Cormac McCarthy.

[Mobius]

Cormac's 89 years old today.

Night of your birth. Thirty-three. The Leonids they were called. God how the stars did fall. I looked for blackness, holes in the heavens. The Dipper stove.

He was actually born in 33 so this Blood Meridian quote fits.

[Mobius]

Here is a decent sized excerpt from his new book The Passenger , from the New York Times

https://archive.ph/4ObPz

The Passenger comes out in about 10 days, and then his follow-up Stella Maris about a month after that

[Magnum Valentino]

Anyone got The Passenger yet? Curious if it's worth putting it to the top of my queue, which would involve buying it.

[wrec]

Anyone got The Passenger yet? Curious if it's worth putting it to the top of my queue, which would involve buying it.

100 pages in and really into it. The usual McCarthy tropes you'd expect with the male protagonist (haunted, alcoholic, itinerant, lengthy procedural descriptions) but there's a whole surreal thing going on with the sister that I don't recall him doing anything like before.

[kalowski]

Anyone got The Passenger yet? Curious if it's worth putting it to the top of my queue, which would involve buying it.

My copy is arriving on Friday!

[Magnum Valentino]

Class, I might pick up a copy tomorrow as I'm so rarely near the kind of book shop that sells this sort of thing.

[Dark Sexy Dangerous]

Cormac interview alert!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrUy1Vn2KdI

[wrec]

Great interview. Obviously it was focusing on the Institute and I suspect he'd rather talk about anything but writing, but the bits about the unconscious were especially fascinating.

I finished The Passenger last Friday and have been meaning to put a few spoiler-free thoughts together. It reminded me of Suttree a lot (not just because that was the last of his I read): central character Bobby Western is similarly guilt-ridden and haunted by his past, someone who might have been an academic instead doing dangerous or menial jobs, and drinking with petty criminals, bums and outsiders. While the whole thing is underpinned with existential terror, it's often very funny. The parts from the point of view of his late sister Alicia confronting her schizophrenic demons are very strange and atypical of McCarthy, and again often funny.

It's very rambly and episodic,  and some plot elements fizzle out in favour of tangential philosophical conversations - all this is very up my alley. Maybe those more attuned to structure and technique might have valid complaints, but criticisms I've seen seem to miss the point altogether.

You might have seen a Slate reviewer going viral having said that McCarthy was a nihilist (!), and if he thinks everything is meaningless, what's the point of writing a novel? That's all obviously ludicrous but many refuted this by referring to the note of hope at the end of The Road, and describing him as an essentially optimistic writer, which I don't think is generally true at all. Anyway "the discourse" is at least partially fucked.

Won't say more for fear of spoilering but I absolutely loved it, plenty of familiar Cormac tropes but some new territory too. The writing is wonderful of course and deeply atmospheric. I'm all hyped up about it so wary of going overboard but certainly enjoyed it as much as any of his and am still mulling it over. I'm not sure if Stella Maris will feel like a kind of appendix to this or how it will deepen or expand the story of Alicia but am bursting to get a hold of it.

[sevendaughters]

Without having read either, I get the feeling that you have to read The Passenger, read Stella Maris, and then read The Passenger again, to really swim in this, to really understand how the two psyches inform each other.

The Slate piece wasn't as awful as the tweets mocking it would have it (part of the problem was the dumb tweet and the shaping of it by the editorial team) but the general discussions around literary writing have worsened as the fate of English as an academic discipline has in parallel. As liberalism continues to suffer morbid symptoms, so does not being able to contemplate someone not writing from that place. To me McCarthy is writing from that same place of vocation and calling that the greats seem to emerge from.

[wrec]

Without having read either, I get the feeling that you have to read The Passenger, read Stella Maris, and then read The Passenger again, to really swim in this, to really understand how the two psyches inform each other.

Very likely.

Slate piece wasn't as awful as the tweets mocking it would have it (part of the problem was the dumb tweet and the shaping of it by the editorial team) but the general discussions around literary writing have worsened as the fate of English as an academic discipline has in parallel. As liberalism continues to suffer morbid symptoms, so does not being able to contemplate someone not writing from that place. To me McCarthy is writing from that same place of vocation and calling that the greats seem to emerge from.

Yeah, there was (I think) a Times review that took issue with aspects common to his writing in general which seemed odd. I saw a bit of one on youtube that said if it'd been by an unestablished writer all the bits not vital to the plot would get edited out - which to me works as an indictment of the publishing world, not McCarthy. I find the obsession with "plot" above all bizarre.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

Hi if the only ones I've read are The Road and Blood Meridian what do I read next? Thank you kisses

[kidney]

Hi if the only ones I've read are The Road and Blood Meridian what do I read next? Thank you kisses

Outer Dark

[Magnum Valentino]

Yeah Outer Dark.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

righto, ta

[kalowski]

Or if you have time on your hands The Border Trilogy:
All the Pretty Horses
The Crossing
Cities of the Plain

[Magnum Valentino]

I've had Blood Meridian and the last two books of the Border trilogy sitting unread for what must be years now. Can't really make a start on the trilogy without All The Pretty Horses but I kind of want not to have these fuckin books sitting over me (literally, they're in the shelf above my desk) any more.

Can anyone offer a decent argument for reading Blood Meridian. I really loved The Road, No Country and Outer Dark but wasn't dying about Child of God or the Orchard Keeper.

[kalowski]

Simple argument: it's fucking amazing.

[dontpaintyourteeth]

yeah get it read

[Mobius]

You should read Blood Meridian it's the bestest book ever.

Hopefully that endorsement encourages you!!!

[13 schoolyards]

Blood Meridian is excellent. It's McCarthy's best book for mine.

[kidney]

Speaking of, it's being made into a movie (for realsies this time).

[Mobius]

Have you read it yet magnum

Speaking of, it's being made into a movie (for realsies this time).

Yeaaah I made a thread in movie chat for it

https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=102434.msg5261247#msg5261247

There seems to have been in uptick in blood Meridian popularity because a big YouTuber called wendigoon has done a 5 hour vid all about it, which is nice!

[Magnum Valentino]

Have you read it yet magnum

I've started! It's good!

[iamcoop]

GONE

[bgmnts]

Would you lot recommend Cormac to someone who has become more sensitive to the cruelest narure of humanity?

Is it worth powering through?

[dontpaintyourteeth]

yeah

[Alberon]

No Country for Old Man.

[Old Nehamkin]

Would you lot recommend Cormac to someone who has become more sensitive to the cruelest narure of humanity?

Is it worth powering through?

Give Suttree a go. It's probably the warmest of his novels while also being generally wonderful.  Disclaimer: some fairly bleak stuff does still happen but compared to Blood Meridian it's... I dunno. Something much less harrowing than that.

[kidney]

Cormac McCorpsey?

Fuck :(

[kalowski]

End of The Road