seem over-the-top. It's clear you believe your moral judgement is better than both Augusta's and Cormac McCarthy's. Stop being so presumptious.
Oh and if you read through my comments, you saw me mention that my entire career has been spent working with sexual assault survivors. So what you're perceiving as presumption is actually expertise and a deep well of experience working with people like Augusta over the course of many years.
But I get it. This author went to literary cowboy fantasy camp and that was all the time that was needed to write the truth of this story.
It's still presumptuous of you.
Presumption doesn't really apply to public discussion on a widely read article but whatever.
Yes, how dare I comment on public opinions on a public forum. How gauche.
You're the one choosing to view the story of grooming as romantic and pull some half-assed anecdote as a reason its justified. So I understand why you're being hyper defensive. It's not exactly a pretty truth to have reflected back on you.
This isn't a morality judgement. This was an actual, legally defined, crime.
Well when an author makes a choice to frame grooming and statutory rape as one of the great love stories of our time, they should probably expect some serious pushback.
Augusta, first and foremost, needs to write for herself and find a female editor. Not another man that seeks to exploit her under the guise of great literature.
Great piece!
I wanted more. Love the imagery you use.