Cormac McCarthy has died
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Rest in peace. His poetic Blood Meridian epilogue really stuck with me:
"In the dawn there is a man progressing over the plain by means of holes which he is making in the ground. He uses an implement with two handles and he chucks it into the hole and he enkindles the stone in the hole with his steel hole by hole striking the fire out of the rock which God has put there. On the plain behind him are the wanderers in search of bones and those who do not search and they move haltingly in the light like mechanisms whose movements are monitored with escapement and pallet so that they appear restrained by a prudence or reflectiveness which has no inner reality and they cross in their progress one by one that track of holes that runs to the rim of the visible ground and which seems less the pursuit of some continuance than the verification of a principle, a validation of sequence and causality as if each round and perfect hole owed its existence to the one before it there on that prairie upon which are the bones and the gatherers of bones and those who do not gather. He strikes fire in the hole and draws out his steel. Then they all move on again."
7'0, 330 lbs, light complexion, looks good hairless, has acting experience: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kane_(wrestler)#/media/File:Th...
The important aspect of an actor for the Judge wouldn't just be his physicality and baldness, it would also have to be a certain very particular type of sinister air. Few large actors have that.
edit: American Psycho might have if they'd stayed faithful to the book
The best suggestion I've heard for someone living is Vince D'Onofrio but I don't know if he has the total range needed.
> it was announced in April 2023 that New Regency is set to produce a feature film based on the novel, with McCarthy and his son serving as executive producers and John Hillcoat serving as director.
I thought his adaptation of The Road was fine (though maybe a book that doesn't need an adaptation), and he hasn't done anything interesting since then, in my opinion. But Blood Meridian may be better material for him.
CM: That's all crap. The fact that's it's a bleak and bloody story has nothing to do with whether or not you can put it on the screen. That's not the issue. The issue is it would be very difficult to do and would require someone with a bountiful imagination and a lot of balls. But the payoff could be extraordinary.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704576204574529...
So unfilmable in current Hollywood?
The point of the book is not at all the visual, most of it is very subtle. One commentary that I heard that was very astute pointed out that many parts of the book are specifically not detailed, one big example being that we rarely if ever witness the Kid killing or partaking in the murder/general viciousness of the gang.
This means that a large part of the book is emulated in your brain while reading - did you infer that the kid is doing all this, and is just as bad as them? Is he an observer, like you, and doesn't leave because he doesn't know better? Does he actively try to avoid unnecessary violence?
Your reading of these things will affect your reading of further parts - like the accusations of Holden, saying that the Kid was always a traitor to the spirit of the gang, which are not specific enough to be factual, but you absolutely know what he means while reading (depending on how you characterised the Kid).
All this means that any one expression of the story would betray the oeuvre (in my mind), which aims to get you in the boots of these horrible men and understand that they are part of you (between other things).
The stark writing and purposeful lack of factual descriptions of some key points make Blood Meridian a very evocative work, rather than descriptive. Half of it is and remains in your mind, and that's simply not what movies do.
All this to say - you can do a movie showing what happens in the book, and it would be good! But it would contain very little of why the book is so beloved and respected.
And hopefully nobody would offer it to somebody second rate.
Like like with all poetry, it's a joy to think about and dissect.
My foremost example here would be Berserk.
He uses an implement with two handles and he chucks it into the hole and he enkindles the stone in the hole with his steel hole by hole striking the fire out of the rock which God has put there
A post hole digger has two handles. When you’re using it in rocky ground you hit rocks and make sparks.
Picture:
https://images.homedepot-static.com/productImages/ed49f7f1-a...
[EDIT] As for the rest, putting aside metaphorical readings, the clockwork-like progression and repeated crossing of the line of holes calls to mind the stop-and-start movement of running barbed wire and working a ratcheting tensioner tool behind the one digging the holes, and in the right country, the curious among those workers may pause to reflect on the remains of long-dead things (fossils, "bones"—fish, horse, bison, mammoth, spine-like crinoid stems, shells and coral from an eons-dead sea, even dinosaurs—the ranches and farms of the West largely sit atop the shallow graves of life's history on Earth) sitting flat in the dirt or exposed by the digging, while others may pay them no mind. There's definitely a defensible reading of this as on the surface a plain, if oblique, description of a work crew running a fence line—not just the one digging the holes, but the whole set of folks described. I'd wager that's what's intended (though not the only thing intended), in fact.
Then the rest follow blindly not truly knowing why and getting stuck with the destruction/dregs/etc.
If that is what is going on, I can't really argue about it however I'll take the more joyous propaganda tyvm.
By putting up a fence he alters so many things about the land, in a profound way, and the others who occupy that land have a relationship and reaction to this fence.
Edit: maybe it isn’t a fence. Could be set up for a railway? Or something else like early poles for wires for communication?
I’ve read a lot of McCarthy but not Blood Meridian
The man digging holes is a pioneer. McCarthy isn't really clear on what he does; intentionally so. He might be digging fence holes, making campfires, building railroad tracks – it doesn't really matter.
The wanderers are the settlers following the pioneer westward. They appear to be coordinated by some force, like the pieces of a clock. This is arguably the "go west" attitude of manifest destiny.
"...they appear restrained by a prudence or reflectiveness which has no inner reality" is McCarthy's true criticism of manifest destiny. Retrospectively, we glorify settlement of the west and slot it into a clean narrative or progress. But in its time, the expansion was chaotic, violent and devoid of morals. People were just walking hole-to-hole for the sake of finding the next hole.
Some wanderers collect bones and some don't. Perhaps McCarthy means that some wanderers kill, but we don't know. From McCarthy's nihilistic viewpoint it doesn't matter because the westward expansion is moral-less so killing someone isn't different from collecting bones on the ground.
This contrasts with the moral good vs. evil narrative usually applied to the old west (see anything written on cowboys vs. indians, sheriff vs. bandits, etc.) McCarthy portrays the old west outside of a moral framework. Horrific violence happens and there's no explanation or justification.
But after wracking your brain trying to decrypt the message, you realize that it just says there is no greater meaning to the violence of the book. It is just people doing things on a vast plain.
It's almost as though McCarthy is saying to us, "See? You're still looking for a deeper meaning that does not exist."
McCarthy seemed to deal _absurdly well_ in the banality of the pitches of life, both high and low. One always leads to another. It’s a sort of nihilism but with a karmic baseline. Reading his prose I got the sense I shouldn't make much out of anything, but all the same, it still happened and is worth talking about.
Many readers feel cognitive dissonance from this book: there’s so much detail, it must add up to some moral lesson. You’ll hear people say, “Blood Meridian is an amazing book, but I don’t understand it.”
They’re still trying to apply a moral label to the story and can’t find one. To quote The Judge, “Your heart’s desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery.”
McCarthy’s message in Blood Meridian may be that we see a higher fidelity picture of the old west if we don’t attempt to fit events into a moral arc. Still worth discussing, but we must abandon good vs. evil as a framework if we want a glimpse at the truth of what happened.
(Faulkner; the first lines of The Sound and the Fury)
— Absalom, Absalom - Faulkner - first two sentences
Klaus Schwab even references it in his recent book "The Grand Narrative" as an alternative future that will come to pass if we don't do everything right even though the future disaster, from the hints given in The Road, is clearly not climate change.
It's frustrating because I generally like writing in a similar manner to how he wrote, but I found it incredibly dull to listen to for any length of time. It was just this meandering mess of "here and there" without anything to pay attention to, or have a need to care for. It wasn't that I hated it, I just didn't like it either. I was entirely indifferent to it, other than a vague sense of politely waiting for it to end. I didn't feel I lost much by listening to it, but had nothing to gain either. It was just a distraction of other things I could have been listening to instead.
If you write a novel that aims to distill a genre into its own __prototype methods, you should leave the reader with a feeling that you're doing something more important and artful than simply cashing in on the existing archetype. Perhaps, like, a critique of the archetype itself embedded in the work would give the reader something more to think about.
[edit] I'd also just call attention to "Earth Abides" by George R. Stewart (1949). This pulpy, pathos-ridden, amazing jerk-off sci-fi fantasy of being the last person on earth already hits pretty much all the major themes. If you're going to write the dark and traumatizing version of it with a boy in tow, how about adding something to the genre rather than collecting accolades based on an unproven assumption that by reducing it to parts you have somehow expanded upon it?
“A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained weddingveil and some in headgear of cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horse’s ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse’s whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen’s faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.
Oh my god, said the sergeant.”
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Raid_of_1840
[2] https://www.google.com/books/edition/Comanches/Cqh8qSexvU4C?...
The Comanche Empire is more of a history textbook.
IIRC, I found The Comanche Empire by looking at the bibliography of Empire of the Summer Moon.
That was probably Iron Jacket [1] who is known for wearing conquistador armor that made him seem impervious to light arms fire.
War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.
--
Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.
--
In the days to come they would ride up through a country where the rocks would cook the flesh from your hand and where other than rock nothing was. They rode in a narrow enfilade along a trail strewn with the dry round turds of goats and they rode with their faces averted from the rock wall and the bake-oven air which it rebated, the slant black shapes of the mounted men stenciled across the stone with a definition austere and implacable like shapes capable of violating their covenant with the flesh that authored them and continuing autonomous across the naked rock without reference to sun or man or god.
--
They rode on and the sun in the east flushed pale streaks of light and then a deeper run of color like blood seeping up in sudden reaches flaring planewise and where the earth drained up into the sky at the edge of creation the top of the sun rose out of nothing like the head of a great red phallus until it cleared the unseen rim and sat squat and pulsing and malevolent behind them. The shadows of the smallest stones lay like pencil lines across the sand and the shapes of the men and their mounts advanced elongate before them like strands of the night from which they’d ridden, like tentacles to bind them to the darkness yet to come.
Now that's how you introduce a character!
... with them now rode a boy named Sloat who had been left sick to die in this place by one of the gold trains bound for the coast weeks earlier. ... He rode near the head of the column and he must have counted himself well out of that place but if he gave thanks to any god at all it was ill-timed for the country was not done with him.
It occurs to me now that this echoes a scene late in Moby Dick in which Ahab smashes his sextant to the deck and declares that henceforth he will navigate by dead reckoning alone, without reference to the sun or stars or like works of God.
Captain Ahab is mortal and goes down with all but one of the crew of the Pequod, like Glanton who dies along with most of his gang at the hands of the Yuma. Both leaders are proud and defiant to the last and are justly killed (though we have to feel first mate Starbuck at least deserved better).
Both Glanton and Ahab are undisputed masters of their respective expeditions, and both leave behind young families at the outset, though for different reasons: Glanton flees the law, Ahab sails voluntarily.
--
... they watched like the prefiguration of their own ends the carbonized skulls of their enemies incandescing before them bright as blood among the coals.
That's one of the ones I remember, if you loosen the definition of "remember." I liked it because here's the ostensible leader of a gang of homicidal mo fo's, and not because of that, not despite it, but possibly quite irrelevantly to it, he's just as sure of himself and his "vision" as any other person we would normally think of as a leader.
Brings to mind Thucydides: “Of the Gods we believe, and of man we know, that by a law of their nature, wherever they can rule they shall. This law was not made by us, and we are not the first to have acted on it. We did but inherit it, and shall bequeath it to all time. And we know that you and all mankind, if you were as strong as we are, would do as we do.”
"Once there were brook trout 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."
Blood Meridian was another monstrosity that lured me into a very dark inner space. I think it expresses the USA's relationship to violence better than anything else I have read, fiction or non-fiction. But there is a lot more going on at the same time, and I don't think I ever fully explored that. It didn't help that for a relatively short novel, it's so exhausting to read, both intellectually and emotionally.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30611829
Edit
Meant to link the HN thread, not the original source.
> Use minimalism to achieve clarity. While you are writing, ask yourself: is it possible to preserve my original message without that punctuation mark, that word, that sentence, that paragraph or that section? Remove extra words or commas whenever you can.
> Inject questions and less-formal language to break up tone and maintain a friendly feeling. Colloquial expressions can be good for this, but they shouldn't be too narrowly tied to a region. Similarly, use a personal tone because it can help to engage a reader. Impersonal, passive text doesn't fool anyone into thinking you're being objective: "Earth is the centre of this Solar System" isn't any more objective or factual than "We are at the centre of our Solar System."
> Finally, try to write the best version of your paper: the one that you like. You can't please an anonymous reader, but you should be able to please yourself. Your paper — you hope — is for posterity. Remember how you first read the papers that inspired you while you enjoy the process of writing your own.
EDIT: you posted the wrong link, I was trying to help YOU, and the readers of your comment. You removed the original nature link, and then post a condescending reply to me. It's insulting and makes me think less of you and I now deeply regret trying to help.
Later
(I wrote "of course" here, as a sort of clumsy acknowledgement that I'm not posting an actual sci-hub link, not as any sort of commentary on the preceding comment --- that comment was appreciated, as I'd originally posted the wrong link, to the paywalled Nature story and not the HN thread. Sorry if it reads any other way!)
The institute is on the top of a big hill and I'll always remember how he gave me a lift one day as I was walking up.
First, I do like downbeat, apocalyptic fiction. I sometimes enjoy reading fiction that evokes anguish or that portrays failures. Kazuo Ishiguro is one of my favorite English language writers.
But... I didn't like "The Road" at all. I think I get the point, but to me it was essentially "apocalypse porn". It was about pointlessly and joylessly describing a dying, hopeless world, but in a way that wasn't interesting to read. I didn't even like how it was written, after a while I started counting how many times McCarthy saw fit to write "the last of [food]". "They ate the last of the biscuits". "They ate the last of the beans". Etc, etc.
I'm sorry but I cannot find better words for this, The Road felt like "hopelessness porn".
I expect people won't agree with me. So be it.
Suttree and Blood Meridian are the elite tier, IMO.
To me, McCarthy in the "The Road" was the boring kind of depressing.
Since he wrote it this has been done to death by numerous writers (including comic books), but at the time it felt fresh, and I vividly remember wanting to curl into a ball on my bed in horror at some of the depictions in the book, not just because they were horrible, but because I thought: "Yup. That's what would happen alright."
blood meridian, sutree, the border trilogy are not that. they are work of art where words are crafted in ways that go beyond the pages. it is really the work of a master like very few writers ever did in history. a small excerpt of blood meridian. with so many little words, ..
« And by and by they came to a place where the road was darkened in a deep wood and in this place the old man killed the traveler. He killed him with a rock and he took his clothes and he took his watch and his money and he buried him in a shallow grave by the side of the road. Then he went home.. The harness maker lived until his son was grown and never did anyone harm again. As he lay dying he called the son to him and told him what he had done. And the son said that he forgave him if it was his to do so and the old man said that it was his to do so and then he died. But the boy was not sorry for he was jealous of the dead man and before he went away he visited that place and cast away the rocks and dug up the bones and scattered them in the forest and then he went away. He went away to the west and he himself became a killer of men. »
> He came forward, holding his belt by one hand. The holes in it marked the progress of his emaciation and the leather at one side had a lacquered look to it where he was used to stropping the blade of his knife. He stepped down into the roadcut and he looked at the gun and he looked at the boy. Eyes collared in cups of grime and deeply sunk. Like an animal inside a skull looking out the eyeholes. He wore a beard that had been cut square across the bottom with shears and he had a tattoo of a bird on his neck done by someone with an illformed notion of their appearance. He was lean, wiry, rachitic. Dressed in a pair of filthy blue coveralls and a black billcap with the logo of some vanished enterprise embroidered across the front of it.
The line about how the "holes in [his belt] marked the progress of his emaciation" is seared into my brain forever.
However, Children of Men is admittedly not as bleak as The Road, so not a fair comparison. If you really want a film that produces bottomless despair in the viewer, I recommend Threads (1984) instead. It was produced by the BBC on a shoestring budget, and yet it's still a better film. I can't say I recommend it, but if you do watch it, the ending is on par with Requiem for a Dream for being memorable and filled with doom and horror.
The Road just wasn't very good IMO. No Country for Old Men, on the other hand? Same writer, different genre, but excellent.
Mind you, I didn't think it was samey or cliched, I don't remember thinking "there are too many of these already". What I thought was that it was poorly written and uninteresting, and that it seemed like bleakness for its own sake.
I was pleased to see that the local NBC affiliate had made the announcement of his passing[0] the top story, but I was especially gratified that it describes him as “the author of Suttree, The Road, Child of God and several other novels.” It’s probably the only obit that will lead the list of novels with Suttree and relegate Blood Meridian to “several other novels,” haha.
[0] https://www.wbir.com/article/news/local/cormac-mccarthy-dies...
An excerpt from “The Apple Store”…
“… There was folks outside just standin there. Line stretchin round the block. Maybe a hundred people. I saw a man who’d brought his own chair. He had a shirt on with the same logo as the one on the store. I figured he worked there so I asked him what the line was all about. What were all these people waitin for. He told me it was for a apple phone or some such. I said dont these folks have telephones already? He told me they all had apple phones but it was the older one. I asked him what would happen to the old apple phones. He told me about a fella named Craig had a list and everbody sold their old telephones on it. A telephone sellin list.”
"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."
Serious advice: think twice before reading The Road if you’re susceptible to doom and gloom about the human race.
(It Comes at Night is probably my #1 in that category for film, and I guess Watts' Blindsight in books—both messed me up for days after, the former with some depressive nihilism, the latter with days of fairly intense derealization that weren't too fun—and I'm not normally especially prone to either of those, I don't think)
Plus one of the more normal characters investigating the phenomenon just happens to be a vampire who--surprisingly enough--is neither formulaic nor boring.
The writing-guide-esque "OK, now write down ten wild elements or characters that certainly do not fit in your world... flip page ... and now add one of them, finding a way to connect it to some other element you've already established" was almost comically transparent, but also so damn effective that I've added it to the ol' toolbox.
(I mean, I don't know that Watts literally did that sort of exercise, exactly, and even doubt that he did, but in my head that's definitely how that part got in there)
Interestingly, (and apropos) McCarthy's last, Stella Maris, I think, did a much more eloquent job of exploring the same themes. Stella Maris is astounding, it's cosmic horror without the 'supernatural.' Instead there's only Gödel and Metzinger.
That said, I think Echopraxia is a better sequel than Maelstrom and a pretty good book on its own. He is working on a final book in the Blindopraxia trilogy and I expect it to move even further from the wonder of the original book, but now that my expectations are set I am looking forward to it all the same.
I suppose I was expecting peak Shyamalan, but A24.
I read the entire thing in HTML on my phone on the author's web site over a week or so. After the first few days of catching bits during breaks, I found myself sitting at home on the porch just reading from my phone - not typical for me. (I did later buy a copy.)
And compare it to The Road, whose environment would have you begging for a holiday to The Last of Us. Not just the lack of food, but the lack of ability to grow new food, to rest, to warm, to heal. The constant, dogged, thinking, scheming threats. And your kid isn't pushing ladders down to you nearly enough.
https://deadline.com/2023/04/new-regency-cormac-mccarthys-bl...
I made it that far before becoming incredibly annoyed at the way literature critics were praising his new invention of post-apocalyptic stories which nobody had ever read before ever.
Also, if I remember correctly, he felt that the rules of punctuation didn't apply to him. Maybe that paid off if I'd read more than ten pages.
I don't doubt that he was a true giant. But even setting aside these purely meta-textual gripes, it's just not a story I want to hear. If I want to be depressed and angry, I'll read Hacker News.
Uplifting? There was nothing uplifting about The Road. It's a world without hope. From the description of the forests, seas, societies and families, cormac builds a truly hopeless apocalypse with no hope for redemption or salvation. A world where hope cannot exist.
> Amid the utter horror and hopeless bleakness a parent does everything they can to protect their child.
A father tries to do everything he can to save his son, but ultimately, he fails. It's a world without hope after all. The father dies and a bunch of cannibals "take in" the boy.
It's one of the rare books that I finished in one sitting and then read again a few days later.
Here are some people using the word uplift in their review on Amazon: [0]. There are some negations though ("this book is not uplifting").
[0]: https://www.amazon.com/Road-Vintage-International-Cormac-McC...
So what? Of course the love between a father and son persists. It's only natural. But that's not the point of the book. The book is about finding hope. The father is desperately trying to save his son. To find hope for his son. He thinks there is hope along the coast. That's why they are on "the road". When they reach the coast, they find a leaden sea holding no life. All marine life is dead. They find no hope. There, cannibals that were hunting the father and son shoot the father with an arrow and the father dies. The son buries his father and the cannibals find the boy and "take him in".
> [0]: https://www.amazon.com/Road-Vintage-International-Cormac-McC...
This is just reviews with the word "uplifting". Many of the comments with "uplifting" is just saying it is not uplifting.
"This is an unusual book. There is nothing uplifting here, so don't expect it."
"As uplifting as a charred word void of virtually all-living species. As uplifting as a dead land shrouded in night, blanketed with ash and gray snow, legions of charcoaled corpses ornamenting the highways and hallways. As uplifting as the vicious gangs who prowl the countryside surviving on the last food source - other humans. As uplifting as the Halocaust, Idi Amin's Uganda, or Pol Pot's Cambodia."
Read the book. There is nothing uplifting about it. The only thing uplifting about it is that we don't live in such a world. It's as hopeless a world as you can possibly create. It's a world where the wife and mother of the protagonists goes off into the woods to kill herself rather than face the horrors that await her and her husband and her son. That's how bleak and hopeless the world is. It's a world where the father carries a gun to take out his son and himself in case the cannibals get them. It's a world where the father fails to keep his promise to his son and dies, leaving him to a pack of cannibals. And that isn't even the worst of it. What exactly is uplifting here?
I noted that when I posted the link. But at least half are saying it is uplifting.
I obviously can't argue further as I haven't read it. I will remark that different people will react to the same material variously uplifted or beaten-down, and neither reaction is less valid (unless they just misunderstood the plot). Personally, I tend to find depictions of nobility and perseverance in the face of imminent doom interesting and moving if not uplifting.
You should. It's the best of its kind in my opinion.
> I will remark that different people will react to the same material variously uplifted or beaten-down, and neither reaction is less valid (unless they just misunderstood the plot).
I'm open to people having subjective feelings - like whether they enjoyed it, they found it too graphic, not graphic enough, etc. But uplifting is different. There has to be something concrete to back up the feeling of being uplifted.
> Personally, I tend to find depictions of nobility and perseverance in the face of imminent doom interesting and moving if not uplifting.
But that's the point. It isn't nobility and perseverance in the face of imminent doom. The mother thought it was inevitable doom. The father had hope. It's perseverance in false hope. Nonexistent hope. It's like you seeing a person jump 100 stories from the twin towers and flapping his arms in the hopes of flying and saving himself. Would you say that is uplifting? Of course not. Unless you were being edgy or silly.
Instead of reading silly amazon reviews, go read the book and see for yourself.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36316079#36325708
I have read the book, and it is about sticking to your morals no matter how evil the world will become. That is the message of the book.
What morals? They stole other peoples stuff. They abandoned the poor people in the basement to die at the hands of the cannibals. They "helped" the guy they met on the road but that was due to childish naivety of the son. It was superficial and meaningless help. The book was entirely about amoral animalistic survival than morality. Notice how it was mostly the son who wanted to be "moral". If anything, the book is saying being moral is childish in an amoral world.
If anything, it showed the inability to stick morals. The most important "moral" of the story was the father's promise to the son and his wife, not to let the son fall into the hands of the cannibals. Throughout the book the father promises to kill them both if it came to that. In the end, the father couldn't bring himself to kill the son and left him to the cannibals who were hunting him.
In your response, you say we don't know whether the "good guys" got him or the "bad guys" did. It's obvious the "bad guys" got him. On your first reading, it isn't clear, but after subsequent readings, it is obvious there are no good guys left and the cannibals who were hunting ( or possibly other cannibals ) them got him.
> That is the message of the book.
If that was the message, the book showed how stupid and pointless it was. Not that it was a good thing. If there was a "message", it was that the mother was right and the father was wrong. But that isn't the message either.
Rather than taking the book for it is, people are trying to find a positive message to make themselves feel better. That's a childish notion. Not everything is a disney movie. Not everything has to have a happy ending or a positive message. You don't have to be uplifted or find morality in a book.
It is not. The man that found the child had a shotgun. He was trying to convince the kid that he had his own wife and child. If he was one of the cannibals, he could have just shot him and got it over with...this is like a six year old we are talking about. Overpowering him, kidnapping him, or just shooting him would be more easy. It doesn't make sense for him to try and convince the kid to join him.
>If anything, the book is saying being moral is childish in an amoral world.
I highly disagree. the man had problems trusting others, for good reason. But the child was a reminder to him WHY it is important to stay good. It ties in with Plato's concept of Eudemonia. Helping others must come with a sense of self-preservation. To save others with abandon is not moral...it is recklessness. On the other side of the coin, having nothing BUT self preservation is cowardess. They represent both sides of the same coin...the boy tugs at the fathers heartstrings to keep him in touch with his morality, and the father has the common sense to keep them alive.
>Rather than taking the book for it is, people are trying to find a positive message to make themselves feel better. That's a childish notion.
Making your interpretation the "one and only interpretation" and dismissing others as "making themselves feel better" is closed minded, myopic, and also childish. While I disagree with your interpretation of the book, I respect it. However the point of art is to attach personal meaning to it. That is not childish...that is human.
Your interpretation is that there is no meaning, and that morality is pointless. Mine is that it is important to do your best in a world that is evil, even if you mess up and don't live up to your own standards sometimes. "carrying the fire" seems like obvious symbolism to me for morality. They don't always carry it...they are sometimes bad themselves. When that happens, the kid gets upset at the dad and there are consequences. The dad develops as a character and decides that giving up and killing them both is the wrong thing to do. Is he right? Honestly probably not. But that is the thing about morality, it is not always black and white.
I think it is. I gave my reasons in another comment.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36326924
> If he was one of the cannibals, he could have just shot him and got it over with
In the book, the cannibals like to keep their "herd" alive in the basement. Remember? Why did they keep their humans alive?
> Overpowering him, kidnapping him, or just shooting him would be more easy.
No. It would be easier to convince him to follow them willingly. Would you rather drag a corpse 10 miles or have the the corpse follow you 10 miles. I can't tell if you are trolling or not? Throughout book, exhaustion and the physical toll play a prominent role - of just pushing a cart, father carrying the boy, etc.
It's getting exhausting repeating the obvious. The conclusion of the book is the father dead and the orphaned boy ending up with cannibals. Exactly what they wanted to avoid and breaking the promise that the father made to his wife. If that is uplifting to you and you find moral value in that fine. I guess if you keep looking for something, you'll eventually find it. Even if it is not there.
>No. It would be easier to convince him to follow them willingly. Would you rather drag a corpse 10 miles or have the the corpse follow you 10 miles. I can't tell if you are trolling or not?
I am not trolling. Have you ever picked up a six year old? They weigh practically nothing. The cannibals are not shown to be as exhausted or weak as the father so it would not be as much of a problem. Perhaps if he gets off to the idea of betrayal, or if he really does think that having a kid follow him for 10 miles would be easier convincing him would be easier, but I have a hard time believing that.
>I guess if you keep looking for something, you'll eventually find it. Even if it is not there.
I could say the same thing about your interpretation of events. I do wish you would be more open minded and less cynical...the way you so easily dismiss people and feel that your interpretation is the only correct one is extremely offputting. Productive conversation cannot happen if you keep dismissing everyone else as "missing the obvious."
What? Now you are just desperately grasping at straws.
> The father says that "there are no other kids his age", yes, but remember...most of the book is told through the father's eyes.
And? So what? The kid also says so, not that it matters.
> There is no information technology anymore...
That's right. Before the internet and IT, nobody saw any children. This comment is the dumbest thing I've read in a long while.
> all he knows is that he has not seen any kids and that he hasn't heard of any kids. He is an unreliable narrator.
The kid also said so. And I don't think you know what "unreliable narrator" is. There has to be clues within the story to imply that he is unreliable ( psychologically, memorywise, etc ). Not that he doesn't have access to a smartphone.
> Have you ever picked up a six year old? They weigh practically nothing.
Yes. Not only that, I was six year old once. Long before I was 6 years old, my parents stopped carrying me around. And you are being intentionally sneaky here. Who said anything about picking up a 6 year old. I said carry a 6 year old how many miles they had to go.
> Perhaps if he gets off to the idea of betrayal, or if he really does think that having a kid follow him for 10 miles would be easier convincing him would be easier, but I have a hard time believing that.
Yes. It's easier to believe that in a starving world, a random kind couple is willing to take in someone else's child to feed. Something his own father struggled immensely to do. That is easier to believe.
It's obvious what happened. It's why you ignored every one of my points except the absolutely nonsense about "no more information technology..."
Let me guess, you are the type of person who watched the movie No Country for Old Men and believe that chigurh didn't kill the wife. Or that the girl in the red dress in schindler's list wasn't dead but playing dead because she was saved by some magical good nazis. At this point I hope you at pretending to be trolling to save yourself some embarrassment.
I'm so dumb. I forgot that before information technology, kids were invisible. Thank you.
>What? Now you are just desperately grasping at straws.
Explain. Am I incorrect?
>And? So what? The kid also says so, not that it matters.
Because he has not seen any. Just because they didn't see any kids doesn't mean they don't exist. The fact that the kid himself exists suggests that this is not entirely correct.
>That's right. Before the internet and IT, nobody saw any children. This comment is the dumbest thing I've read in a long while.
I would appreciate it if you could make a point without resorting to insults. For one suggesting that others are childish for their interpretations, you are resorting to childish actions.
As for my point, perhaps I was not clear in my meaning. I meant that there was no way to verify that there are no kids...no newspapers saying that "all kids are dead," or any other way for him to verify that information. He is just saying what he has seen, which is no kids.
>There has to be clues within the story to imply that he is unreliable ( psychologically, memorywise, etc ). Not that he doesn't have access to a smartphone.
Again, you misinterpret my point. The father is not omniscient. He does not know for certain.
>Yes. Not only that, I as six year old once. Long before I was 6 years old, my parents stopped carrying me around. And you are being intentionally sneaky here. Who said anything about picking up a 6 year old. I said carry a 6 year old how many miles they had to go.
At this point, I am starting to think you are not actually reading my comments. A well fed cannibal with a stomach full of people is not going to have trouble carrying a six year old the same way a starving father on the brink of death would be.
>Let me guess, you are the type of person who watched the movie No Country for Old Men and believe that chigurh didn't kill the wife. Or that the girl in the red dress in schindler's list wasn't dead but playing dead because she was saved by some magical good nazis. At this point I hope you at pretend to be trolling to save yourself some embarrassment.
Now you are resorting to ad hominem and assuming things about my character. No, I am sure Chigurh killed the wife. I have not seen Shindler's List so I cannot say one way or the other.
>At this point I hope you at pretend to be trolling to save yourself some embarrassment
The only person embarrassed here is you. You have shown great immaturity during this conversation, and immediately assume the worst in everyone. That says a lot more about you than me. I will not be continuing this conversation, because it is obvious any further discussion with you will be fruitless. Have a blessed day.
But if you take them at their word, they're "carrying the fire", so the story gets a hopeful ending.
Perhaps that's what people find uplifting about it.
It isn't explicitly stated, but it is heavily implied. I gave my reasons to another comment.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36326924
> That could be one interpretation, I suppose, if depression is your goal.
It's a work of fiction. Nobody died. Nobody starved. Nothing to get depressed about.
What family? You really believe the man and woman who took in the boy had a "family"? A world where boy's own mother abandoned him and his father to kill herself because there was no hope. A world where there are no plants, animals, fish, etc left. A world where a a woman gives birth and then she and her friends cook the fetus over a campfire. You think in a world where there is no food, no possibility of food, where everyone is either starving to death or cannibalizing, that there is a happy family? It's a world where everyone is starving to death. You think "a family" is going to take in an extra mouth to feed?
Did you miss the parts in the book where they explicitly mention how there is no children the boy's age left? The boy desperately wants a friend but there are no children his age left. Except for that one "imaginary" kid he ran into that disappeared. Why do you think that is?
Also, the father and son were being hunted by a pack of cannibals who mortally wound the father. What are the odds that the cannibal hunters caught up to him. What are the odds that a magical good samaritan family stumbled upon him?
When I first read the book, I thought the kid was saved. Then I reread it and boy cormac really made it crystal clear how hopeless that world was.
Talking about odds in a fictional story is misguided. The odds are 100% whatever the writer intended.
Yes and the nice cannibal they killed offered to give them food and shelter. Remember how nice that cannibal was? The pistol was worthless and if I remember correctly, it didn't even have a bullet left. Of course he let him keep it. It's no threat.
> Talking about odds in a fictional story is misguided.
No. It's a matter of determining what is most likely.
> The odds are 100% whatever the writer intended.
Yes. The author wrote everything that led up to the meeting for a reason. Everything the author wrote leads to the man and woman being cannibals. It's pretty obvious. It isn't a children's book. For children, the author explains everything clearly and spoonfeeds you. But for adult books you have to think about what the author is trying to say. Did that world seem like it had any good samaritans that you envision. No it did not. For a reason.
What the author intended is 100% obvious. You don't like it because you childishly want a happy ending. Cormac wasn't writing disney books or children books. If you are still confused and you seem to be, go read his other books. You'll understand what kind of writer he was.
I get the punctuation issue, but I think his writing is proof that you don't always need to follow the rules from elementary school. He was so meticulous that, even without commas, all his sentences remained clear, and the effect it had was—for most readers anyway—to make the meaning somehow clearer, and certainly more powerful.
That's strange. The book grabs your attention from the get go. It starts strong. Stays strong. Ends strong.
> I made it that far before becoming incredibly annoyed at the way literature critics were praising his new invention of post-apocalyptic stories which nobody had ever read before ever.
This makes absolutely no sense. Were you reading the book and reading reviews at the same time?
> Also, if I remember correctly, he felt that the rules of punctuation didn't apply to him. Maybe that paid off if I'd read more than ten pages.
His punctuation was fine. The book reads well. His words and sentences flow. I found it easily one of the most accessible.
> it's just not a story I want to hear. If I want to be depressed and angry Hacker News.
Ah there it is. People with petty gripes always have an agenda. So your "gripes" above are just because you want don't like apocalytic stories and want to warn people off it? Why not just say so instead of making up silly criticisms? Also, it's a work of fiction. It isn't real. Really nothing to get depressed or angry about. If anything, it should make you happy since we don't like in such a hopeless world. But really, like all great literature, it should make you think.
No, this is a fair criticism.
It's true this is done for literary effect, but it does make it harder to read.
To quote McCarthy himself:
> James Joyce is a good model for punctuation. He keeps it to an absolute minimum. There’s no reason to blot the page up with weird little marks. I mean, if you write properly you shouldn’t have to punctuate.[1]
Whilst this might be true, his punctuation style is non-conventional and that does break our expectations making it harder to follow.
[1] https://www.openculture.com/2013/08/cormac-mccarthys-punctua...
What literary effect? I didn't even notice there were punctuation issues until I read the guy's comment. Maybe since it was basically a book where most of the dialogue is between two people? It was one of the easiest and most straightforward reads of my life.
> > James Joyce is a good model for punctuation. He keeps it to an absolute minimum. There’s no reason to blot the page up with weird little marks. I mean, if you write properly you shouldn’t have to punctuate.[1]
...“to make it easier, not to make it harder” to decipher his prose. He wrote that way to make it easier to read. And I agree with him. His prose just flowed. Also, the problem with joyce isn't the punctation. Even with proper punctuation, joyce would be difficult.
But if people have issues with it, then so be it. Are there any examples where his punctuation caused issues for readers?
I completely understand. For me, I see it as a story about clinging to hope despite impossible odds. The theming reminds me of the manga Berserk, but way more grounded in reality and somehow even more depressing. Spoilers:
The main character is dying, and will leave his son to fend for himself when he does. The son doesn't really stand a chance, but it is his responsibility to teach him to "carry the fire." It ends a bit vague...the father dies and the kid refuses to leave the body.
Eventually a man comes by and offers to take care of him. Whether or not he is actually a good guy, or yet another disgusting person, is not really known. But its a glimmer of hope, and that is what is important to the message. As long as there is hope, carry the fire.
This article by Art of Manliness is what convinced me to read it despite how depressing it is. The book isn't for everyone, but it IS life changing in my opinion: https://www.artofmanliness.com/people/fatherhood/carry-the-f...
don't ever, ever read Riddley Walker
Now I have a daughter and am also wondering how different it may seem on this reading of the book…
Maybe I'd appreciate it more now.
It's a good movie, and I'm sure a good book (consider it thrown on the backlog), but damn, so effectively bleak.
The best adaption of McCarthy's work to the screen is No Country For Old Men. The Coen brothers seem to "get" McCarthy better than others.
Coen brothers still make movies with real people and brought this world to life in an authentic way.
[Anton vs the "We can't give out no information" lady](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WLA81q9ok0) I love Coen movies with regular people like this. The lady is hilarious and it is one of the only people that Anton didn't take out.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cormac_McCarthy#/media/File:Co...
[2] https://www.slashfilm.com/img/gallery/how-quentin-tarantino-...
In retrospect, I'm conflicted. In some way, it seems too straightforward ("The Road" title fits well) dystopia. Distilled, masterfully executed, but somehow ... trivial? Maybe it's the "Seinfeld is unfunny" trope where it can become obvious only after experiencing it.
My son is now a bit older than the boy would be. I feel like the book would either build your resolve or beat it down, so just go in forewarned.
“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. And a machine to make the machine. And evil that can run itself a thousand years, no need to tend it.”
I had a harebrained fantasy of taking a sabbatical to do a visiting fellowship at the Santa Fe Institute while he was there. I figured he would like talking brain-behavioral science and I would like hearing anything he had to say, plus would have gotten to talk with mathematicians and other technical experts with a visionary tinge. I never did it (too early in my career to try), but it was fun to imagine.
My spouse got me his final novel(s), which he had the prescience to announce as such, and I almost started reading them a few days ago. Now I know it will be a memorial read, also content that he assumed it mostly would be.
"Yelping With Cormac: Ritual Roasters" https://yelpingwithcormac.tumblr.com/post/10442344603/ritual...
Always gives me a chuckle
Three stars.
See that false burrito. See it swaddled in tinfoil on the desk in the bowels of that great tower, a bundle of meat and sauce in a place long ago ceded to silicone and copper. The stooped man eating that peasant food as if in consuming it he can escape to a farmfield in a verdant valley and look down and see blood running from his blisters and say, yes this is work. This is work. Instead his hands are clawlike and ruined by the keyboard and the mouse for he is a thing of bone and sinew in a sprawling contraption electric and of man’s creation but not of man at all. And were he to saw his breast open with that plastic knife and soak the carpet black with his hot blood and were he to look ceilingward like some stigmatic enraptured and with the bellows of his lungs let forth a soaring wail in that subbasement his screams would be swallowed by the acoustic panels and repulsed by the good steel door as if he had made no sound and spilled no blood at all.
https://yelpingwithcormac.tumblr.com/post/15243208646/chipot...
* All the Pretty Horses
* The Crossing
* Cities of the Plain
This is a nice interview; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrUy1Vn2KdI
“Every remedy for loneliness only postpones it.”
I have always been in love with McCarthy's deep philosophy in his writing. I like the following two examples, not for any particular relevance of their content but just for the deepness that they get at.
One is one of the final scenes in the No Country for Old Men film adaptation by the Coen brothers, and the dialogue is in the book as well. Sheriff Bell visits his cousin Ellis about feeling overmatched by the violence he's seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdOPJKocMWg
> "What you got ain't nothing new. This country's hard on people. You can't stop what's comin'. It ain't all waiting on you. That's vanity."
The other is one of the final scenes in The Counselor, which is, as far as I know, McCarthy's only screenplay, at least that was actually filmed and released. The Counselor is on the phone begging for some way to get his wife back from the cartel, the Jefe of which explains the impossibility of the request regarding situation he has created: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIn7y4ejIFM
> "It is not for me to tell you what you should have done or not done. The world in which you seek to undo the mistakes that you made is different from the world where the mistakes were made. You are now at the crossing. And you want to choose, but there is no choosing there. There's only accepting. The choosing was done a long time ago. I don't mean to offend you, but reflective men often find themselves at a place removed from the realities of life. In any case, we should all prepare a place where we can accommodate all the tragedies that sooner or later will come to our lives. But this is an economy few people care to practice. ... You continue to deny the reality of the world you're in. You are at that crossing. At the understanding that life is not going to take you back. You are the world you have created. And when you cease to exist, this world that you have created will also cease to exist."
This is pure brutality in the form of prose and dialogue.
Haven't seen The Counselor before, but that's a tough scene to watch. Definitely on the queue now!
Warning though - it broke a game my friends play “how would you survive X apocalypse?” My answer for many switched to “wouldn’t want to.”
On the bright side, it's a great antidote for anyone who's falling too deep into the prepper rabbit hole. YAGNI.
* It had snowed lightly in the night and her frozen hair was gold and crystalline and her eyes were frozen cold and hard as stones. One of her yellow boots had fallen off and stood in the snow beneath her. The shape of her coat lay dusted in the snow where she’d dropped it and she wore only a white dress and she hung among the bare gray poles of the winter trees with her head bowed and her hands turned slightly outward like those of certain ecumenical statues whose attitude asks that their history be considered. That the deep foundation of the world be considered where it has its being in the sorrow of her creatures. The hunter knelt and stogged his rifle upright in the snow beside him and took off his gloves and let them fall and folded his hands one upon the other. He thought that he should pray but he’d no prayer for such a thing. He bowed his head. Tower of Ivory, he said. House of Gold. He knelt there for a long time. When he opened his eyes he saw a small shape half buried in the snow and he leaned and dusted away the snow and picked up a gold chain that held a steel key, a whitegold ring. He slipped them into the pocket of his huntingcoat. He’d heard the wind in the night. The wind’s work. A trashcan clattering over the bricks behind his house. The snow blowing out there in the forest in the dark. He looked up into those cold enameled eyes glinting blue in the weak winter light. She had tied her dress with a red sash so that she’d be found. Some bit of color in the scrupulous desolation. On this Christmas day. This cold and barely spoken Christmas day.*
From that time, when I see some news piece about Cormac McCarthy I cannot thank him enough for doing a masterpiece accesible to ESL speakers.
RIP.
_The Road_...I was warned, but not prepared.
I mean, they capitalized “is” too. Sloppy work, 0/10.
Example from ABC News AU: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-14/missing-australian-hi...
> Brisbane woman Julia-Mary Lane found dead in Canadian wilderness in 'unfortunate hiking accident'
Personally, the Border Trilogy and The Road are among my most favourite novels.
RIP
“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.”
> READING MCCARTHY is a podcast devoted to the consideration and discussion of the works of one of our greatest American writers, Cormac McCarthy. Each episode will call upon different well-known Cormackian readers and scholars to help us explore different works and various essential aspects of McCarthy’s writing.(Note these episodes try to offer accessible literary criticism and may contain spoilers from different McCarthy works.)
His books don't resonate with a good number of friends, and I can understand why. But for me it's a strange mix of dark and comforting, with words that make my neurons dance like they're listening to jazz.
"When the lambs is lost in the mountain, he said. They is cry. Sometime come the mother. Sometime the wolf."
It's a play of 2 characters and 1 setting, and has an (IMO very good) HBO adaption starring Samuel L. Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones.
Like most of his work, it's an existential contemplation of sorts and perhaps raises more questions than it answers. But I find myself going back to it a lot, maybe as a divining rod for my own meaning to life and death.
RIP, Cormac.
I'm stoked to see how he handles BM, especially who he casts as Judge Holden. I feel like Philip Seymour Hoffman would have been perfect for the role, but I'm confident Hillcoat will find someone equal to the task.
My favorite Judge quote from BM:
“This is an orchestration for an event. For a dance, in fact. The participants will be apprised of their roles at the proper time. For now it is enough that they have arrived. As the dance is the thing with which we are concerned, and contains complete within itself its own arrangement and history and finale, there is no necessity that the dancers contain these things within themselves as well. In any event, the history of all is not the history of each, nor indeed the sum of those histories, and none here can finally comprehend the reason for his presence, for he has no way of knowing even in what the event consists. In fact, were he to know, he might well absent himself, and you can see that that cannot be any part of the plan, if plan there be.”
RIP.
[0] https://youtube.com/watch?v=VBmCJEehYtU (Linking his version of Royals, as it’s my favorite, but there are are plenty of other wonderful covers and originals)
Some of my past HN comments re McCarthy:
-
When I read both Melville and McCarthy, I'll often find myself mid-run-on-sentence and think to myself, "welp, he's gone too far this time" only to find, by golly, they pull it off in the end. What would otherwise be complete pretension and chaos is, when wrought by true literature artists, simply breathtaking. There are times when I'm reading McCarthy and I literally, out loud, utter "Lord have mercy" for the beauty/fullness/meaning that man can lay upon us.
—
This quote from Blood Meridian is one of my favorite in all of literature and I think capture McCarthy's magic. He has such great talent to describe simultaneously with vivid details yet inexact clarity/meaning.
> It was the judge and the imbecile. They were both of them naked and they neared through the desert dawn like beings of a mode little more than tangential to the world at large, their figures now quick with clarity and now fugitive in the strangeness of that same light. Like things so charged with meaning that their forms are dimmed.
“War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.”
By sheer coincidence, the e-book version is currently on sale (at least I sure hope it's coincidental):
https://www.amazon.com/Road-Vintage-International-Cormac-McC...
"Et en Arcadia ego" and "Ruder forms survive". Different books.
Throughout his work runs a line of thought that is never explicitly explained or can be easily summarized but some of his sentences and paragraphs nod at it. Here's one of my favorites:
"He thought that in the beauty of the world were hid a secret. He thought that the world’s heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world’s pain and its beauty moved in a relationship of diverging equity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower."
To my surprise, Don DeLillo is still alive.
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.
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/crossing-the-blood-merid...
Texas? Don't tell them what they can do with their land. Don't tell them they need to ditch their truck. Not saying it was a 1:1 illustration in his novels, but it did give me a better insight into how folks west of Austin 'tick'.
—Cormac McCarthy, The Road
I haven't read The Road or Blood Meridian, but when you consider the different styles and structures of McCarthy's prose, it's easy to agree that he was a remarkable writer. RIP.
https://lithub.com/harold-bloom-on-cormac-mccarthy-true-heir...
if you write a novel with something like that then you know what will go in your obituary if you get famous
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eu6STuj4njw
Wendigoons 5 hour review of Blood Meridian.
3.7M views in 4 weeks.
I read The Road and I was astounded. Still have yet to read another book I’ve liked as much, but at least he got me reading to find it!
But if the quotes do nothing for you, his stories probably will not either.
At first when I could not speak, I could not read easily, because sedation had undermined my attention span. I was depressed. I could turn on the TV, but why? My wife brought a wonderful DVD player to my hospital room, but I could not make myself watch movies. My life was stale and profitless. I would spend hours in a murky stupor. Knowing I had always been reading a book, my concerned wife began reading to me: Jane Austen, Charles Dickens.
Curiously, my love of reading finally returned after I picked up Cormac McCarthy's Suttree, a book I had already read not long before my first surgery. Now I read it two more times. I was not "reading the same book." I was reentering the same experience, the same occult and visionary prose, the life of Suttree so urgently evoked. As rarely before, a book became tactile to me. When Suttree on his houseboat pulled a cord and brought up a bottle of orange soda pop from the cool river, I savored it. I could no longer taste. I tasted it more sharply than any soda I've ever really had. When Suttree stopped at the bus station for a grilled cheese, I ate it, and the pickle, and drank the black coffee. I began to live through this desperate man's sad life. https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/i-think-im-musing-my-...
McCarthy, the heir of Faulkner, who mines the Southwest and Mexico for the way they can break your heart before they kill you. McCarthy is best known for his Border Trilogy, about men, horses, pain and loyalty; All the Pretty Horses was directed by Billy Bob Thornton. McCarthy's best book is said to be Blood Meridian, which Harold Bloom said he hated so much for its violence he threw it across the room twice, and then read it, declared it a masterpiece, and wrote the introduction for the Modern Library edition. My own favorite is Suttree, with its closely-woven mosaic of unusual and unknown words and its heartbreaking story. It's about a man fallen from grace who lives in a houseboat, catches catfish for a living, has hallucinatory alcoholic adventures and episodes of sentiment, pity and loyalty. https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/coen-country
As McCarthy does with the Judge, the hairless exterminator in his "Blood Meridian", and as in his "Suttree," especially in the scene where [...], the movie demonstrates how pitiful ordinary human feelings are in the face of implacable injustice. https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/no-country-for-old-men-20...
A friend gave me a copy of "Child of God" amd frankly it was the most disgusting, dark, unrewarding, unethical, uninspired, uniteresting, poorly written books ive ever read.
I was flat out offended by the book and repeatedly had to set it down and fume about how unnecessarily disgusting he was being. I never finished it. I got the impression that cormac was a thoroughly disturbed individual with a macabre fascination with the most fucked up 0.00001% of humanity. To make matters worth he cant write worth a damn.
I will say his metaphors can be quite beautiful hut they often make no sense grammatically.
Tldr : Cormac Mccarthy is not for me.
I read "Suttree", and it was a mixed bag for me. I loved "All the Pretty Horses" and "The Road".
you should separate yourself from that notion.
it's true that authors can be damaged individuals with little personal hope, but some of the most macabre things ever written have been conjured by perfectly normal/well-functioning/happy individuals who enjoy fairly well-balanced lives -- it's simply not a good indicator of the person behind the pen.
as for the grammatic non-sense (to which I agree can be exactly that, non-sense) I always read it as if it were sort of styled similarly to the concept of 'beat poetry'. Grammar and syntax goes out the door for prose/beauty/imagery and style.
Question 1: Example, please?
Question 1.5: In what way does the example not make sense grammatically?
Question 2.0-2.(n): To what degree does grammar 'matter'? Is conformance to some prescriptive view of grammar essential to 'good' writing? What is the function of grammar - precision and disambiguation? Are there contexts in which grammar can or should be subservient to other linguistic effects, such as prosody? Are there other phenomenological effects of reading to which grammar may or may not be relevant?
An exercise for the motivated reader: Read 'A Carafe that is a Blind Glass' by Gertrude Stein. What does it feel like? What does it evoke? What are we doing mentally when we read it? What exactly are we doing when we read?
To be fair—his writing's a lot more challenging than most. Even most other literary writing. Even most other literary writing that's widely regarded as challenging. Editing it to conform to language & grammatical norms would definitely make it a lot easier to read.
> What is the function of grammar - precision and disambiguation? Are there contexts in which grammar can or should be subservient to other linguistic effects, such as prosody? Are there other phenomenological effects of reading to which grammar may or may not be relevant?
And this is the "on the other hand": on the other hand—and most unusually—reigning in that deviation from norms, at all, would, nonetheless, make his writing worse. Some writing can tolerate bending even the more well-considered and empathetic of writing rules—his required breaking them. Demanded it, and demanded a whole other set of rules of his own making, exactly as a poem may break the rules of prose writing, while strictly following a whole other set of rules, all to good effect.
And grammer matters to the extent that the sentance is able to convey its meaning clearly to the reader. In my opinion, McCarthy does not hit this mark in a lot of case. Maybe im too dense, but his mixture of invented hick language, completely fucked up punctuation, and flowery/poetic language, is often very tough to sus out. What is actually supposed to be happening is often not so clear.
That the reader is required to make some effort to un-knot the language is a legitimate tool of the poet. Some are too impatient, used to sound-bytes from a tv personality perhaps, and won't open them selves to something novel or evocative. It has to 'make sense' grammatically and semantically. Poetry is often neither of those.
Ultimately this is all a matter if taste
Not a fan myself.
But…
> I was flat out offended by the book
That was entirely up to you. That was a decision you made and blamed on someone else. I feel like that is something important to consider with your first sentence.
Im actually quite hard to offend but when a sick fuck publishes and makes money of his disgusting pornography, its upsetting. If it had some real artistic merit in my estimation I would not be so bothered.
But clearly this is all subjective. It just crossed a line with me, and the work wasnt meaningful enough to justify it.
Do yourself a favor and read Blood Meridian. It's been said many times that you are not the same person when you're done reading it. I fully agree.
Take The Road, for example. The notion of assessing the probabilities that you'll have enough ammunition to either kill multiple assailants, or alternatively, need to keep the ammunition to kill yourself and your son seems sickening and pointless to explore to some people. Taken seriously and with an open mind, it can invoke serious contemplation of your values, what life means to you, what compassion can really mean, how you take what you have for granted, and more.
As awful as it is to consider, there are real people who have had to make these decisions. That there can be a state of existence in this world where these are pressing matters is simultaneously bewildering and disgusting, yet eye-opening in ways I consider important to living better even outside of that context.
The relentless and ruthless tunnel of gloom and suffering in that book is a useful tool to remind yourself in a vivid way: It's all still here. I'm alive. The trees are green, the rain is clean, the grains are growing for a fall harvest I can still reasonably expect will arrive — life is pretty good. And yet life can get so much worse. Perhaps I should value this moment so much more than I was prior to these thoughts.
Cormac took the very real, very disgusting parts of humanity and wove horrifying tapestries from it. But they're not purely for the sake of shock and disgust. The contrast of what he depicts — held up to most readers' realities — provides a heightened sense of the inverse of what he describes, allowing you to realize much better how beautiful the good parts of humanity are. Left to our own imaginations, most of us are not only unlikely to wade into that darkness, but we also lack the sheer depth and breath of skill he has in bringing it to life. What he offers is a sort of simulation of something otherwise inaccessible to most of us.
I'd make the case that without this exploration, our perception of life can be duller. I'd never want that dullness to be sharpened by real experience though; I'd much rather brush against that reality in the form of a story.
Human senses are calibrated by relative experience. Whether it be taste, sight, smell, touch, or even emotion: you won't recognize what feels good or what is better without experiencing what's worse in some way or another. The harrowing experience of imagining the vulnerability and suffering of loved ones or yourself might actually be an excellent tool for recalibrating and hardening your desire to see people safe and thriving. It may reestablish how crucial it is not to let the world descend into what Cormac describes. It can open your mind to possibilities you hadn't considered in ways that aren't strictly hypothetical or for the sake of pure masochism.
In defense of an otherwise entirely useless comment, you weren't really speaking ill of the dead, you were speaking ill of his work.
> To make matters worth he cant write worth a damn.
OK tough guy.
You didn’t like the book? Fine, but attacking his capabilities as a writer is ridiculous. He’s one of the greatest authors in a generation.
Also Id like to clarify I am basing my opinion solely on the one book of his ive tried to read- child of god
Ok, but can you see any beauty in the fact that he wrote words that evoked such a response? How much do you read on a daily basis that evokes absolutely nothing and passes without memory? Read some of his other stuff if you didn’t like this particular novel.
I was just offended.