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I've read Suttree, Child of God, The Orchard Keeper, and Outer Dark on my Kindle Keyboard and they all seemed to be great copies. Also you can get immediate definitions with the dictionary which is great, although it doesn't have a lot of Cormacs more obscure and archaic words. I really love my kindle so much so that I don't buy print books anymore unless they are unavailable. Buy one of his books on it, read it, and see how it feels.
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Jan 9, 2013 22:34
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I'm sure the free preview of any of his books will give you a decent idea of what the reading experience is like. Frankly I kind of enjoy not having a dictionary around when I read him (same with David Foster Wallace), but it would be fantastic for highlighting.
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Jan 10, 2013 03:39
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epoch. posted:Is this a bad idea in general? I don't know, that kind of depends on you as a person. Would you rather have books in your home or not? Is it preferable for everything to be in a single electronic source or would you rather have a few physical copies kicking around for whatever reason? Personally, while I've been getting rid off most of my other books, I've decided that McCarthy's works will be among the few I retain.
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Jan 10, 2013 04:24
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Thanks for the input guys.Blind Sally posted:Personally, while I've been getting rid off most of my other books, I've decided that McCarthy's works will be among the few I retain. I'll likely keep all my big-L literature books too (and interesting anthologies, collections, etc) but most the mass-market fiction has got to go. Huzzah, minimalism.
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Jan 10, 2013 13:34
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Jewmanji posted:I'm sure the free preview of any of his books will give you a decent idea of what the reading experience is like. Frankly I kind of enjoy not having a dictionary around when I read him (same with David Foster Wallace), but it would be fantastic for highlighting. Oh, I love the highlighting ability of the kindle as well. Every once in a while I go to the page on amazon that lets me see what I've highlighted and read through all the hilarious quotes from Suttree and it always puts me in a good mood. I love that book. I guess I should have noted that I keep a physical copy of Suttree on my nightstand to pick up randomly when I'm not digging what I'm currently reading, and I have Blood Meridian and The Road on my bookshelf. Honestly I love that I'm getting away from physical copies though, the last few times I moved I had 6 book shelves and about twenty REALLY heavy boxes of books and it gets annoying. I also love that I can take an incredibly lightweight object around to pretty much anywhere (its even spent many hours underground in a coal mine where I would read during breaks/lunches) that has hundreds of my favorite books on it, and is more comfortable than real books, and is just as easy on the eyes as a real book. It will depend on how you like it, but the kindle has really grown on me over the years I've had it.
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Jan 10, 2013 22:05
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Just finished chapter one of All the Pretty Horses. This struck me as a particularly fine piece of writing:Cormac McCarthy posted:I'm goin to tell you somethin, cousin.
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Jan 17, 2013 07:38
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^^^Ah, I completely agree with you. That's the point I reached when I knew that book was going to be Special. McCarthy does a good job of writing dialogue just right in that book. By about this point I didn't need quotation marks or any "John Grady said" anymore, I always knew who was speaking, since the characterization is so strong (poo poo I can even see this conversation in my head, let alone hear it).
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Jan 17, 2013 12:46
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The way Mccarthy writes dialogue is one of the most hilarious and awesome affectations in any fiction I've read. Punctuation? Grammar? WHO NEEDS'EM?? Like, sure, it adds to the atmosphere, the mood, the flow of the dialogue and all that but on top of that it's just so... justifiably arrogant it makes me laugh. It's like he's saying "If you write good dialogue you don't need anything else. I write good dialogue. Suck it."
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Jan 17, 2013 23:51
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I just started reading Suttree the other night and I had to put the book down for a couple of minutes at the melon scene I was laughing so much. "You ain't goin to believe this."
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Jan 18, 2013 03:55
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I love how he can make the most sparse lines so full and powerful. This is one of my favorites from All The Pretty Horses. "He heard the latch click shut on the door across the hall even above the muted scrape and click of spoons on the metal trays. He looked toward the front of the hall. There was no one behind the serving line. The two guards were gone. He continued to eat. His heart was pounding and his mouth was dry and the food was ashes." You can feel that. You're there practically.
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Jan 18, 2013 09:24
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pixelbaron posted:I just started reading Suttree the other night and I had to put the book down for a couple of minutes at the melon scene I was laughing so much. I'm reading Suttree at the moment as well and that whole section of the book was hilarious. I love reading that book out in the wild. There's something so utterly satisfying about sitting outside a cafe reading Cormac on a beautiful sunny morning. That passage from All The Pretty Horses is great. Think I'll have to read that next (drat, my book queue is getting bloated this year and it's only January).
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Feb 2, 2013 19:56
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Werner Herzog reads a passage from All the Pretty Horses. http://youtu.be/QNnMo2ZvjHs I cant believe I haven't posted this yet, it's great.
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Feb 3, 2013 08:32
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Well if we're going to post our favorite audio clips then here's Glanton at the campfire. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WZGK2kziPM
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Feb 5, 2013 17:44
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What philosophical ideas do you take away from his books? The main theme I see is how people conduct themselves in a universe where free will is really just an illusion created by the ego. I'm thinking specifically of the implacability Chigurh from No Country For Old Men. "If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?" Also the conversation at the end of Cities On The Plain, between Billy and the mexican drifter. quote:The man studied the coming day. In the middle of my life, he said, I drew the path of it upon a map and I studied it a long time. I tried to see the pattern that it made upon the earth because I thought that if i could see that pattern and identify the form of it then I would know better how to continue. I would know what my path must be. I would see into the future of my life. It seems like a lot of his characters have fatalistic notions about their ability to change their own destiny. It makes some of them hollow, deranged sociopaths and makes others noble and heroic.
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Feb 10, 2013 02:13
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goddammit, I just finished reading Suttree.  after Harrogate survived the stupid loving mine explosion I thought for sure he'd make it to the end, but his death was probably the worst of the book. Forget the dead baby, forget Ab Jones, forget the poor loving girl crushed during the mudslide whom Suttree taken a romance to, Harrogate's death hit me like a punch in the face. And to top it off, his sister shows up and starts asking for him... I can only imagine the look on my face as I sat there reading that book. Once I finished it, I literally sat at the table in the cafe for a good ten minutes just staring out into the world. Old Sut really did a number on me.
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Mar 6, 2013 03:09
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Suttree's probably my favorite of his books, but it can be so incredibly sad. On the spoilered parts: McCarthy is amazing at writing human misery, but the death of the girl killed in the mudslide always gets me especially, not because I even particularly liked her. It's this passage: "He seemed to be making for the river with her but in the loose sand he lost his footing and they fell and he knelt there in the rain over her and held his two fists at his breast and cried to the darkness over them all. Oh God I caint take no more. Please lift this burden from me for I caint bear it." I always try to sort out the different philosophical ideas in his books but I am just so terrible at philosophy so I feel like I never really get anywhere. But yeah, there is definitely that fatalistic feeling in a lot of it. Particularly in Blood Meridian, I can't remember the exact passage, but where the judge is chasing everybody down and killing them, and the priest tells the kid just to give up because he's not going to outrun the judge.
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Mar 6, 2013 04:23
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Frostwerks posted:Werner Herzog reads a passage from All the Pretty Horses. http://youtu.be/QNnMo2ZvjHs The whole program is fantastic. Never knew about it. Thanks for posting this.
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Mar 6, 2013 08:53
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For all the Blood Meridian fans amongst us, alt-country musician Ben Nichols released a concept album a few years back based completely around the characters of Blood Meridian and their stories, including Chambers and Tobin. The songwriting on them is very neat, because it uses both lines referenced right out of the book and original lyrics. It's called The Last Pale Light In The West, and I've always thought it reflected the book perfectly. Since I'm reading the book currently, seeings lines and events that are in the novel and in the songs is really cool. Check it out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5kWzDwMteE
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Mar 20, 2013 21:37
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Low Desert Punk posted:For all the Blood Meridian fans amongst us, alt-country musician Ben Nichols released a concept album a few years back based completely around the characters of Blood Meridian and their stories, including Chambers and Tobin. The songwriting on them is very neat, because it uses both lines referenced right out of the book and original lyrics. It's called The Last Pale Light In The West, and I've always thought it reflected the book perfectly. Since I'm reading the book currently, seeings lines and events that are in the novel and in the songs is really cool. Check it out. This is really good, thanks for the rec!
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Mar 26, 2013 20:10
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Sorry I've been absent from this thread I made. Teaching English is a timesink beyond my wildest imagination. Especially this Millennial Generation. Half of my semester is teaching them how to see a world outside of their smartphones. joedevola posted:What philosophical ideas do you take away from his books? The main theme I see is how people conduct themselves in a universe where free will is really just an illusion created by the ego. I'm thinking specifically of the implacability Chigurh from No Country For Old Men. What I take from McCarthy is that he, above all else, acts as an anthropologist. The worlds and the characters he makes--from Blood Meridian to Suttree to The Road--are things he presents as objectively as a (good) news reporter or a scientist: he shows the unadorned facts and leaves the reader to create assumptions. That's the skill inherent in his writing, and the reason why it resonates. If the art of being a good reader means looking for things that don't make sense on the level of the story, and using those things as proof of a premise, then McCarthy is the guy who makes those premises possible. He writes, then stands back from the writing, and without words asks, "So what do you think?" I agree mostly with what you say. In McCarthy's universe there isn't evil and there isn't good so much as there's amorality and apathy. Chigurh is the avatar of that apathy in No Country and the Judge is the avatar of that amorality in Blood Meridian. To both, there's no difference between buying a pack of peanuts and scalping a young child. Its the duty of the protagonists in his stories to navigate a universe which allows that kind of amorality. In The Road, the ruined world is as much an antagonist as The Judge is in Blood Meridian. In short, that world just doesn't give a gently caress about anything, similar in approach (if not form) to his villains.
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Mar 29, 2013 23:54
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Low Desert Punk posted:For all the Blood Meridian fans amongst us, alt-country musician Ben Nichols released a concept album a few years back based completely around the characters of Blood Meridian and their stories, including Chambers and Tobin. The songwriting on them is very neat, because it uses both lines referenced right out of the book and original lyrics. It's called The Last Pale Light In The West, and I've always thought it reflected the book perfectly. Since I'm reading the book currently, seeings lines and events that are in the novel and in the songs is really cool. Check it out. haha I was coming to post about this today. I'd heard the title track Last Pale Light in The West quite a few times and it was a favorite but for some reason I didn't get around to downloading the album until last night. It's really amazing for anyone on the fence. It completely put me in the mood to read the book again and move on to other Cormac works afterwords since I've slacked on them all besides The Road. The only thing is I think this will cause me trouble in my creative writing class as I'm for sure going to try to write something like Cormac for the final project. I can tell already it's going to happen without me trying it's going to be horrible and I'm going to spend an absurd amount of time editing it to try to be good.
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Apr 23, 2013 20:59
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Dropping in to say I just finished reading Tobin's story about meeting the Judge for the first time. Fucccckk. Since this is now the general Cormac McCarthy thread, and since a Google search showed no instances of the word "salitter" in the forums, here's a link I use as an example of why I think he's the greatest living writer (it's a bit overwrought but the point of it makes it worth reading) http://thefirstmorning.com/2008/09/11/salitter/ quote:
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Apr 23, 2013 21:46
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I thought the Pale Light in the West album kind of missed the mark in capturing the themes and general feeling of Blood Meridian. It seemed trite, for the lack of a better word. But that's just my impression.
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Apr 23, 2013 22:14
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a slim spar posted:Dropping in to say I just finished reading Tobin's story about meeting the Judge for the first time. Fucccckk. That is absolutely awesome. I would love an annotated version that includes etymologies for the more obscure words. I'd consider re-reading it on a kindle, but it just seems wrong.
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Apr 24, 2013 05:52
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Jewmanji posted:That is absolutely awesome. I would love an annotated version that includes etymologies for the more obscure words. I'd consider re-reading it on a kindle, but it just seems wrong. I can speak from experience that McCarthy on a Kindle does in fact feel wrong. Couldn't make any progress in e-book Suttree, whereas reading from the nasty-rear end first edition from my school library was a joy. I don't know what it is. Kindle just ain't got that salitter, I guess.
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Apr 24, 2013 06:15
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Exactly, you have to read his wrenching prose from a physical book. Ideally while you're dying of thirst in a horrible cave in the middle of a particularly lovely desert. I'm always amazed by his ability to find the perfect word for anything, even when that word is 400 years old and completely out of use. For content: am I the only one who didn't love All The Pretty Horses? I was forced to read it in college (and skipped a lot of it) and didn't get much out of it, but that may just be because I was young and a moron. I'd give it a second chance, but I feel like I should maybe spend that time on Suttree or something instead?
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Apr 24, 2013 07:21
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a slim spar posted:For content: am I the only one who didn't love All The Pretty Horses? A friend of mine once told me she was made to read it in school and had forsworn McCarthy as a result. I'm trying to get her to read The Road, it's a pretty good gateway read.
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Apr 24, 2013 11:13
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a slim spar posted:Exactly, you have to read his wrenching prose from a physical book. Ideally while you're dying of thirst in a horrible cave in the middle of a particularly lovely desert. We had to read it in high school and I didn't care for it. I tried it again 8 or so years later and realized I was a moron.
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Apr 24, 2013 11:56
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It still ain't Suttree though (but then again, what is?)
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Apr 24, 2013 12:07
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Every of those posts against All The Pretty Horses are from people who were forced to read the book. Read it on your own time. e. I read it during school (but not for school) and liked it quite a bit. It made me very grateful for having taken Spanish and having a rough literacy of the language. An elementary Spanish education combined with context clues makes whatever Spanish there is very manageable. Also, while the book has some violence, it's a very romantic love story and makes me want to read the rest of the border trilogy. I guess I should read Suttree too.  While we're on the subject, has anyone seen the movie version? I liked the film version of The Road, but ATPH's reviews make it out to be pretty lovely. Fun Times! fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Apr 24, 2013 |
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Apr 24, 2013 21:24
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Barry Foster posted:It still ain't Suttree though (but then again, what is?) A bad book. Start throwing your rocks, I am ready for them. I'm serious, though, I've mopped up McCarthy's entire bibliography and Suttree was aimless and indulgent well past the point of inanity. It's probably the only novel of his that I feel validates all the common criticisms leveled at him by professional critics, and then I remember the Mormon priest's scene in The Crossing and I go right back to not giving a poo poo about what they think. But Suttree's schtick just got real tiresome by the 100-page mark. Oxxidation fucked around with this message at 01:54 on Apr 25, 2013 |
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Apr 25, 2013 00:19
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Fun Times! posted:While we're on the subject, has anyone seen the movie version? I liked the film version of The Road, but ATPH's reviews make it out to be pretty lovely. I thought it was fairly well done. It looks fantastic, from a cinematic standpoint. It's also one of the saddest movies I've ever seen. Like, I was in tears. I didn't tear up once during the book, so, I don't know. I suppose I felt that the film version was far more manipulative in that sense. I felt they nailed the mood and atmosphere, though. Also, I'm not one-hundred percent sure, but I think the ending was a bit different than the book. Something to do with Guy Pearce's character was a cannibal or something? Ah, someone help me out. It's been a while since I've seen the movie.
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Apr 25, 2013 04:56
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I couldn't finish Suttree. Just couldn't follow what was going on at all. I am an idiot though. I think part of the problem was having no idea how to pronounce 'Suttree'.
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Apr 25, 2013 07:20
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Oxxidation posted:A bad book. Suttree is very similar to The Road in that you can lose your place in it, start reading at a random spot, and continue reading without feeling like you've missed anything. But it's a trick that takes a long time getting used to. Roger Ebert, of all people, had a very elegant take on Suttree: Ebert posted:When I was drinking, I went to O'Rourke's on North Avenue, which was heated in the early days only by a wood-burning stove. Dress warmly and drink in a cool room, was my motto. Now in the hospital those cold, cold words of McCarthys' transported me. At a point beneath desire, I was there on Suttree's leaking houseboat in the hopeless dawn, sharing the ordeal of Suttree, the general, and Golgotha. It was an improvement. I was not trapped in a bed and a chair. I was not hooked up to anything. I was miserable, but I was alive, and McCarthy was still able to write that perfect terse dialogue. That is the thing about McCarthy. He is both the teller and the subject of Suttree. I do not mean anything so banal as that the book is autobiographical. It is the merciless record of a state of mind, the alcoholic state of mind, even when Suttree is not drinking but is white-knuckling it. (from http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/perform-a-concert-in-words) Asbury fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Apr 25, 2013 |
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Apr 25, 2013 16:03
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3Romeo posted:Suttree is very similar to The Road in that you can lose your place in it, start reading at a random spot, and continue reading without feeling like you've missed anything. See, this is the kind of thing that I would consider a downside. The book has hardly any plot or forward movement to speak of. It's 400 pages of turgid word games with next to nothing in terms of action or character conflict.
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Apr 25, 2013 17:13
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Blind Sally posted:I thought it was fairly well done. It looks fantastic, from a cinematic standpoint. It's also one of the saddest movies I've ever seen. Like, I was in tears. I didn't tear up once during the book, so, I don't know. I suppose I felt that the film version was far more manipulative in that sense. I felt they nailed the mood and atmosphere, though. I thought the movie was super emotionally effective, but I had a problem with the ending. At the end of the Road, the boy goes off with the family, but it is merely a prolonging of his existence. The world is dead, and these new guardians are unknown. How safe are they? But in the movie, when they appear it's dawn, with golden light filling the ash world, strings lift up the soundtrack, and the tone is that everything is going to be OK. which leaves the movie ending on a more optimistic note. Oxxidation posted:See, this is the kind of thing that I would consider a downside. The book has hardly any plot or forward movement to speak of. It's 400 pages of turgid word games with next to nothing in terms of action or character conflict. For me it's enough to be a part of the world he creates. It's so vivid and rich that I don't need a whole lot more. The book is Sutt loving around to avoid Big Issues in his life and self-reflection, and that leads to a bunch of episodes that might not all develop character, but are entertaining as heck (for sutt and the reader both). How can you not love the melon-fucker?
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Apr 25, 2013 18:48
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Oxxidation posted:See, this is the kind of thing that I would consider a downside. The book has hardly any plot or forward movement to speak of. It's 400 pages of turgid word games with next to nothing in terms of action or character conflict. You're not wrong about that; there's nothing at stake in the book on any kind of plot level. It's just Suttree and the people he meets, and how they go about their lives in and around the city. If it isn't your thing (and it isn't a lot of people's), that's perfectly fine. But on the other hand--on a craft level--it does have some of McCarthy's best writing, the sort that's somehow a combination of the Biblical, the poetic, and the insightful: Suttree posted:Hard weather, says the old man. So let it be. Wrap me in the weathers of the earth, I will be hard and hard. My face will wash rain like the stones. Suttree posted:He looked at a world of incredible loveliness. Old distaff Celt's blood in some back chamber of his brain moved him to discourse with the birches, with the oaks. A cool green fire kept breaking in the woods and he could hear the footsteps of the dead. Everything had fallen from him. He scarce could tell where his being ended or the world began nor did he care. He lay on his back in the gravel, the earth's core sucking his bones, a moment's giddy vertigo with this illusion of falling outward through blue and windy space, over the offside of the planet, hurtling through the high thin cirrus. Suttree posted:How surely are the dead beyond death. Death is what the living carry with them. A state of dread, like some uncanny foretaste of a bitter memory. But the dead do not remember and nothingness is not a curse. Far from it. When I read the book I go at it the way I read good poetry: I very often miss what it's saying but I'm always in awe at how it says it. But like I said before, if that isn't your thing, that's perfectly cool. Suttree, pretty much for the reasons you described, is low on my list of his best books,* but it's also a great one to sit under a summertime tree with. joedevola posted:A friend of mine once told me she was made to read it in school and had forsworn McCarthy as a result. Anything you're forced to read always sucks. It's the paradox of teaching literature. Nothing takes the fun out of reading for enjoyment like realizing you'll either a) be quizzed on it, b) have to write an essay about it, or c) have to listen to a lecture about it dealing with a confederacy of things that are are given an academic value but have no other quality. NOTHING LIKE LEARNING THE BOY IN THE ROAD IS A SYMBOL FOR HOPE, BOY HOWDY! My own experience with this was To Kill a Mockingbird. Read it in high school and hated it--nothing really resonated with me.** I picked it up a few years later, after I got some experience under my belt, and absolutely fell in love with it--with the character of Atticus, in particular. The books you're forced to read as part of a high school curriculum are great except for the fact that they don't mean anything to the students. *I mentioned earlier in the thread that I thought it ran neck-and-neck with Blood Meridian. I need to sit down and re-read both after this semester to actually decide which opinion of mine to go with. **I grew up a white boy in a farm town where minorities were mythical like leprechauns and unicorns, so even though I understood the racism in the novel, I simply had no context to empathize with it. Asbury fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Apr 25, 2013 |
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Apr 25, 2013 19:04
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Sorry for the content-less post, but goddamn McCarthy can write. Wow.
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Apr 25, 2013 19:21
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3Romeo posted:Suttree is very similar to The Road in that you can lose your place in it, start reading at a random spot, and continue reading without feeling like you've missed anything. But it's a trick that takes a long time getting used to. David Foster Wallace also thought that Suttree was one of the best tales of alcoholism out there, according to his biography
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Apr 25, 2013 19:21
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Oxxidation posted:See, this is the kind of thing that I would consider a downside. The book has hardly any plot or forward movement to speak of. It's 400 pages of turgid word games with next to nothing in terms of action or character conflict. But if those things are what you read books for, then you know. Ok.
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Apr 25, 2013 19:51
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