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He had a small cardboard suitcase and he came out of the weeds and set it on the edge of the road and straightened up and began combing his hair. He looked about his appearance, propping one foot on the case and bending to scrape beggarlice from his trousers with his thumbnail. New trousers of tan chino. A new shirt open at the neck. His face and arms were suntanned and his hair crudely bartered and he wore cheap new brown leather shoes the toes of which he dusted, one, the other, against the back of his trouserlegs. He looked like someone just out of the army or jail. A car came down the highway and he gestured at it with his thumb and it went on. Traffic was slow along the road and he was there a long time. It was very hot. You could see his skin through the new shirt. Across the road a construction gang was at work and he watched them. A backhoe was dragging out a ditch and a caterpillar was going along the bank with mounds of pale clay shaling across its canted blade. Carpenters were hammering up forms and a cement truck waited on with its drum slowly clanking. He watched this industry accomplish itself in the hot afternoon. Downwind light ocher dust had sifted all along the greening roadside foliage and in the quiet midafternoon the call of a long sad trainhorn floated over the lonely countryside. A boy was going along the works with a pail and he leaned to each, ladling out water in a tin dipper. He saw hands come up from below the rim of the pit in parched supplication. When all these had been attended the boy came down along the edge of the ditch and handed up the dipper to the backhoe operator. Suttree saw him take it and tilt his head and drink and flick the last drops toward the earth and lean down and restore the dipper to the watercarrier. They nodded to each other and the boy turned and looked toward the road. Then he was coming down across the clay and over the ruts and laddered tracks of machinery. His dusty boots left prints across the black macadam and he came up to him where he stood by the roadside and swung the bucket around and brought the dipper up all bright and dripping and offered it. Suttree could see the water beading coldly on the tin and running in tiny rivulets and drops that steamed on the road where they fell. He could see the pale gold hair that lay along the sunburned arms of the waterbearer like new wheat and he beheld himself in wells of smoking cobalt, twinned and dark and deep in child’s eyes, blue eyes with no bottoms like the sea. He took the dipper and drank and gave it back. The boy dropped it into the bucket. Suttree wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. Thanks, he said. The boy smiled and stepped back. A car had stopped for him, he’d not lifted a hand. Let’s go, said the driver. Hello, he’d said, climbing in, shutting the door, his suitcase between his knees. Then they were moving. Out across the land the lightwires and roadrails were going and the telephone lines with voices shuttling on like souls. Behind him the city lay smoking, the sad purlieus of the dead immured with the bones of friends and forebears. Off to the right side the white concrete of the expressway gleamed in the sun where the ramp curved out into empty air and hung truncate with iron rods bristling among the vectors of nowhere. When he looked back the waterboy was gone. 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.
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Jun 13, 2023 20:49
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he was the only author I cared about and im sad now
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Jun 13, 2023 20:53
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He wrote a bunch of very interesting novels
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Jun 13, 2023 20:53
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Suttree is the best one and really who cares about the others
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Jun 13, 2023 20:55
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The man never met a punctuation mark that he didn't hate.
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Jun 13, 2023 20:56
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Once there were brook trouts in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery RIP to the greatest novelist of our time. gently caress.
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Jun 13, 2023 20:56
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WILDTURKEY101 posted:Once there were brook trouts in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery Uh Pynchon is still alive, probably
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Jun 13, 2023 21:02
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I guess not all that surprising news but still a bummer. We won't see another like him.
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Jun 13, 2023 21:02
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Danger posted:Suttree is the best one and really who cares about the others
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Jun 13, 2023 21:03
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op has punctuation what a slap in the face to cormac mccarthy the man really pioneered the use of run on sentences
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Jun 13, 2023 21:04
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Froghammer posted:This is flagrant The Crossing erasure and I won't stand for it For real The Crossing is his best but Suttree is really good too.
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Jun 13, 2023 21:06
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My Spirit Otter posted:op has punctuation what a slap in the face to cormac mccarthy the man really pioneered the use of run on sentences It’s a direct quote from Suttree
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Jun 13, 2023 21:08
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outer dark ftw
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Jun 13, 2023 21:12
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Cormac McCarthy used punctuation well IMO. He just never really cared for certain types of punctuation and had a distinct way of writing, I would not say my experience of reading his books was that they were full of run-on sentences. If anything my impression is that his sentences tended towards being shorter than what you see for many other writers, because he would rather just write a full stop and do a new sentence instead of doing lots of commas and all that. Also that the language and content of those sentences was very considered and deliberate.
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Jun 13, 2023 21:13
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Danger posted:It’s a direct quote from Suttree All i know is that in 1963 cormac mccarthy forced then president george w bush sr into banning punctuation and then travelled around the continental united states with roving bands of authors who forcibly removed all punction from typewriters
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Jun 13, 2023 21:15
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A sad day indeed. One of my favorite authors.
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Jun 13, 2023 21:20
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Pussy, said Suttree from a new place. Weet pussy. Sweet giggling ensued. His penis rose enormous from between his legs, a delicious spasm and there unfolded from the end of it a little colored flag on a wooden stem, who knows what country? Lightly tinctured, a flavor of sunlight lay in the room. Water dripped in a bowl. He could hear the flat detonation of tennis shoes along a pavement beyond a wall in a courtyard in another kind of kingdom. Late in the afternoon he rose and wobbled about the room on naked bony legs, a coarse cotton shift just covering his shanks, some strings dangling. He found a sink in the corner of the room and hung by the taps with his face in the bowl and cold water running over his smoking skull. Blood hammered through bearing bad news. He raised up dripping and urinated a few drops painfully into the sink. He looked about the room. Two other beds, both empty. A steel cart with enameled bedpans. He had lifted his nightie and was palming water over his shrunken gut when a nurse entered the room. He turned. They made their way toward each other, reeling across the floor with outstretched arms. I’ve got you, said Suttree. What were you doing? Bellycooling. Do I know you? Be careful. Listen, said Suttree. We were never promised that our flesh, that our flesh … Hush now. Come on. I have a thing to tell you. I know all souls are one and all souls lonely.
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Jun 13, 2023 21:23
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Danger posted:Uh Pynchon is still alive, probably Fair but I like McCarthy better.
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Jun 13, 2023 21:26
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I'm feeling quite weepy. He's been part of my life constantly since I first read him in 1995. Outer Dark terrified me more than anything I've ever read. Suttree: “And what happens then? When? After you're dead. Dont nothing happen. You're dead. You told me once you believed in God. The old man waved his hand. Maybe, he said. I got no reason to think he believes in me. Oh I'd like to see him for a minute if I could. What would you say to him? Well, I think I'd just tell him. I'd say: Wait a minute. Wait just one minute before you start in on me. Before you say anything, there's just one thing I'd like to know. And he'll say: what's that? And then I'm goin to ast him: What did you have me in that crapgame down there for anyway? I couldnt put any part of it together. Suttree smiled. What do you think he'll say? The ragpicker spat and wiped his mouth. I dont believe he can answer it. I dont believe there is an answer. ”
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Jun 13, 2023 21:27
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One time I wanted to play a clip of a squirrel in my front lawn caught on security cam for my family but in the background the audiobook version of Blood Meridian was playing loudly on blutooth speaker. I learned his books were meant to be read. RIP Cormac for making me explain poo poo
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Jun 13, 2023 21:29
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“Far out on the desert to the north dustspouts rose wobbling and augered the earth and some said they'd heard of pilgrims borne aloft like dervishes in those mindless coils to be dropped broken and bleeding upon the desert again and there perhaps to watch the thing that had destroyed them lurch onward like some drunken djinn and resolve itself once more into the elements from which it sprang. Out of that whirlwind no voice spoke and the pilgrim lying in his broken bones may cry out and in his anguish he may rage, but rage at what? And if the dried and blackened shell of him is found among the sands by travelers to come yet who can discover the engine of his ruin?”
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Jun 13, 2023 21:30
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Stick Figure Mafia posted:One time I wanted to play a clip of a squirrel in my front lawn caught on security cam for my family but in the background the audiobook version of Blood Meridian was playing loudly on blutooth speaker. I learned his books were meant to be read. Blood meridian narrated by Richard Poe is fantastic.
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Jun 13, 2023 21:32
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Suttree was the only book of his I ever read. Decent enough.
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Jun 13, 2023 21:40
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Pompous, tiresome "man lit" celebrated by professors who felt kinda funny teaching Toni Morrison. Once heard him called the new Joyce lmao
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Jun 13, 2023 21:41
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I didn't read
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Jun 13, 2023 21:44
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Wtf is man lit
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Jun 13, 2023 21:45
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WILDTURKEY101 posted:Once there were brook trouts in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery Wow I'm not familiar with him but we had rainbow trout in a massive pond and a stream where I was growing up and this is really cool^
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Jun 13, 2023 21:55
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quote:“It was a lone tree burning on the desert. A heraldic tree that the passing storm had left afire. The solitary pilgrim drawn up before it had traveled far to be here and he knelt in the hot sand and held his numbed hands out while all about in that circle attended companies of lesser auxiliaries routed forth into the inordinate day, small owls that crouched silently and stood from foot to foot and tarantulas and solpugas and vinegarroons and the vicious mygale spiders and beaded lizards with mouths black as a chowdog's, deadly to man, and the little desert basilisks that jet blood from their eyes and the small sandvipers like seemly gods, silent and the same, in Jeda, in Babylon. A constellation of ignited eyes that edged the ring of light all bound in a precarious truce before this torch whose brightness had set back the stars in their sockets.” I is cry
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Jun 13, 2023 21:56
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Danger posted:Uh Pynchon is still alive, probably Balki is still alive and well.
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Jun 13, 2023 22:01
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It would’ve taken Cormac at least a month to chisel out the sentence “Cormac McCarthy is dead”
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Jun 13, 2023 22:04
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ruddiger posted:It would’ve taken Cormac at least a month to chisel out the sentence Cormac McCarthy is dead
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Jun 13, 2023 22:07
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Jun 13, 2023 23:01
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B-but his feet are light and nimble! He says he’ll never die 
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Jun 13, 2023 23:21
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Seriously though, unbelievable loss for American letters and literature in general. Best ever to do it IMHO
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Jun 13, 2023 23:23
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Is he the first Good Author to ever die of natural causes?
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Jun 13, 2023 23:29
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quote:That night Glanton stared long into the embers of the fire. All about him his men were sleeping but much was changed. So many gone, defected or dead. The Delawares all slain. 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 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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Jun 13, 2023 23:32
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I think our time is up. I know. Hold my hand. Hold your hand? Yes. I want you to. Okay. Why? Because that's what people do when they're waiting for the end of something.
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Jun 13, 2023 23:32
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The soft black talc blew through the streets like squid ink uncoiling along a sea floor and the cold crept down and the dark came early and the scavengers passing down the steep canyons with their torches trod silky holes in the drifted ash that closed behind them silently as eyes. Out on the roads the pilgrims sank down and fell over and died and the bleak and shrouded earth went trundling past the sun and returned again as trackless and as unremarked as the path of any nameless sisterworld in the ancient dark beyond.
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Jun 13, 2023 23:41
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which of his works will his estate sell to netflix first?
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Jun 13, 2023 23:43
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I remember werner herzog reading excerpts on some show on npr. he shoulda done more
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Jun 13, 2023 23:46
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