don’t get on here much and not too deep into literature, but i have a profound love in my heart for everything he writes and how he does it. just wondering general opinions on him and his work ?
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A lot of readers love his work without really being able to articulate why. He’s extremely popular despite likely filtering most readers. I think that because his prose really blurs the line between purple and brilliant, he’s influenced an entire generation of writers to try to sound like him, much to the chagrin of even stalwart McCarthy fans. I appreciate his work at lot notwithstanding.
BM is brilliant obviously, but all of his works save for his first are genuinely inspired. Suttree is especially beautiful.
i typically resent writers who use words that you have to just google to understand what the frick they’re talking about like he does a lot, but when i read child of god the way he describes the disgusting appalachian environment spoke to me lol. i have yet to read his newest series that just finished before he passed, but i really look forward to it
>i typically resent writers who use words that you have to just google to understand what the frick they’re talking about
Genuine question: Can you not infer what the word means based on the context? Do you ever try to just read on past the word you don't understand and see if later words in the sentence retroactively help make sense of it?
I see people saying this a lot and I dont get it
Blood Meridian was good but haven't enjoyed anything else by him
Cities of the Plain trilogy straight garbage, Outer Dark was just mediocre, Child of God I already forgot about and only read like four month ago
child of god i did a lot of and i do the inference but personally i like to know exactly how something’s being described as in child of god or the road he uses such abstract words to describe environments it makes me want to understand wholly what is being described. probably sound like a moron but i don’t care .
>Cities of the Plain trilogy straight garbage
Border trilogy is what its normally called.
Did you miss the story-within-story wrappers and deceptive narrators?
They're technically competent exploratory works with a significant topic executed well. You might not like them. I don't like Hemmingway. I do however know that Hemmingway is good.
it was just kinda boring and corny to me? it felt like after the apocalyptic revisionist western of BM he felt the need to show he could just write a plain by-the-numbers cowboy genre book? iunno i probably didn't get it...
nah doesn't sound moronic a lot of people tell me this exact thing. i don't know why but i;ve never had a problem with words i don't know i either infer from the text or if i truly can't figure it out i just move on. but a lot of people tell e they cannot do that, they have to grab a dictionary.
im moronic at math and anything numbers related so i automatically blank out anything like measurements, equations, anything numerical in a test i don't bother with outside of dates. so that's the way in which i am a moronic reader
>iunno i probably didn't get it...
A lot of genre conventions are broken hard in Border Trilogy. There ain't much action, and a lot of interiority. And the triumphs of action are explicitly homosexual. Try rereading after your second divorce. Its about boys becoming men by failing as men.
On what earth would The Crossing qualify as a plain western?
The epilogue that follows is a much better iteration of the dynamic. Billy is clearly embodying all the readers of the book while the unnamed man is the narrator made flesh. You seem knowledgeable, you must have noticed that in McCarthy characters are delineated by either the physical process of their action or their voice. Of all the philosopher-strangers Billy meets only 2 can speak English, rest rely on the translator-narrator for the communication of their philosophy (hence, as rightly noted, the deception). Anyone who has read philosophy in 2 different languages will get the aesthetic McCarthy is working here. But of all the narrators, there is only one who sounds exactly like our omniscient narrator. It's the last unnamed man. I don't think McCarthy is fighting his readers. If he was he wouldn't include that epilogue that goes real deep into how McCarthy sees reading and writing himself. McCarthy seems to be fighting his own material, to make perfect sense of it but with the knowing that it is impossible; language can never stand exactly for experience. That's the real Cormackian tragedy.
>language can never stand exactly for experience. That's the real Cormackian tragedy.
You presume the narrator exists. I merely know I exist. I sit the book. I read the text inside me. I watch the sky.
The gay sex scene in the underpass is really important, but that's because Billy is a different man. John Cole is a heterosexual man, and so seeks to expend his seed in the conflict with other men over child prostitutes who are a stand in for his homosexuality. Billy is gay as frick. So he doesn't need to fight men like that over women, and he can live in a world of women, and he doesn't have to build a little toy dirt floor house that a princess prostitute won't ever live in.
Billy is the reader. And John Grady Cole is the reader. And they're the twin forms of reading, John being reading for plot, ending as it does. Billy being reading for content. Ending as he doesn't.
What do you think of the "permanent adolescent" thesis of the United States and how Billy and John manage to transcend that with eros and thanatos respectively (yes *the gay one is eros*)? If you compare it to Old c**t for No Man where nobody is a man: the welder is a boy, the sheriff is an old boy, and Sugar, well he's fricking the Uberman. The Kid never becomes The Man. The Man in the Road never becomes the Father by allowing himself to fail to make space for his son. Its just the gay boy and the [w]hor[s]e breaker who become men.
Just my thoughts there. Its like when John wonders if he's going to sell his childhood to the rapist mexican ore muleteers.
>You presume the narrator exists. I merely know I exist. I sit the book. I read the text inside me. I watch the sky.
Even speaking from a purely ontological standpoint you are ignoring the actual process of reading. I read the words; I hear a soundless voice in my head; I see the signified world. Sure it exists in my head but the stimulant is not my conscious intelligence (therefore not my self). The stimulant, as it is not part of the ego, must be given a name (the mormon in the church, the 1st narrator), and we call it the narrator. I am really just quoting the unnamed man from his thesis on dreams.
I know. But if you look at say No Country you start seeing characters as assemblages of desiring-machines, or to use a buddhist framework as attachments without egos. If we break down John Grady Cole there's knowing horses, there's gay fear, there's not knowing women, there's planning for the crisis that will occur, etc. As assemblages rather than clean whole texts the conflict between intentional text and received hypertexts becomes more and more apparent. As Cormac said about new criticism, "Why should I give a lecture, its all there in the book." Which means that the remains of a past process is dead, and all that's present is Billy's experience in the underpass. Now I'm not like Billy, I'm a top. I'm willing to risk eisegesis in hermeneusis because I know the context of the hypertext of me and the various assemblages that make up a Cormac novel(s) is more interesting than a structuralist reading of a Cormac novel. And a good top should always slightly force a bottom.
Oh frick off. They're cheap copies of Cormac. None of the above were post-Heidegerrian atheists with an ontological fixation that destructures ego into beings. Faulkner especially despite writing a flows system.
>just wondering general opinions on him and his work ?
> ?
FRICK OFF FRENCHIE.
>Suttree
is juvenalia.
Cormac is writing about ontic experience as God, and playing some nasty post-modern games where he fights his reader. The endings of Cities of the Plain is basically him salting the entire trilogy and turning the reader who turns back into a pillar of salt. God's water cannot be found in rehearsing life. You get one trip in the hearse.
Cormac's works prior to Blood Meridian are tained by Appalachia and the suffusion of God (water) throughout everything. He had to go to the desert to discover that man's failure is not man's failure in the face of god, but man's failure in the absent presence of god.
Despite his greatness he is, however, no Eric Carle.
OP here i am mercian lol. i think i have a big appreciation for his writings as a lot of folks i speak and deal with in missouri where i live is pretty similar to how he writes. like i said in op im not too crazy into literature, so would you recommend someone like eric carle to read for me as one who enjoys cormac? i very much enjoy his lack of conventional respect for english and general prose convention. blood meridian and his previous work is all i’ve much delved into though. child of god and no country for old men i do personally hold on a pedestal for the greatest books, but again just my opinion as someone not as well versed in literature as a whole i guess. 🙂
>OP here i am mercian lol.
Then type like one. There is no space in American orthography prior to punctuation containing two elements.
Eric Carle wrote the Hungry Hungry Caterpillar. A far superior work to any of Cormac's but beyond your capacity. You'd want to start with Faulkner as another major American novelist with a distinctive voice, post-modern game playing versus the reader, and a southern voice. Faulkner ought to be on your list.
Child of God is a wild ride. You can see the bits of Suttree that were worth turning into a novel in Child of God. Outer Dark is a lot like Child of God but more mythical. If you liked No Country then read the Border Trilogy, which are slower but hit harder even than No Country when you figure out what's going on. And—like No Country—Cormac does pay off for you with ontology ("being in the worldy-ness") and with the ever restrained action and with the horrible attack on the reader.
Cormac is fighting you in each of the books. He isn't trying to fool you. He is trying to snap your spine over his knee, and it isn't kayfabe.
i honestly disagree. i believe cormac isn’t fighting the reader at all, i think he’s world building and leaving much to the reader to interpret. in a lot of his writings it’s incredibly literal and leaves a lot to interpretation such as the characters of anton in no country or lester in child of god, it’s very much explained who and and why they are and so much isn’t, but that’s why i think i enjoy the writings of these so much. maybe we’re both speaking on the same thing of fighting the reader, but i rather enjoy the fact it isn’t a hand hold of explanation of act on what happened. as in no country where the interlude chapters of the cop speaking on the past and everything else. i dunno tho, and also i type merican bby. but i will read blood meridian trilogy after. i don’t think personally child of god was such a wild ride, i think it kind of encapsulates the kind of author cormac was. but that’s my opinion 🙂
>i believe cormac isn’t fighting the reader at all
Reread the climactic encounter in Mexico in Cities of the Plains and tell me that Cormac isn't the 40 year old, and the reader isn't the other man.
i suppose i may have misunderstood what you meant by fight the reader. i think i thought you meant that was a bad thing. i agree with you to a degree, but i don’t think so much of it was in intentional rather if it was not a negative in regards to the content
I think its intentional. Cormac thinks a lot about the writing and reading process. Reading his writing is a process he induces through the length of his lines, their beat and complexity. He writes while riding a horse at the pace of riding a horse in the voice of a man who rides a horse in the accent of the voice of a man who rides a horse.
Cormac is fighting his reader, and he knows his reader will win. But he knows that, if he's good enough, he can take the reader with him when he goes.
Some writers *try* this but it fails and ends up as bad writing. Cormac succeeds. I've fought a lot of authors. Some like Nabokov are just puzzle masters. Others are attempting to confess their criminal sins in public. Cormac just wants God to Leave Him The Frick Alone but knows that because He Doesn't Exist then He Can't Stop. If you want obvious evidence of Cormac fighting you, read The Road which requires deep combative reading to get something out of it.
Its like the cryptic crossword: its better than the standard.
the road is honeslty my least favorite of his works, and i think you just perfectly explained why lmfao. yeah i completely understand what you mean now by fighting the reader, but like you said he is the few i’ve actually had the i guess patience to fight back with? he knew exactlly what he was doing when he was putting pen to paper, and i honeslty think just helped explain a lot of why i enjoy his works so much
Cheers mate, glad to help you to understand yourself better on the point. The road is a short novel, but because of how its written reads like a long one.
the road is especially challenging with shit like that, it’s exactly that which reads like a long one, but i think it adds to the value of the read especially just with how cormac is as an author
You are the juvenile one, moron.
>"the sky was the color of piss!"
hack crap
anyone’s specific opinion on child of god!?
I like the escalating pace. The disappearance of the litter of junkyard cat c**ts was great. Vengeance was a bit underwhelming, but so's progressive loss of identity in loss of materiality.
Would have made for a better Twin Peaks than Twin Peaks especially if it had been shot in Twin Peaks style as a soap opera comedy.
the pace is honestly perfect for me, and the interlude chapters, especially the one about the guy singing the chicken shit blues is amazing
It has an unreliable Omniscient narrator.
he's mid
who’s not mid comparatively in your opinion 🙂
Writing like McCarthy in a world after Joyce, after Robbe-Grillet, is just hacky.
>Alain robbe-grilllet
Getting influenced by unread favela Black folk isn't exactly something to be proud of, moron. Especially when you haven't read the writer yourself, just like him.
Be butthurt somewhere else. gayner couldn't write half as good and McCarthy never wtote family soap operas. Their similarity ends at southern settings and an ornate style. You would know if ypu weren't illiterate.
>and McCarthy never wtote family soap operas.
What is _The Road_?
Please for the life of me at least read the summary of the book if you are not gonna read it. There is a movie even, watch that. Falseflagging in McCarthy threads is getting absurd. I am afraid in time McCarthy will be accused of being too romantic in his narratives.
The road was too romantic in its narrative. The child sees the dog, and the little boy. The Road is literally a family soap opera. You need to see a desert without water. McCarthy is romantic as all hell.
Enough IQfy for you today.
I seen places darker than the "climaxes" of the early novels.
Nice way of saying 'I have my head up mah ass'
Thanks for admitting that about Suttree in the end.
This is a completely incoherent post. Guess it makes sense that that's the kind of person who would think McCarthy has something to say.
You are clearly copying a poser's unread arguments from a previous thread by mentioning Robbe-Grillet. Because you are butthurt and moronic.
>the kind of person who would think McCarthy has something to say.
Something you would never know cuz you are hopelessly low IQ.
Somebody else posted about Robbe-Grillet recently? That's neat. He's underappreciated these days, but his argument about what Realism in novels looks like hasn't been meaningfully refuted yet. Read Le Voyeur.
Of course, McCarthy, like most contemporary middlebrow writers, prefers to stick his head in the sand and pretend it's the 19th century, which is as ridiculous as a painter imitating the Dutch masters today.
Because desiring machines and lines of flight are so c19.
I would be happy to discuss Ballard with you, anon, but this isn't the thread.
Of course the butthurt cucks get butthurt again that there is some good McCarthy discussion. They are venerating glorified screewriters to pretend it's some new style to derail it.
How do you read The Crossing then? Structurally? The characters decohere as they assemble, Billy isn't an identity any more than he's a series of momentary engroupments of emotions. He fricking k— the w— *at the end of the b—* because the grasping of the moment. What kind of epic requires the grasping of the moment? It isn't a miswritten drama like people accuse No c**t of being. Billyness percolates in his pouring out because there never is a Billy: the w— is s—.
I dunno man. I think you're not reading McCarthy, I think you're reading the limits of your capacity to read. The destruction of certainty and fathers in the context of transborder fractured being doesn't sound much like Zola's high realism.
Replied wrong?
If you can't see lines of flight or desire machines there, then allow me to repeat my last paragraph.
>Of course, McCarthy, like most contemporary middlebrow writers, prefers to stick his head in the sand and pretend it's the 19th century, which is as ridiculous as a painter imitating the Dutch masters today.
Stop replying to yourself, poser. The fact that you think McCarthy is some classical, 19th century style writer is enough proof that you likely didn't even read the wiki entry. And stop lionizing Grillet, he is like a more pretentious hemingway with all the same ideas about realism. Throw in some neuroticism for the Kafka pretense.
Robbe-Grillet writes like a bad screewriter with the same Hemingway iceberg schtick. The fact that you are vouching for him as a comparison with McCarthy of all people goes on to show how little you know about either one.
Just dropping in to say he's a pale imitation of Faulkner
Outer Dark is better than The Orchard Keeper.
I'm not them but perigrination ought to have informed you that the critique wasn't "better" but formed and executed. As he says it takes an evening redness to change.