/lit/ - Literature

>>15413405
Evidence of controversy?

>>15413405
ah, blood meridian, monsieur? that novel is the sark and chaparral of literature, the filament whereon rode the remuda of highbrow, corraled out of some destitute hacienda upon the arroya, quirting and splurting with main and with pyrolatrous coagulate of lobated grandiloquence. our eyes rode over the pages, monsieur, of that slatribed azotea like argonauts of suttee, juzgados of swole, bights and systoles of walleyed and tyrolean and carbolic and tectite and scurvid and querent and creosote and scapular malpais and shellalagh. we scalped, monsieur, the gantlet of its esker and led our naked bodies into the rebozos of its mennonite and siliceous fauna, wallowing in the jasper and the carnelian like archimandrites, teamsters, combers of cassinette scoria, centroids of holothurian chancre, with pizzles of enfiladed indigo panic grass in the saltbush of our vigas, true commodores of the written page, rebuses, monsieur, we were the mygale spiders too and the devonian and debouched pulque that settled on the frizzen studebakers, listening the wolves howling in the desert while we saw the judge rise out of a thicket of corbelled arches, whinstone, cairn, cholla, lemurs, femurs, leantos, moonblanched nacre, uncottered fistulas of groaning osnaburg and kelp, isomers of fluepipe and halms awap of griddle, guisado, pelancillo.

>>15413405
>deserve a place in the canon
what is the canon?

a. it sucks and you pseuds write off everyone who points that out.
b. american culture is ass, currently
c. nobody cares about "the canon" anymore

>>15413539

>>15413544
yeah yeah yeah laugh it up

>>15413528
the howitzer the judge used to kill injins with while naked in his tent with a 12 y.o girl and the idiot

>>15413889
lmao

>>15413584
Bugman go home

>>15413544
No, that's "the Epson"

>>15413405
The controversy is more or less over how edgy a book can be before people lose interest. Maybe the best comparison is Naked Lunch, which is also famous enough to draw readers and gratuitous enough to turn them off.

As for the canon. It's probably best to say that there's a very small mainstream canon of widely-read books that are both known and respected, then a number of sub-canons reflecting particular social bubbles. The Road is a canon contender, you can tell because it's talked about in mainstream locations and shoved at children. BM is a bigshot in the late-high-modernist and miserable edgelord sub-canons.

>>15413405
I don't get it either, it's not even his best novel. No Country For Old Men is way better.

>>15413981
Bite down hard, tard.

>>15413998
Errrgh I hate The Road. I've never come across a flatter pile of derivative garbage.

>>15414001
No country for Old Men is his worst, by far. Reads like a screenplay stretched to be a novel.

>>15413405
I’ll just end all controversy.

It is a great novel.

>>15413405
pretentious horseshit people delude themselves into thinking they like because they heard it's "real literature"

>>15414679
Unironically this.

>>15413539
rent free

>>15414679
It insists upon itself.

>>15413411
Underrated

i think it's really good. McCarthy has a great voice, and he created some really great characters (specifically The Judge). The prose is perfect; he knows exactly when to be vague and when to be obvious, when to be poetic and when to be plain, etc.
I can see why people have issues with it because it definitely feels like it's written to be a part of the "canon" if that makes sense. Very Melville/Faulkner/whatever, has a very "classic" feel to it. I love that style though, especially because he updates it in such a horrifying way.

>>15413405
It may be good writing but it esentially a story about a homosexual. Not going to fill my brain with sich nonsense.

>>15416013
fart huffer detected

>>15416533
y tho

>>15413411
heartily kek'd
>>15413539
>>15414679
based
>>15416013
t.

can someone give me an actual reason why it sucks or is everyone just shitposting

>>15416892
read >>15413411

book is just full of archaic words and pretentious prose to describe le epic murders and violence

>>15416817
>15x filename
you need to go back

>>15416911
have you read it? it can get pretty wordy in certain parts but a lot if it isn't that obscure. like most of it is intentionally very straightforward. >>15413411 is funny but it's not what the text actually reads like at all.

>spanish militiamen with handgonnes ignited using cigars
remind me why this book is bad

>>15416911
brainlet cope

I'm about halfway done with it right now. There are some good peices of writing here and there, but honestly it feels kind of empty. The archaic terms are annoying as fuck -escopetas- and he uses 'and' so fucking much. It feels like hes trying to hard to be real, 'damn bro life was tough back then and people like died and dying is like... Painful.' Id rather read history about the West. There is not a single interesting character so far. Everyone seems auxiliary. I'm really not sure if I want to finish it.

>>15417046
Take the redpill and just drop it, I got halfway and realized it wasn't getting better so I stopped

>>15417046
i'm reading it right now too, and i feel the same way. I bought into the meme and got it expecting 'le judge' to be as interesting and fantastic as everyone puts him. Everything he says just feels hollow and banal. Maybe that's the point? I'll finish it, but i'm kinda disappointed.

>>15417046
>>15417058
>>15417120
There's a reason why people mock this book. It's shit and the only reason pretend it has literary value is because some fart sniffing coastal tool told them this nonsense was a masterpiece.

>>15417161
>>15417058
Thanks. Just needed a reason too. I'm halfway through and there has not been a single scene that stuck out to me as truely interesting. Can't believe I wasted 45 minutes today reading tobin tell a story to the kid about that one time judge made gun powder from bat shit. "What is he a judge of" shut up Holy crap. Fucking memed into reading this pile of crap.

I don't see how anybody could call it pretentious. It's a hyper-violent western with some biblical shit

do you the guys itt actually read? all of these criticisms sound like they're coming from people who just started reading or barely understand it as an artform.

>>15417375
What am I missing? It's just not a good book.

>>15417375
Then how long have you been reading, anon? No one here is saying to fucking drop it and read Stephanie Meyer, they're just saying that Blood Meridian is not this modern epic masterpiece. People are entitled to their opinions. Also, the book is grammatically a fucking nightmare.
I don't know how people can compare it to Moby-Dick when at least Melville was grammatically correct in his lengthy descriptions of sperm whale noggins.

It's because his true masterpiece is pic related

>>15417433
>>15417475
You’re entitled to your opinions, obviously. It’s just the criticisms are so shallow itt, idk. Like saying that the grammar was “bad.” It’s written in a strange way, yes, but to me it’s obvious that McCarthy is aware of the way he is bending language, and, by experimenting with punctuation, he creates a voice for himself that is unlike anything I’ve read.

Just because you don’t understand something immediately doesn’t make it bad. I’d really encourage you guys to give it another shot with an open mind. It really is chilling and philosophically stimulating.

>>15417375
>durrr american retard "prose" that started gaining popularity as "literature" is art and you're a brainlet if you don't like it
stop. huffing. farts.

>>15417623
>Just because you don’t understand something immediately doesn’t make it bad. I’d really encourage you guys to give it another shot with an open mind. It really is chilling and philosophically stimulating.
see, here's where you over extend

it's not that we can't understand it. it's that we do understand it and see it without our perceptions being clouded by what some retard considers literary or not. stfu with your high art fart-huffing.

you've been brainwashed into thinking that questioning a piece of modern american "literature" means you "just didnt get it'

>>15417822
i said what you quoted because you criticized the novel's grammar. To me that's a pretty dead giveaway that you didn't "get" it, because he clearly is writing that way intentionally. I'd also say you "over extend" far more than me by implying that, since I have an opinion differing from yours, my mind is clouded and brainwashed. Sounds a little hypocritical to me.

also you must be 18 to post here

>>15417880
>He ate the last of the eggs and wiped the plate with the tortilla and ate the tortilla and drank the last of the coffee and wiped his mouth and looked up and thanked her.

GODDAMN mccarthy is a genius. a true visionary. i truly miss what he's going for because i trash his "muscular" prose

did you read The Road? or any other work by mccarthy aside from The Orchard Keeper?

>>15417950
and before you squeal, yes that excerpt is from The Crossing not Blood Meridian

>>15417880
I don’t think he’s saying it was unintentional, just that the intended effect was not to his taste.
I love blood meridian but I can see how that could put people off.

>>15417950
is that supposed to prove something? i thought you said his prose used too many obscure words and was impossible to understand?
Is the line you cited supposed to be an example of a bad line? Also who are you quoting with the "muscular" thing?

and yes i have read other McCarthy, although i haven't read all of his works.

>>15417961
yeah i get that it's not for everyone obv, just the pompous nature of his criticisms are dumb.

>>15417992
im not the anon who said anything about archaic words

also muscular prose is literally the style of prose mccarthy is known for inventing

>>15417880
i'm the anon who criticized his grammar. I criticize it because of the constant comparisons to Moby-Dick that "critics" give it, when really it's more of an Old Man and the Sea. I personally do not think it is a bad book, and understand his prose and its purpose. It's just not this masterpiece. I haven't finished it though and am trying to keep an open mind.

>>15417375
The retards ITT simply aren't well read enough to understand how good BM is.

>>15413997
kek

>>15418754
Confirmed retard.

>>15413405
I just want someone to properly define "great novel" in exact terms instead of extremely general ones.

>>15418889
If it has 3 threads at once on /lit/ and came out over 5 years ago, it's either great or "great"

>>15418912
>stop feeding the trolls
Ahhh, that's what I'd forgotten. Thank you for the reminder. Last BM thread for me, the fanbois can keep it.

>>15419127
Cool man sounds good

>>15414001
What goes on in the mind of people who say things like this? It could only be the product of someone who has the attitude that movies came before books.

I feel so immature. Relatively little bothers me but when I read dismissive opinions about books I like I just want to start swinging. There's really no reason to feel that way, it's not like it impacts my enjoyment of the work at all. Somehow I identify with the book and feel that an attack on the book is an attack on me. Anybody else get this?

>>15420755
I feel ya dog, I felt that way once when I was talking to someone about Moby Dick and they started shitting on it. The best cure for this mindset is to just take a chill pill and realize that it's never worth it to get angry at someone for their opinions on fiction, of all things.

>>15420755
This is what defending your culture feels like. Your opinion on the book is a culmination of every part of you up to this point. This is why people argue on 4chan about literally everything. They feel personally attacked by the media they consume because it is the only thing in modern society one can connect with because through advancing technology and corporate propaganda our ability to identify with any sort of "work" or "community" means nothing. Our jobs make nothing. We are shut alone in our homes. We are simply what we consume for we make nothing of value.

>>15420755
nah I just feel smugly satisfied that people are being filtered.

>>15420789
I must say that I have never been glad to hear of more cases of someone being unable to appreciate the sublimity of enjoying high quality literature. Compare it to the slaughterhouse; I'll never stop eating meat but I don't want to have to witness every botched execution that leaves the victim screaming and writhing on the ground.

>>15413405
It’s a mean book full of meanies and it doesn’t fill my heart with love and puppies and Jesus.

I heard so much about how violent it was that I was underwhelmed when I read it. It didn't feel that violent at all, given the premise. The Border on the other hand did feel somewhat violent to me because it didn't have that pretensions surrounding it, but perhaps also because it was so intimately told that I felt for the characters. I mean, nobody has made me love for a wolf. And when Billy shot the wolf to put it out of its misery at that fucking Mexican circus, it hurt me. And the description of him taking the corpse to bury far away in the mountains and shoveling the dirt onto it and her pups still in the belly, it was a hard moment. Blood Meridian didn't compel me in the same way but I did love the vernacular and Bibilical tone of it. It was very grandiose in comparison the Border's simplicity. I'm glad I didn't start with BM or I might sound like some of the anons here had I not already learned a fondness for McCarthy style, which I think is great albeit difficult at first.

>>15420804
You think that's bad? I'm even smugly satisfied when people enjoy literature for the wrong reasons. It's really the only way to enjoy this place.

>>15420868
No no no not the widdle wolfyrinos!

>>15414524
because it is a screenplay, that's how it was written initially.

>>15420952
Fuck off, Xi.