Cormac McCarthy Was A Great Author Who Doesn’t Deserve A Bad Biography

What was read

2417 words in the outlet's own voice, plus 12 in the headline. 2% of the text is in quotes. 4 attribution markers (such as "said" or "according to") found.

Scare quotes (a phrase of one to three words in quotation marks with no speaker in the same sentence): doubling, Gell-Mann Amnesia. Since method 3.1.0 their words count as the outlet's own.

Words found

Word choice: of course 2 points Editorializing
across man’s moral nature. But of course McCarthy was also merely human, an
unfortunately 2 points Editorializing
his literary and philosophical influences. Unfortunately , Tracy Daugherty, author of Cormac McCarthy:
of course 2 points Editorializing
reasons for his literary shortcomings. Of course , McCarthy’s themes are Faulknerian, Southern, and,
laughable 2 points Editorializing
unjust times would have seemed laughable and even loathsome to McCarthy, who
genius attributed to a speaker, not counted Editorializing
did not grasp his son’s genius until later in life. The elder
evil 2 points Editorializing
to choose between good and evil and frequently choose evil. Our lives
evil 2 points Editorializing
and evil and frequently choose evil . Our lives are bounded by necessity.
purported 2 points Expression of doubt
and practically criminal, in a purported biography of Cormac McCarthy. There is
genius attributed to a speaker, not counted Editorializing
old friend and fellow MacArthur Genius Grant fellow, physicist Murray Gell-Mann (who
Raises the temperature: epic 1 point Raises the temperature
an enchanter with words, an epic portraitist of the American landscape, a
deeply attributed to a speaker, not counted Raises the temperature
Howard Zinn–influenced picture of a deeply flawed America — are most distinctly
very 1 point Raises the temperature
and always toward its doom. Very little of what concerns Daugherty in
fury 2 points Raises the temperature
Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury , and Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell
deeply 1 point Raises the temperature
school but grew up in deeply Protestant Knoxville. He was dismissive of
truly 1 point Raises the temperature
the author’s story that is truly worthy of the man and the

Layer scores

Rates are counted points per 1,000 words of the story's own text. For a story longer than 200 words, the rate used is the average of the whole-story rate and the rate in its densest 200-word stretch, so neutral filler cannot dilute a loaded passage away. Score = 100 × (loaded end − rate used) ÷ loaded end, kept between 0 and 100. Headline words count only in the headline layer.

Layer	Points	Words	Whole-story rate	Densest 200 words	Rate used	Scale	Score
Word choice	14	2417	5.8	20.0 (words 1 to 200)	12.9	0 to 40	68
Temperature	6	2417	2.5	10.0 (words 1251 to 1450)	6.2	0 to 40	84
Flagged attribution phrases	0	2417	0.0	0.0 (words 1 to 200)	0.0	0 to 20	100
Headline wording	0	25	0.0	headline only	0.0	0 to 240	100

Densest stretch: Word choice, words 1 to 200 of 2417, with of course, unfortunately; Temperature, words 1251 to 1450 of 2417, with fury.

Shown, not scored: the headline's rate minus the rate of the story's first 80 words is 0.0 points per 1,000 words. Experimental: 0 of 2 names and figures in the headline also appear in the text read.

Overall

Weighted geometric mean of the layers that are established, with 10 added to each layer first and taken away at the end: (Word choice 68 + 10)^0.4 × (Temperature 84 + 10)^0.3 × (Flagged attribution phrases 100 + 10)^0.2 × (Headline wording 100 + 10)^0.1 − 10 = 81. Adding 10 means one layer at 0 lowers the total steeply without collapsing it. A weak layer pulls the total down.

Lowered the score most: Word choice.

Name-swap test: with party, politician and institution names swapped, this report's score moves by 0.0 points.

What a reader could check

People named as sources	2 (As Rick, Albert Camus)
Unnamed sources	0 (0% of all sources found)
Links to primary records (government, court, filings, PDFs)	0
Documents cited in the text (a report, bill, ruling, filing)	0
Checkable specifics (numbers and dates)	19
Data shown (a table or chart)	no
Correction or clarification noted	no

What a reader could check, counted by published patterns. Shown beside the score, never part of it. How each count works

Checked against the official record

No vote count or bill number found in the text read.

Record of this measurement

Method 3.1.0, word-list fingerprint 807a17189402a416, read Thu, Nov 5, 7:37 AM ET by text extractor version 4. Fingerprint of the text read: 27da7016d37bb3d5. Internet Archive copy nearest the time it was read. The text read was not kept (read before method 3.1.0, or from the feed only), so a later rule change can be applied only while the report is still in the outlet's feed.

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The arithmetic for one report