/lit/ - Literature

But the rape was fun

don't ever show your face on /lit/ again

>>17681523
People here call it being filtered but dropping trash like BM just means you have developed taste

>>17681552
why is it so praised anyway?

>>17681552
>anime
automatically discredited.

If you were filtered by a pleb-friendly author’s easiest to digest novel (seriously I read BM to fifth graders and nursing home residents sometimes) then what haven’t you been filtered by? I can’t imagine you’ve been here long if that’s the case. Maybe you should go back to wherever you came from.

>>17681523
>>17681552
Filtered. Being desensitized to the violence was part of the point
>>17681589
>I read BM to fifth graders
Okay I wouldn't go that far, I don't think gore and rape is appropriate content for developing children you degenerate.

>>17681523
Listen audiobook, you can do it.

>>17681523
Filtering frequently happens when you lack enough background knowledge to understand what the author is trying to communicate. I’d suggest reading supplementary material and then reading works about the subjects you don’t understand. Do you know anything about Gnosticism, Nietzsche, theodicy, the Comanche, the Mexican-American war? If you don’t then read up on those and eventually some of the themes will come together.

>>17681618
>don't think gore and rape is appropriate content for developing children
Oh boo hoo. Tell that to every piece of popular media released within the last two decades

>>17681666
I bet you're Brazilian or something nasty. Show me some kids content that has the raping of dying women. What children are exposed to shape the perspectives they hold as adults, a child's mind should be protected from things that may taint its world view.

>>17681573
It really comes together in the end. Also, I spontaneously started hearing the narration as if a southern guy were telling the story at a campfire, and it made it way, way, better.

>>17681686
different anon here. american media is by far more violent than brazilian media. i'm sure law & order or one of the countless other primetime normie crime shows had the rape of a dying woman. that shit is extremely accessible to children.

>>17681686
>What children are exposed to shape the perspectives they hold as adults, a child's mind should be protected from things that may taint its world view.
Oh boo hoo mister armchair pediatric psychologist. Tell that to every piece of popular media released within the last two decades

it's literally polcels first book

>>17681717
Accessible to children doesn't make it children's content

>>17681717
Yeah and no logical human would go out of their way to show children those things. Of course they're going to exist but anon it literally going out of his way to read children a famously gory book. There's so much good literature out there that doesn't involve the removal of scalps and the killing of children—anon is just being a edgy pseud to children.

>>17681523
It’s a good book but /lit/ overrates it way too much. They should be shilling Suttree instead.

>>17681718
ouch the edge >>17681728 >>17681732

>>17681732
>>17681728

yes, valid points. i loved BM. found it extremely captivating, but yes, i would never recommend it to children. as you said, far too many works of literature available that does not involve the violence in BM.

Stephanie Reents thinks it’s a call to recognize Westward expansion as an evil genocide against indigenous peoples and that McCarthy wants us to recognize violence as evil, condemn American history, and give the natives back their land.

I thought it was a story about how violence, real, gripping, brutal violence, is always just over the horizon and her line is a crock of shit. What do you guys think?

>>17681732
I know very little about children but I’d wager that the helicopter-style of parenting that has increasingly become the norm does more harm to children than exposing them to occasional bloodshed and gender-based violence. The children of our long bygone progenitors were routinely exposed to death and violence and the occasional bare breast. Introduced in moderation it toughens even the most spineless of children and readies them for what they might experience later on. This has been true for all of recorded history.

>>17681790
yes, i agree with your viewpoint. i am part native, and no way did i feel like it was a commentary on the relationship between western expansion-era america and natives. what i got out of it is that it was more of a commentary on the primordial predatory instinct of man and how it is forever apart of us, no matter how "civilized" our society becomes.

>>17681796
Actual lunacy. You're a nigger who wants a world full of niggers. I don't think children should be coddled but a 10 year old has nothing to gain from hearing about necrophilia and pointless violence. Violence itself isn't an issue, it's when the purpose or point of this violence is obscure. When a child sees intense injustice it will hurt a world view that believes in a fair or just world: it will push them nihilism and cynicism. People have their whole lives to harden themselves, they need a childhood of hopefulness to decide what for. In the past this violence at least had a discernable reason: For God, for our country, for our survival. Blood Meridian is a great book but it displays too much senseless violence.

>>17681523
hahhahhahaha get off this board

>>17681523
I didn't notice the "endless nature descriptions" everyone talks about at all while I was reading this

>>17681790
you'd have to actively ignore half the book to come away with this notion

>>17681846
Are you a character from The Crucible or what?

>>17681589
It was just boring, dude

>>17681659
>Filtering frequently happens when you lack enough background knowledge to understand what the author is trying to communicate
So you're essentially telling me to be a pseud who forces himself to like reputable authors because they're reputable?

a good novel is good on its own. even with all that background knowledge, the novel's a boring sack of shit - endless, aimless descriptions

>>17681523
You don't belong

>>17681531
psued found. There was not explicit rape in BM

>>17683724
I do. Fuck pseuds.

There is no character development whatsoever. Such a pointless book. Binned after a few chapters.

>>17681573
Because it's great.

>>17683770
You are one.

>>17683779
>here comes the manga reader
The kid had an arc.

>>17681523
i never even finished the first chapter

the "philosopher" who recommended it to me lost my respect

>>17683769
Not true, at the first major battle the Indians sodomize some of the dying soldiers.

gay thread but Blood Meridian kicks ass

>>17683939
what philosopher!

>>17683939
how could you not continue after the goat sex scenr

>>17681523

I made it through it

The puppy bit fucked me up a lot

The kid at the end just made it all really sad

Honestly is the point that men pushed to the choice of dying or killing will take it too far based off of the inherent greed that permitted it to be?

I did enjoy it and the Judge will always be the craziest character to me but fuck it felt very nihilistic and I can't tell if that was the intention

>>17683779
>binned after a few chapters
>no character development
Goddamn anon! This is fucking retarded.

>>17684012
You should read Sepich's Notes on Blood Meridian. He gives a lot of historical grounding to the violence. Curiously he suggested the book is a historical romance. Yeah there is no real consensus on the interpretation, it is a very open book and its great on rereads for the same reason

>>17681573
The Judge and the mystery of his being.
The prose on nature
Motherfucking symbolism and evocative imagery.

>>17681523
You must have missed this gem of a passage. Shits on your eating tortillas.

Who else pictures the Judge as Marlon Brando?
Also does anyone else get major Heart Of Darkness vibes from reading BM?

>>17681523
Maybe read some of his earlier work like Outer Dark or Child of God before reading Blood Meridian.

>>17684175
No

>>17684143
the amount of effort it must have taken to compile all those sources is pretty remarkable. ‘notes on bm’ is an essential piece to understanding bm (and mccarthy’s patchwork in general).

its ok to not like every book anon

>>17684499
Yeah, he even revised it 15 years later and expanded it. Sepich has great appreciation for the realistic aspects of the book and is a testament to its overwhelming nature if you immerse yourself in it.

I feel like this is the kind of novel that would impress a high schooler but reading this as an adult person is a bit ridiculous. Every situation just serves as a vehicle to expose how EPIC and EDGY the judge is
>oh look woowww he killed a kid
>hahah he made ammo out of piss and murdered these indians lmfao
Also whoever said this is realistic is retarded lmao, this is the novel equivalent of your average grimdark adult comic book

>>17684820
This post reads like a manchild wrote it. Perhaps, thats the kind of adult he was talking about kek.

>>17684175
Yes

>>17684820
>highschooler
You have either not read the book or you simply have no idea what highschoolers are like. The book is 90% descriptions of nature interspersed with non-florid descriptions of violence. This is the anti-zoomer book because their ADHD riddled brain refuses to sit through it. Besides, you seem to know a lot about comics, hope the irony is not lost on you.

>>17681696
I read it like this and to a3 hour western ambient track on YouTube. It really set the mood, though i was kinda shit at imagining some of the location, which worked out since the environment seemed to exist more for emotion than description.

>>17681659
Terrible suggestion. Skim the Wikipedia page on Samuel Chamberlain, don't do that autistic shit like you have to pass a class before you can read it. Blood Meridian's prose is more than enough to enjoy it. Reading about the historicity of it is icing on the cake.

>>17681790
Women are not qualified to pass judgement on art or history.

>>17685645
Seconded. Save that shit for rereads or deepdives later on.

Great book, lot of pseuds here who try to be contrarian but end of following the pack. Reminder that aside from a few limp-wristed discord hacks this was one of the most loved books of /lit/ for the better part of 2010-2018

>>17681659

this is like kantbot advice

>>17681573
For me the judge is what made it. He is gradually built up to be some immortal mythical beast, yet he fits perfectly within the realistic world he presides, because he is a total mystery. You and the characters know deep down he is most likely just a very clever and powerful man, yet you can't help but wonder what his deal really is.

It's when he is pursuing the kid at the end when you realise how masterfully his character was developed. The book has a very realistic and grounded tone, yet here in the finale the protagonist is being hunted by some supernatural phantom, and it doesn't feel out of place. It's one of the tensest things I've ever read, because of everything that has preceded, you know there is no way the kid can win - the judge is no ordinary man.

>>17685680
The book only slid in the year end /lit/ charts after the advent of retard zoomers in late '15 and '16. That is unironically a good thing.

>>17681573
because its a masterpiece. i honestly feel bad for anyone who cant appreciate. im not even trying to be demeaning.

>>17683779
retard

>>17684175
na, that kind of takes a lot of his mystique away

Feel the same way about LOTR. I'm at the part where the fellowship gets out of the mines and Dumbledore "dies". Jesus this book has some high-highs such as the Bombadill parts but it gets so boring. FUCK......

>>17686146
I tried reading ROTK but the world building is too damn expansive thay I started to feel bored.

>>17681696
>I spontaneously started hearing the narration as if a southern guy were telling the story at a campfire
Similarly, I started hearing as if it were being growled by an angry Clint Eastwood

John david ebert is making a long series on Blood meridian. Try that OP, it might change your impression.

>>17681589
>easiest to digest novel
that would be The Road and No Country for Old Men

>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 wedding veil and some in headgear or 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 horses' 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.

I got a vertigo halfway through this tirade

>>17684175
i remember thinking once that mccarthy may have been inspired by marlon brando's kurtz to create the judge.

>>17684513
it’s encouraging to see someone else recommending Sepich in yet another thread claiming the book is vapid and badly written. I do think that Suttree is his best novel, but it’s a valuable learning experience tracking his work from the appalachian period to the transition marked by BM. My opinion is that cm made some deliberate attempts at widening his scope, possibly out of need to distance himself from the faulkner comparisons. It’s likely that his departure from “southern novels” is best represented by Blood Meridian, as it was closest in proximity to his first 4 works. His strategy of using other precedented works/historical documents as supplement seems to support the argument that he went to great lengths to abandon the southern genre out of necessity, as it is nearly impossible to contend with faulkner.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgyZ4ia25gg&list=PLE33BCD966FF96F23&index=17

This is a pretty interesting lecture about one aspect of the Judge, and how McCarthy purposefully invokes and then supersedes past literary works - like the Judge sketching in his book before destroying the artifacts he finds.

>>17681589

>>17684122
checked

>>17684175
nah i picture the judge more as the dude with the white face in lost highway. mysterious, other-worldly force.

>>17688135
>>17684175

>>17684175
yeah, i definitely do.

>>17688172
on point portrayal. what is this from?

>>17688199
Nah. This makes him look too devilish which he is not.

>>17684175
Nope.

>>17688199
It's actually from an x rated series called black-ass fuckers but I thought it looked pretty close

>>17688204
i agree although a certain amount of reconciliation is required to translate the narrator's descriptions/reader's peripheral understanding. If we're talking about his appearance in a movie adaptation there has to be more than simply his explicitly described characteristics

>>17681523
gang

>>17681796
You unfold the truth of the world to a child through care and patience so that you there is reflected in the descriptions a mediated barrier and a reflection of insulation and distance. Children should not be isolated from the truth, but their absorption of it must come organically.
You are a molestor, probably autistic. I would spread rumors about you around town if I ever heard that you read smut to my child. In fact I did that to a stupid nigger that wore his hair in a ponytail with shaved sides. He had celtic tattoos, a dumb girlfriend, and an unfortunate child who he felt it his duty to turn into a drug addy retard like himself. Retards like you and the fallen ascomannis have no sense of subtlety or paternal guidance. If you read something other than violent nonsense, perhaps you would reunite with those senses—senses common to all men not lost to the tide of modernity.

>>17685827
Why on earth did the Judge turn back to the village they got shot at, just to save black Jackson? Why could he have possibly cared enough for a ni

>>17684820
F-, the judge rarely does anything other than ride along with them, there's like 4 times he engages in actual violence and about the same number of times that he pontificates
the book is mostly descriptions of nature and after-the-fact violence that the gang stumbles upon

>>17688229
>i agree although a certain amount of reconciliation is required to translate the narrator's descriptions/reader's peripheral understanding. If we're talking about his appearance in a movie adaptation there has to be more than simply his explicitly described characteristics
I met a man who looked exactly as holden is described (except he had eyebrows and wasn't so strong) and he was creepier as any I ever knew

>>17684820
read paradise lost before making a fool of yourself son

>>17686722
that means its working

>>17688413

black jackson made the most effort to be like the judge. the other major characters naturally found him to incomprehensible, evil, untrustworthy...but black jackson was consumed by his lust for violence

>>17684175
i imagine him like pic related with the same voice that richard poe gave him in the audiobook

I tried reading it a couple of months ago but didn't enjoy the style much so dropped after a couple of pages for the moment. Admittedly it was much more readable than Moby Dick which I've read afterwards so I'll come back to BM when I'm in the mood.