Main Menu

Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 11:28:43 PM

Login with username, password and session length

Cormac McCarthy.

Started by marquis_de_sad, February 27, 2019, 02:37:56 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

marquis_de_sad

There was some talk about McCarthy's The Road in the what are you reading thread. I started a thread for him. Here it is.

iamcoop

I thought Blood Meridian was fucking amazing but foolishly never bothered to read anything else by him. How silly. Thanks for reminding me. I'm guessing The Road next?

ToneLa

Asked his forum this.

So, No Country.

Is that Wells cunt just a bullshitter? Also reckon he did war crimes with the mention of executing men on their knees.

ads82

Do we reckon he's the world's greatest living author then? I'm just starting The Road which captures a desolate tone unlike any other novel I've read.

magval

Got stuck on a bus with The Road and finished it earlier than I'd planned to. Fucking wrecked me. One image stuck with me for weeks and I might have to get rid of the book because when I glimpse it on the shelf it floods back into my mind's eye. Pure nightmarish. Gorgeous writing, look forward to more McCarthy this summer when the reading bug returns to me.

Twit 2


amoral

He can be tough going with his run-on sentences and minimal use of punctuation. When he goes into those long passages where it's just 'and' and 'and' and 'and', I often think there's no way to read that that sounds natural or satisfying. I still love him, but it can be a bit of a chore. Child of God might be my favorite.

Kryton

Quote from: magval on February 27, 2019, 09:33:57 PM
Got stuck on a bus with The Road and finished it earlier than I'd planned to. Fucking wrecked me. One image stuck with me for weeks and I might have to get rid of the book because when I glimpse it on the shelf it floods back into my mind's eye. Pure nightmarish. Gorgeous writing, look forward to more McCarthy this summer when the reading bug returns to me.

The pregnant women?

PlanktonSideburns

Read child of God,  felt it was hilarious pulpy garbage with a nice glossy wordsheen


sevendaughters

I really love Suttree. It's less tight, it unspools gently, and it's funnier than his more iconic work. Where Blood Meridian suggests that western intensity of a There Will Be Blood turned up to 11, Suttree is more of a shaggy dog story, a Big Lebowski on the river. Which makes its tragedies and sufferings more impactful to me.


I found The Road too bleak and monotonous (while obviously noting that the boy McCarthy could write a bit) but probably wasn't in the right frame of mind for it. Gave up about half-way through but decided I might try a shorter dose of McCarthy some time. 

Having a bit of a weakness for Southern Gothic-styled literature I picked up Child of God in the library on a whim and was very impressed - a tightly controlled atmosphere of menace.  Downright disturbing really, but he performs the old trick of taking a monstrous character and getting to you sympathise to some degree with him due to skilful evocation of the shitty hand he was dealt in life.

CaledonianGonzo

Blood Meridian really is The One, but a second shout out for Suttree.  One of the best jakey novels ever written.

I'm not such a fan of his earlier Appalachian novels.

ASFTSN

Finished Child of God yesterday. It was probably one of the most 'just okay' novels I've read in ages. Depiction of landscape and place probably the best thing about it, but characters were almost all exactly the same except for some were male and some were female.

CaledonianGonzo

Early ones are - to my mind - the faltering footsteps as he was finding his voice. The run from Suttree through to Cities of the Plain (or debatably The Crossing)  is where the claim to greatness lies.

ToneLa

#15
Not sure I get why the end chapters of Child of God are oot of sequence. Drama I suspect; it works, but not convinced. Liked it tons, mind. Seems like he shot the craw

Twit 2

Does anyone else find the polysyndeton (thanks Wikipedia) tiring after a while? Some of his sentences are up there with the Joyce and Nabokov, but as much as I love McCarthy I couldn't read it all the time.

ToneLa

I find his work very rhythmic, almost musical; in that sense the, uh, polysyndeton (hello new word! And in a McCarthy thread as well!) is powerful. I roll my eyes a bit when I see people go "oh he doesn't use commas he's shit". As if you can do anything in literature but fuck with syntax.

I can see it getting tiring but I approach his work almost like a mood. I know what I'm in for. It jarrs otherwise. I think sometimes it's supposed to. It becomes lyrical and I think it is often employed as if it were the spoken word. But his books are islands; nobody else does it like him, I wouldn't want everyone to as it would be insufferable. It is a trademark of his. I can get into the groove easily enough because it becomes powerful, although there's multiple reasons I'll stop reading (Blood Meridian took me forever due to looking up definitions and re-reading passages to parse them correctly and sometimes just immediately re-read for the jollies), so in a sense, yes, I suppose I get tired! His work can be a hard read, but sometimes you just lock in

Mobius

Why isn't there a Blood Meridian movie?

kalowski

Quote from: ads82 on February 27, 2019, 07:35:15 PM
Do we reckon he's the world's greatest living author then? I'm just starting The Road which captures a desolate tone unlike any other novel I've read.
I do. Incredible writer. I've finished them all and love them all. Not really into ranking them, but The Road is quite incredible.
Would also mention the Border Trilogy: three amazing books that tie together so well in the final section

ToneLa


holyzombiejesus

Inspired by this thread, I got The Road. Whizzed through it in a day and really enjoyed it. Moved on to Blood Meridian which is a bit tedious at the moment. I enjoyed the first 50 or so pages but it just doesn't seem to be flowing since the kid joined up with the judge again. About halfway through now - the description of the snake-bitten mule was pretty foul - and am hoping it picks up again. The bumpf goes on about how the boy embarks on an awful violent spree but he's done fuck all since his first gang got jumped by those Native Americans. Lightweight.

grassbath

Keep at it - I remember feeling like the middle was just drifting nowhere between massacres of varying size and horribleness, but the ending is absolutely incredible.

gib

Quote from: grassbath on March 11, 2019, 06:27:57 PM
Keep at it - I remember feeling like the middle was just drifting nowhere between massacres of varying size and horribleness, but the ending is absolutely incredible.

Seconding this.

holyzombiejesus

Ah, that is good to know. Thanks. I wasn't sure if it was just me - I've been going through a stage of finding it near impossible to settle in to a book and have jettisoned loads after about 2 pages over the last couple of weeks - so I'm glad that others have felt the lull.

PlanktonSideburns

Love him

WHAT A BAASTAD!

hilarious

holyzombiejesus

#26
Quick question: is Suttree worth reading? I'm starting something new tonight and don't know whether to go for it or not. I've read 3 Cormac McCarthy books this year and only genuinely enjoyed 1 of them. Does Suture have pages in Spanish? Why does he do this, the silly arse?

sevendaughters

Quote from: holyzombiejesus on June 19, 2019, 06:41:40 PM
Quick question: is Suttree worth reading? I'm starting something new tonight and don't know whether to go for it or not. I've read 3 Cormac McCarthy books this year and only genuinely enjoyed 1 of them. Does Suture have pages in Spanish? Why does he do this, the silly arse?

Suttree is my favourite but it's more of a shaggy dog story, it's also the most approachable and forgiving, the one you could best imagine as a prestige HBO series (cancelled after one series but those who miss it REALLY miss it).

holyzombiejesus

Cool. I'll start it tonight.

Why does he write those bits in Spanish though? I know that it's kind of authentic because the characters would be speaking Spanish but I find it really detracts from the books.

kalowski

There are no McCarthy books not worth reading.
Es el mejor escritor vivo.