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 Welcome to the Cormac McCarthy thread! This is a direct sequel to the old Blood Meridian thread, which became a sort of catch-all for everything McCarthy related. Since we started touching on his other works (and related projects), it seemed fair to make a new post to widen the spectrum of discussion. The Author "Cormac McCarthy (born July 20, 1933) is an American novelist and playwright. He has written ten novels, spanning the Southern Gothic, Western, and Post-apocalyptic genres. He won the Pulitzer Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction for The Road (2006). His 2005 novel No Country for Old Men was adapted as a 2007 film of the same name, which won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. For All the Pretty Horses (1992) he won both the U.S. National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award. All the Pretty Horses and The Road were also adapted as motion pictures. "Blood Meridian (1985) was among Time magazine's list of 100 best English-language books published between 1923 and 2005 and placed joint runner-up in a poll taken in 2006 by The New York Times of the best American fiction published in the last 25 years. Literary critic Harold Bloom named him as one of the four major American novelists of his time, alongside Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon and Philip Roth, and called Blood Meridian 'the greatest single book since Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying'. In 2010 The Times ranked The Road first on its list of the 100 best fiction and non-fiction books of the past 10 years. McCarthy has been increasingly mentioned as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature." (From the Wikipedia article) The Works Novels: ·The Orchard Keeper (1965) ·Outer Dark (1968) ·Child of God (1973) ·Suttree (1979) ·Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West (1985) ·All the Pretty Horses (1992) ·The Crossing (1994) ·Cities of the Plain (1998) ·No Country for Old Men (2005) ·The Road (2006) ·The Passenger (forthcoming) Short Fiction: ·Wake for Susan (1959) ·A Drowning Incident (1960) Screenplays: ·The Gardener's Son (1976) ·The Counselor (forthcoming) Plays: ·The Stonemason (1995) ·The Sunset Limited (2006) Some Choice Quotes (because seriously, goddrat) The judge smiled. The fool was no longer there but another man and this other man he could never see in his entirety but he seemed an artisan and a worker in metal. The judge enshadowed him where he crouched at his trade but he was a coldforger who worked with hammer and die, perhaps under some indictment and an exile from men's fires, hammering out like his own conjectural destiny all through the night of his becoming some coinage for a dawn that would not be. It is this false moneyer with his gravers and burins who seeks favor with the judge and he is at contriving from cold slag brute in the crucible a face that will pass, an image that will render this residual specie current in the markets where men barter. Of this is the judge judge and the night does not end. --Blood Meridian He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the intestate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like ground-foxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it. --The Road Dear friend now in the dusty clockless hours of the town when the streets lie black and steaming in the wake of the watertrucks and now when the drunk and the homeless have washed up in the lee of walls in alleys or abandoned lots and cats go forth highshouldered and lean in the grim perimeters about, now in these sootblacked brick or cobbled corridors where lightwire shadows make a gothic harp of cellar doors no soul shall walk save you. --Suttree (This is the opening paragraph. loving owns.) The rangers said they brutalized the cattle in a way they did not the wild game. As if the cows evoked in them some anger. As if they were offended by some violation of an old order. Old ceremonies. Old protocols. --The Crossing For New Readers If you've come this far, you've noticed that McCarthy's style isn't exactly easy. Because this OP is already getting kind of long, I'm just going to link my (admittedly uneducated and remarkably clunky) approach from the old Blood Meridian thread. Or, as Stephen King put it in On Writing: "The Grapes of Wrath is, of course, a fine novel. I believe that Blood Meridian is another, although there are great whacks of it that I don't fully understand. What of that? I can't decipher the words to many of the popular songs I love, either." Links and Interesting Stuff from the Old (This is obviously heavily tilted toward Blood Meridian. Also, apologies if I miss anything) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIQynsWpBpQ&t=41s An excerpt from the (amazing) Blood Meridian audio book (and the source of the title quote) Extortionist posted:Yale posted a few lectures covering the book on youtube: flamingmuse posted:To keep the thread going and prove that I probably have this book on my brain a little too much, I thought I'd post this. BuckarooBanzai posted:It may have gotten mentioned elsewhere in this thread already but here's a link to the Cormac McCarthy Society's English translations of all the Spanish in BM: E. Porter posted:I just rediscovered this Blood Meridian inspired wallpaper I made a few years ago. Figured I might as well use my first post here to share. Miscellaneous Feel free to cover anything about McCarthy here (including a decades old remarkable similarity to an actor who played a character of his). If you haven't yet read it, take a look at the old BM thread because there was some very good discussion there.* If you want to make a baller post about a particular novel or play, go for it; I'm more than happy to update the OP as cool poo poo keeps rolling in. Edit: Update 1, courtesy of ExpletiveDeleted: Notes on Blood Meridian * For the record, I generally don't think of "very good" as a synonym for "theory-based and densely academic," but if you feel like bringing in post-colonial or queer theory or whatever, go for it. Asbury fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Aug 27, 2012 |
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Aug 26, 2012 21:18
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Thanks for the great OP3Romeo, I really enjoyed your analysis in the last thread! For any of you who might be on the fence about McCarthy I really suggest you give it a go. Some non-literary types write off McCarthy's style as being pretentious, but it's really not. He doesn't describe mundane things in overwrought prose, he describes artful things of depth and consequence in the only way they can be communicated. Here's some of my favorite passages from Blood Meridian. Check out this sick rear end personification of Death: quote:The dust the party raised was quickly dispersed and lost in the immensity of that landscape and there was no dust other for the pale sulter who pursued them drives unseen and his lean horse and his lean cart leave no track upon such ground or any ground. By a thousand fires in the iron blue dusk he keeps his commissary and he's a wry and grinning tradesman good to follow every campaign or hound men from their holes in just those whited regions where they've gone to hide from God. Here's an insight into one of his badass characters based on the historical murderer and fortune seeker, John Glanton: quote:He watched the fire and if he saw portents there it was much the same to him. He would live to look upon the western sea and he was equal to whatever might follow for he was complete at every hour. Whether his history should run concomitant with men and nations, whether it should cease. He'd long forsworn all weighing of consequence and allowing as he did that men's destinies are ever given yet he usurped to contain within him all that he would ever be in the world and all that the world would be to him and be his charter written in the urstone itself he claimed agency and said so and he'd drive the remorseless sun on to its final endarkenment as if he'd ordered it all ages since, before there were paths anywhere, before there were men or suns to go upon them.
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Aug 26, 2012 21:58
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Awesome OP. Really enjoyed reading the last thread. Didn't see John Sepich's Notes on Blood Meridian mentioned (sorry if it was). That's a great source to have along with the book since it's got some of the historical stuff as well as some analyses and translations of the Spanish parts. Oh, and does anyone else have the Modern Library edition? It's got a great introduction by Harold Bloom in it. Might be online somewhere, I'll look. Also Modern Library editions in general are the bomb, such pretty books. I'm excited to have a McCarthy thread, hope we can get some discussion going in here. Literally just finished another read-through of Blood Meridian the other night, and I just love talking about McCarthy in general. As for other McCarthy stuff, I might actually love Suttree more than Blood Meridian, although honestly I think I understand Suttree even less than I understand Blood Meridian. I love that Suttree can have all this amazing imagery and truly heartbreaking parts and also be absolutely hilarious at times. Like really, Harrogate is the most ridiculous person on the face of the earth. Just starting Child of God so I'm excited for that as well. Also I'd love to see someone try to apply queer theory to Blood Meridian because I'm really not sure how that would work at all.
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Aug 26, 2012 23:24
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Above Our Own posted:Thanks for the great OP3Romeo, I really enjoyed your analysis in the last thread! 420 quote Blood Meridian e'y day. Cormac McCarthy in Blood Meridian posted:Only now is the child finally divested of all that he has been. His origins are become remote as is his destiny and not again in all the world's turning will there be terrains so wild and barbarous to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man's will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay.
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Aug 26, 2012 23:25
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ExpletiveDeleted posted:Awesome OP. Really enjoyed reading the last thread. Didn't see John Sepich's Notes on Blood Meridian mentioned (sorry if it was). That's a great source to have along with the book since it's got some of the historical stuff as well as some analyses and translations of the Spanish parts. Oh, and does anyone else have the Modern Library edition? It's got a great introduction by Harold Bloom in it. Might be online somewhere, I'll look. Also Modern Library editions in general are the bomb, such pretty books. Child of God is pretty good. I feel like there's a lot more to it than I think there is, which is always a good sign (I'll be goddamned if it doesn't read like an allegory, but I don't know what for). And yeah, Suttree runs neck-and-neck with BM as my favorite of his stuff. I mean, read a quip like "The crimes of the moonlight melonmounter" and try not to work it into conversation. I double dog dare you. As for the queer theory thing: it might not be as hard of a reading as you might imagine. I'm certainly no expert on it, but working off of the basis that queer identity is about "...[w]hatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant" (and not just about gay identity), you could probably bullshit a good paper about how The Kid (who alone has "mercy in his heart for the heathen") was the odd man out in the Glanton Gang. Combine that with the scene in the jakes and, I dunno, some metaphor about American dominance of the west and the pacification of the Native Americans or some poo poo, and you could probably get a good twenty page paper about the Manifest Destiny smashing queer identity on a national level. Or something.
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Aug 27, 2012 00:35
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quote:How these things end. In confusion and curses and blood. They drank on and the wind blew in the streets and the stars that had been overhead lay low in the west and these young men fell afoul of others and words were said that could not be put right again and in the dawn the kid and the second corporal knelt over the boy from Missouri who had been named Earl and they spoke his name but he never spoke back. That's my favourite (half) paragraph so far. There is just this really amazing sadness in all the violence.
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Aug 27, 2012 01:44
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I just started The Border Trilogy a few weeks ago, and I'm almost halfway through The Crossing. I had read The Road back in 2007 and loved it, and I'm not sure why it took me so long to read another of his books. Wait. Yes I can--they're depressing as gently caress. 
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Aug 27, 2012 02:10
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3Romeo posted:As for the queer theory thing: it might not be as hard of a reading as you might imagine. I'm certainly no expert on it, but working off of the basis that queer identity is about "...[w]hatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant" (and not just about gay identity), you could probably bullshit a good paper about how The Kid (who alone has "mercy in his heart for the heathen") was the odd man out in the Glanton Gang. Combine that with the scene in the jakes and, I dunno, some metaphor about American dominance of the west and the pacification of the Native Americans or some poo poo, and you could probably get a good twenty page paper about the Manifest Destiny smashing queer identity on a national level. Or something. Yeah, I had a couple classes last semester where we did a lot of queer theory stuff, and I find it pretty interesting, I'm just always kind of leery about literary theories in general because I think they can quickly become ridiculous. That said, you make a good point and I think somebody could definitely work up a decent argument around that sort of idea, and it'd probably be quite interesting. And, I mean, there's the whole jakes scene, which has so many different interpretations. I'm still not sure which one I believe, because I've seen a lot of people make good cases for the Judge raping the Kid instead of killing him, or doing both. Also, 3Romeo, have I ever told you that you have one of my favorite avatar/text combos on the whole forums? It's amazing. Since we're all quotin' (and I could just quote McCarthy forever, honestly), one of my top favorite Blood Meridian paragraphs: Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian posted:A man's at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with. He can know his heart, but he dont want to. Rightly so. Best not to look in there. It aint the heart of a creature that is bound in the way that God has set for it. You can find meanness in the least of creatures, but when God made man the devil was at his elbow. A creature that can do anything. Make a machine. A machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it. MK-Ultramarathon fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Aug 27, 2012 |
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Aug 27, 2012 02:26
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3Romeo posted:Child of God is pretty good. I feel like there's a lot more to it than I think there is, which is always a good sign (I'll be goddamned if it doesn't read like an allegory, but I don't know what for). Child of God is the only McCarthy novel I have read more than once, and I have read it five or six times. It is about a man who does not belong in the world, in all of the ways that can be true, and how nature and man are forced to deal with him. Imagine if The Judge wasn't able to artfully navigate human society; imagine that he just moved with his urges, unable to understand if they are good or bad. That's what Child of God is about. And he's just like you or me.
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Aug 27, 2012 03:14
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It needs to be said since even in a book full of murderous assholes, Davy Brown is possibly the meanest of the bunch.
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Aug 27, 2012 07:45
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Frostwerks posted:It needs to be said since even in a book full of murderous assholes, Davy Brown is possibly the meanest of the bunch. I'm partial to (black) Jackson myself: "Jackson, pistols drawn, lurched into the street vowing to shoot the rear end off Jesus Christ, the longlegged white son of a bitch."
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Aug 27, 2012 14:27
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Martin Van Buren posted:I'm partial to (black) Jackson myself: Thank you for reminding me of that scene... I always forget about it since it gets kind of lost in the larger scope of the book, but I love it because it's so unexpectedly funny.
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Aug 28, 2012 03:57
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Great new thread! While I never contributed much at all to the previous thread, I got many hours of enjoyment reading excellent posts, and look forward to more of the same. A little reflection on Blood Meridian: I've never read many interpretations of the Judge by scholars outside of this forum, so this may be a theory that has been put forth many times before. So please bear with me. Is a Judge less of an actual person\devil\physical being, and more of a figurative representation of the collective conscience and desires of Glanton's gang? Is Glantons seemingly demonic pact with the Judge actually a representation of his steadfast pursuit of his own ends regardless of the cost? Is the Judge's speech on war and its godhood over man the verbalization of the gang's unutterable, internal thoughts? When the Judge (perhaps) kills the Kid\Man at the end, is it a figure of the Man's final reconciliation with what he truly is: a worshiper of war and all that entails?
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Aug 28, 2012 05:09
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a starwar betamax posted:Great new thread! While I never contributed much at all to the previous thread, I got many hours of enjoyment reading excellent posts, and look forward to more of the same. I could spend hours talking about who or what the Judge is but to your original point - the Judge is corporeal. He appears before the Kid joins the gang. He runs the preacher out of Nacogdoches and watches the Kid as he (the Kid) and Toadvine leave town after burning down the hotel.
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Aug 28, 2012 18:16
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One of my favorite quotations is this little gem from Suttree:quote:Whoopla laughter scuttling after him and a gold tooth winksome, bawdy dogstar in the ordurous jaws of fellatio major.
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Aug 28, 2012 21:53
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Dr. Faustus posted:One of my favorite quotations is this little gem from Suttree: Also one of my favorites.  On the subject of the Judge and what he actually is... I've thought over this so many times, and the only conclusion I've managed to come to is that I have no clue what McCarthy wants us to think, and I'm not even sure if he's trying to point the reader in a specific direction or just kind of leave it up to us in the end. That said, the Judge is certainly an actual person, in a sense. But there are so many otherworldly sorts of elements to him that I feel like you can't really just leave it at that. The whole gunpowder scene, especially the fact that at the beginning he just appears smack in the middle of the desert, just waiting around, definitely hints that there's something more to him. And, of course, "He says that he will never die." I was reading Child of God on the bus today and came across this gem: Cormac McCarthy, Child of God posted:The dumpkeeper had spawned nine daughters and named them out of an old medical dictionary gleaned from the rubbish he picked. These gangling progeny with black hair hanging from their armpits now sat idle and wide-eyed day after day in chairs and crates about the little yard cleared out of the tips while their harried dam called them one by one to help with chores and one by one they shrugged or blinked their sluggard lids. Urethra, Cerebella, Hernia Sue. This man is a genius.
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Aug 29, 2012 00:49
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Screw the kindle price. I went and bought Blood Meridian in paperback. I prefer print in any event. Looking forward to this read. Question: am I going to be required to read spanish for BM? (I only ask, due to the conversations in the Border Trilogy)
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Aug 29, 2012 03:49
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If you've got a high school level knowledge of spanish you really should be fine. The most difficult to parse scene would be, to me, the encounter with the juggler and the whole tarot reading. And even then, you can still suss out some meaning if you've got the rudiments of understanding.
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Aug 29, 2012 04:45
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Fog Tripper posted:Screw the kindle price. I went and bought Blood Meridian in paperback. I prefer print in any event. Agree with Frostwerks, but in addition I'm pretty sure there's translations online. Also if you're really dedicated you can find Notes on Blood Meridian by John Sepich which has all the Spanish parts translated in full. I managed to get through it just fine just using Google translate, because I've had a lot of Latin so I can sort of pick my way through Spanish. The tarot part is pretty important, though, so it's nice to get the gist of the Spanish because it helps you understand the scene.
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Aug 29, 2012 14:29
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I'm pretty bad at Spanish and during my first readthrough, I didn't look up anything for the Tarot scene, only understanding about half of what they said (perhaps as much as some members of the Glanton gang). It added to the mystery of the scene. Second readthrough I had the notes from the OP to help me along.
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Aug 29, 2012 22:19
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If you don't think the opening page of Suttree is brilliant just put a bullet in your head and get it over with already.
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Aug 30, 2012 17:32
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Just finished Child of God. Loved it, but it was way too short! Off to Amazon to purchase more Cormack.
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Sep 1, 2012 00:33
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Child of God has been a surprisingly easy read for me so far. I've made it about a third of the way through already just kind of reading it on the bus and before classes. I think it's got something to do with the really short chapters... and yeah, the book overall is quite short too. Loving it so far. And I'm also re-reading Suttree because why not, and I just love this passage toward the beginning when the farmer's shooting Harrogate for loving his melons: Cormac McCarthy, Suttree posted:The train bawled twice out there in the darkness. Now beg God's mercy, lecher. Unnatural. Finger coiled, blind sight, a shadow. Smooth choked oiled pipe pointing judgment and guilt. Done in a burst of flame. Could I call back that skeltering lead. Seriously though Harrogate is such an amazing character. I adore the character of Suttree but Harrogate will always hold a special place in my heart. He's just so painfully, endearingly oblivious about absolutely everything. And because I really want to get some discussion going up in this thread because I want it to stay on the front page, does anybody have an opinion on that very ending passage of Suttree with the hounds? The one I'm talking about is this: Cormac McCarthy, Suttree posted:An enormous lank hound had come out of the meadow by the river like a hound from the depths and was sniffing at the spot where Suttree had stood. Somewhere in the gray wood by the river is the huntsman and in the brooming corn and in the castellated press of cities. His work lies all wheres and his hounds tire not. I have seen them in a dream, slaverous and wild and their eyes crazed with ravening for souls in this world. Fly them. I'm pretty bad at actually analyzing literature, but the obvious thing here is some sort of hell/purgatory metaphor. I always took it that Suttree had this sort of self-imposed purgatory going on, and he's finally escaping it when he leaves the city. But a lot of passages in the book seem downright sinister, which could go to support some sort of more hell-based thing. Or I could be off-base entirely here. I love Suttree because it just has so much going on in it, so I'm interested to know if anybody else has thoughts on this. Or anything else really.
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Sep 1, 2012 05:57
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I'm really glad this thread popped up. I got a cheap kindle version of All The Pretty Horses but once I looked into it and realised it was the middle part of a trilogy...Just started Blood Meridian today. I don't really know what to do though! Should I get a hold of the notes and translations before I go any further?
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Sep 3, 2012 13:14
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gitsurfer posted:I'm really glad this thread popped up. I got a cheap kindle version of All The Pretty Horses but once I looked into it and realised it was the middle part of a trilogy...Just started Blood Meridian today. All The Pretty Horses is actually the first book of the Border Trilogy - the other two are The Crossing and Cities of the Plain. You should be fine starting with the one you've got.
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Sep 3, 2012 14:01
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gitsurfer posted:I'm really glad this thread popped up. I got a cheap kindle version of All The Pretty Horses but once I looked into it and realised it was the middle part of a trilogy...Just started Blood Meridian today. You'll be fine to just start reading. If you have trouble with the Spanish, there's translations online. I would hold off on the notes and stuff until after you've read through on your own at least once. If you have questions or trouble understanding parts of the book (which is pretty likely for something as dense as Blood Meridian) people in this thread will be glad to help.
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Sep 3, 2012 14:16
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Use a smartphone, install Google Translate, and hover the camera over the page when you come to a passage in Spanish.
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Sep 3, 2012 16:23
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Popular Human posted:All The Pretty Horses is actually the first book of the Border Trilogy - the other two are The Crossing and Cities of the Plain. You should be fine starting with the one you've got. Ah! Rats! I have no idea how I managed that. It doesn't bode well for me that I can't even get the right books. Thanks for letting me know. I'll look into the google translator. Sounds like a handy thing to have.
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Sep 3, 2012 19:14
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Above Our Own posted:
Hey, where in the book is this from? I don't even remember it from my first readthrough, and I'd love to go back and read the passage. \/ \/ \/ Thanks! gunblade fucked around with this message at 06:03 on Sep 4, 2012 |
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Sep 3, 2012 21:00
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gunblade posted:Hey, where in the book is this from? I don't even remember it from my first readthrough, and I'd love to go back and read the passage.
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Sep 3, 2012 22:58
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mdemone posted:Use a smartphone, install Google Translate, and hover the camera over the page when you come to a passage in Spanish. Are you sure you want to do that? Remember the scene where the Judge copied a petroglyph into his book and then scraped it away with a piece of slate? Maybe it's some kind of superstition I have, or some half formed idea, but I have a feeling it'd be better just to read it in a book and not understand. I don't think I could get "into" it as much if I had to read it on a screen, under glass. I think technology is closely allayed with the thing that is called war in Blood Meridian, so if you use a high tech kind of thing to read it, you're sort of buying into it. Magic isn't real, but I have the sense that Blood Meridian is some kind of non-rational (but valid and meaningful) statement. Symbols are ultra important, and the way you "consume" the book, for lack of a better word, becomes part of the message itself. Blood Meridian is the petroglyph -- meaning is conveyed, but not like it is in an astronomical or theological treatise, for example. I like the hyper-metaphoric feeling in it. Metaphors are pretty much one of the basic ways people understand things, in Blood Meridian you have to tease out this almost recursive line as you traverse the story. Sort of like if metaphors were made manifest: what is actually going on here?
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Sep 12, 2012 07:57
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SniperWoreConverse posted:I think technology is closely allayed with the thing that is called war in Blood Meridian I tend to agree. The Judge isn't above getting his hands dirty in his work, but he certainly has no qualms about using technology to ply his trade. Further, [Blood Meridian epilogue spoilers] I believe the figure at the end fencing in the west was the Judge. As he's just about the closest thing the book has to a personification of it, I'd say that technology is very much allied with war. (I'm assuming that when you said "allayed" you meant "allied," because "allayed" means something different than what your intent seems.)
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Sep 13, 2012 06:51
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A while back, I stumbled across a paper claiming that Blood Meridian is actually structured as a palindrome. Essentially, the author claims that the themes and words in the first half of the book are "mirrored" in the second half of the book, with the center point being at the banquet in Nagodoches. The paper in question is here: http://www.johnsepich.com/cormac_mccarthy/palindrome.pdf The thing is, while this theory is interesting, I'm still not sure that I believe it. On one hand, this sort of analysis is absurdly vulnerable to selection and confirmation biases. On the other hand, if any author were to be both capable and willing to write a book in the form of a palindrome, it would probably be McCarthy. The last time that I re-read Blood Meridian, I was thinking about this the whole time, and...I'm still not sure. Has anybody else heard of this theory? Anyone else have an opinion?
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Sep 14, 2012 10:48
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HollowClown posted:A while back, I stumbled across a paper claiming that Blood Meridian is actually structured as a palindrome. Essentially, the author claims that the themes and words in the first half of the book are "mirrored" in the second half of the book, with the center point being at the banquet in Nagodoches. The paper in question is here: http://www.johnsepich.com/cormac_mccarthy/palindrome.pdf
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Sep 14, 2012 13:45
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Blind Sally posted:I tend to agree. The Judge isn't above getting his hands dirty in his work, but he certainly has no qualms about using technology to ply his trade. I don't think I buy this. (And I don't think it needs a spoiler) It disregards the dominant symbol of the "sparks" that come from the fencing. The symbol of flame in all of McCarthy's later books is associated with the good. Blood Meridian is really about the invasion of white people into the west, and the fencing in is a symbol of the end of the anarchy of the invasion and the intrusion of Order, with a significant change in how evil appears. Consider that Grady goes to a Judge for absolution in All the Pretty Horses and how Chigurh operates in No Country compared to the Judge in Blood Meridian. I think part of McCarthy's project with those books (From BM to The Road) is to show a complete metaphorical progression of humanity from birth through life to death.
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Sep 14, 2012 15:46
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a starwar betamax posted:It seems to me that McCarthy was developing a chiastic structure in the line of ancient storying rather than a thematic palindrome. Hmm...interesting. I wasn't thinking about chiastic patterns at all; it certainly makes more sense, though. Well, question answered.
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Sep 14, 2012 21:17
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Blind Sally posted:(I'm assuming that when you said "allayed" you meant "allied," because "allayed" means something different than what your intent seems.) I wrote allayed at first, and then did a bit of a double take and looked it up. There is an archaic definition of "to mix metals; alloy" so I said gently caress it and left it in. SniperWoreConverse fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Sep 14, 2012 |
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Sep 14, 2012 21:26
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The Mormon priest's story in The Crossing is probably the only convincingly spiritual passage I've ever read and the only reason I'm not quoting it is because it's like forty pages long. There's this bitter honesty in all of McCarthy's writing that goes hand-in-hand with his fatalistic viewpoint and makes his work uniquely refreshing to my mind. It's one thing to say "well everything is terrible but humanity keeps on keepin' on because there's nothing better to do" and another to portray the bad so unflinchingly and keep the good so sparse and yet just barely present enough to keep a touch of hope going. The only other writer I know that comes near that sort of tone is Tom Franklin and I'm sort of extremely pissed off that I've exhausted both their bibliographies.
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Sep 18, 2012 03:38
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http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2012/10/cormac_mccarthy_s_blood_meridian_early_drafts_and_history_.html A very interesting article here about the genesis of Blood Meridian. I'm sure this will be of interest to a lot of you.
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Oct 6, 2012 15:45
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Jewmanji posted:http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/books/2012/10/cormac_mccarthy_s_blood_meridian_early_drafts_and_history_.html Thanks for this.
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Oct 7, 2012 16:14
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