/lit/ - Literature

>>15802830
What's to understand. The Judge is the gnostic archon come to explain the friend-enemy distinction to a bunch of marauding cowboys in the desert. Then he fucks the kid in the ass

Some say the Judge is the devil

Some say djinn

Some say God in human skin.

vamonos, amigos

>>15802890

de donde viene?

>>15802880
>>15802843

Is the Judge a catalyst for violence or the evidence of it?

What's there to understand?

Old West bad

Read it again.
Pay close attention to everything Glanton does in the evening desert, and also to The Kid's sections in the denouement after he become The Man.

>>15802830
>Ride in to town
>Party hard
>Kill some locals
>Judge does something weird or unnerving
>Leave the town in shambles
>Walk through the desert
>Get in a bloodbath
>Ride in to town
I'm 3/4 of the way through, does this loop continue?

>>15804446
yes. besides some brilliant imagery and symbolism (horses falling, piss gunpowder bread, judge on big ass rock in the desert), the plot is quite redundant, predictable and boring imo

>>15804446
No, it changes around that point.

Reread it

>>15802913
Both, which reifies the harnessmaker parable. Bloom stresses the gun inscription to emphasise the constant presence of death and war in the American pastoral dream

>>15804468
>>15804570
Read some more, they entered the encampment at the ferry, killed some locals, judge did some weird shit with a coin except this time they fortified everything and kept partying, then got in to a bloodbath with indians.

Is the ending Lynchian?
>dancing bear gets killed
>little girl crying over it
>the man goes to have sex with a midget
>the judge kills the man and rapes him
>antagonist dancing and being unnerving at the end

I honestly thought Glanton was the Judge for about halfway through the novel. He purposely was written in a subtle way until the violence starting ratcheting up. The Judge only stepped back when Glanton started filling his shoes.

Also
>The Judge was responsible for all those child deaths/disappearance right?

>AHHHHHH NOT THE VIOLENCE DONT MAKE ME BEAR WITNESS >NOOOO IM HAVING DOMINION OVER EVERYTHING IM GOOOING INSAAAAAAANE
>HELP ME NIGGER JACKSON

Should I read this book? I've heard of it before but I don't know the plot

>>15804922
yes, he is spotted naked dancing around the disappearance/deaths of the kids and he does the same at the end of the book after he rapemurdered the man

>>15802830
Ok. What is the point of the book? What is it trying to say?
This is just empty edginess.

>>15805233
something about man's propensity for violence

>>15802830
Capitalism:)
Happiness:)
Fucking awesome:)

>>15805077
How and why would you know the plot before reading a book? Just fuckin read it

>>15806199

why is he so pale (literally white devil?)

why did he like raep of children (represents the indiscriminate victims of all violence and its imprinting on all?)

why did he not want any witnesses for his own workings but encouraged others to partake in similar actions? (is it because if you understand the in/visible nature of war maybe you question it?)

>>15806310
Some men... just want to see the world burn ;P
Truly this is the Great American Novel

>>15806337
Retard

>>15802843

The gnostic interpretation is a meme.

At a more fundamental level, the Judge's conflict is with "optical democracy," the Real, which threatens his rationalism. The Judge's violence is rooted in his attempt to order the world into names and categories that he documents in his ledger. Scalping is a textual enterprise. Allegory itself is the violence, which is why the gnostic interpretation is a bit ironic. If the Judge is the gnostic archon, then we have fallen for his trap.

>>15804468
>yes. besides some brilliant imagery and symbolism (horses falling, piss gunpowder bread, judge on big ass rock in the desert), the plot is quite redundant, predictable and boring imo

The plot is supposed to be recursive. Just like the landscape is recursive. It reflects the Judge's quest.

>>15802830

This was the book that /lit/ was reading together last month and holding discussion threads about the book every couple of days. What book is /lit/ reading now? I thought it was either Tolstoy or Homer.

>>15804872
BM pre-dates TP but I know what you mean

>>15805201
Did he really rape him?

>>15806598

he raped him in the classical sense. a forceful seizure of his soul.

>>15802830

It's not a crossword puzzle. The way to get more out of it is to get better at reading so the language doesn't hinder you and you can read it fast and absorb it viscerally. Clever symbolism that you need to "get" is all bollocks.

P.S. The most distressing bit is where Brown cuts the barrels off that beautiful shotgun. I hated him so much for doing that. I cheered when I found he was hanged.

F___ you, David Brown.

>>15806598
the night before a naked child is found dead the judge is seen dancing naked, this is evidence of him dancing naked after he rapes, so yeah he raped the man

What are some good discussion questions? My book society meeting is in two hours

>>15804468
>caring about plot
don't you have to be 18 to post here?

>>15806526
It's Anna Karenina. I'm gonna skip it but I can't wait for the next one.

>>15802830
Watch this lecture and the second part.
https://youtu.be/FgyZ4ia25gg

>>15809878
Her conclusion of McCarthy as a simultaneous re-interpretation of Scripture and the western canon in the second video as the kid w/ bible is great and something i didn't catch when reading.
It's a shame the second video didn't include the portion of the lecture where she elaborates on the life and death quote she ends the first lecture on.

>>15802830
Use cliff notes or something. There's plenty of them online if you look for them.

I hated All The Pretty Horses so much I can't read McCarthy. Are all his books just as bad?

I dislike over-analyzing this book, I feel it works better being read and taken as some tales cowboys would tell over a campfire

>>15809822

I'll wait for the next book for next month as well. But I'll download Tolstoy's Anna Karenina from Gutenberg later.

>>15802830
read Notes on Blood Meridian, of course

>>15804771
what the FUCK was the point of the harnessmaker parable?

>>15811477
whats wrong with atph?

Nothing exists in the world without the judge's consent. One other poster mentioned his writing everything in his ledger. The Judge is highly educated and a man of supernatural ability in almost every area. He represents the human desire for control and mastery and the necessity to justify through rationalization. The Kid, along with the the ex-priest to an extent, is something that exists without the judge's consent. The Kid escapes the judge and does not allow himself to be dominated by the judge. The Kid, though violent, is at first animalistic in how he acts. He engages in the atrocities perpetrated by the Glanton gang, but he is left wearied by them rather than exhilerated (as the Judge is) or completely debased (like Brown). The Judge cannot brook the Kid's nonconformity to his philosophy, hence his dogged pursuit and then implied violation. He dances because he exults in his mastery over this victory over a particularly stubborn facet of reality. I think it also ties in to why he takes such evident pleasure in fucking children and why he keeps the idiot as a pet. Children and the idiot are unable to be reasoned into his way of conceiving of the world, however self-evident it may seem, or manipulated to serve his aims, so the only purpose they can serve is to bring him pleasure.

To understand it first you must understand ye tortilla

Glanton pretty much spat, dumb-dumb.

>>15811605
Bland descriptions of characters and landscapes. Dull, overlong chapters where nothing really happens. Naked men bathing together, calling out perhaps an incipient gayness in the author. No music or energy in the prose.

What was Glanton's tax policy?

>>15802830
>no one has recommended amy hungerford’s, the foremost contemporary american literary scholar, yale lectures readily available on youtube

>>15814064
>anon cannot read on the literature board