/lit/ - Literature

>>17713563
The volcano part was one of the best parts in a book I ever read, followed closely by the desert shootout scene and some parts of the Crossing
>Why didn't Glanton piss with everyone else at the volcano?
Because Glanton had already signed a 'deal' with the Judge when they talked, shortly after the gang found him in the desert. The others signed the abominable contract with the him by pissing to make bullets. It signifies the beginnings of the atrocious events that were to follow.
source: my ass. I just made that up and have no idea what I'm talking about.

>>17713620
>The Crossing
The Wolf in the dog pit section and the doctor's procedure on Boyd were pretty kino.

>>17713620
yeah the volcano is kino, i listen to chapters 10 and 11 of blood meridian frequently. the Richard Poe narrated recording is pure kino from start to finish. Chapter 11 has the harness maker story which bewilders me every time I listen to it. I still don't know exactly what it means

Chapter 10 is my favorite in literature

>>17713695
https://youtu.be/FgyZ4ia25gg
https://youtu.be/7ZFmf4T5L3o

These lectures include a potential answer to the harness maker story.
When the kid becomes a man later in the book and gets attacked in the night by a child, the child's friend says about him that his father was killed in buried in the woods like a dog or something or other, implying that the child's father was the harness maker and even the harness maker's son went on to become a killer of men. endless cycle of violence

the real Glanton had a notoriously small penis, it's how he died

>>17713563
It's gay to pull out your pizzle in front of other men

>>17713915
What I don't understand is what the hell point Holden was trying to make. I thought the bonepicker said it was his grandad was killed. His grandad was the traveler, not the harness maker, but it's not clear how the bonepicker would know how his grandfather was killed. Maybe I'm wrong.

>>17713563
he’s pee shy

>>17713620
>followed closely by the desert shootout scene and some parts of the Crossing
To me, nothing will ever compare to the kid escaping the judge in the desert. I knew the ending the first time I read it and it was still one of the most thrilling scenes in literature.

>>17713632

The part of Suttree where Sut wanders starving through the woods for however long is the most kino thing McCarthy has written.

>>17714550
Nice picture but I prefer this one

>>17715422
lmao

>>17714550
i hate all art of this book. that looks like it's from some faggoty shonen.

>>17713563
This is somewhat related to the thread but when i was reading this book, i found a passage thats off. Can someone explain why? This is the one im talking about:

>>17715695
A loud gas seeped out of the Judge's pale buttocks which sounded like a violin. Did you hear that, kid said he. the sky was ever so dark like a Preacher's soutane. Toadvine's penis was ready to shoot out his sticky seamen into black john Jackson chocolate asshole like a cannon at the battle of Tuxpax. black Jackson's leaking precum spatted on the red dirt. in the manner of a monk. Tobin brought out the cum pail to be cumed in. hence the name cum pail. Tobin handed the cum pail to Toadvine and he squeezed his meat barrel out white water into the bucket and handed to black Jackson and he did the same and handed to the kid and forced him to spit his cum out and he gave the pail back to Tobin which he shot rounds after rounds of baby batter into the cum pail and gave it to the Judge. The judge place his ass on the opening of the bucket and farted and sharted inside the bucket and slapping his hardy turds on the sticky and wet cum. Did you hear that, kid said the judge. white john Jackson came into the camp and talked to black john Jackson.

Nigger said he
yep said he
yep said he

then black Johnson slit white johnson's throat. shooting out ropes upon ropes of blood. The Judge got up and looked at the bucket and starting pissing inside the cum pail which turned into gun powder. he placed the gun powder in his colt dragoon and shot an Injun's head and raped him near the blood meridian and under the even redness in the west.

>>17713620
You have a nice ass.

>>17714181
something something past civilizations something something never gonna live up to them

>>17713695
>>17713915
>>17714181
https://youtu.be/8RSM1izYLy0?t=307

>God how the stars did fall. I looked for blackness, holes in the heavens.
Still remains one of my favorite lines in any book.

>>17715705
what da? that's nasty nigga... lol

>Your ideas are terrifying and your hearts are faint. Your acts of pity and cruelty are absurd, committed with no calm, as if they were irresistible. Finally, you fear blood more and more. Blood and time.

Anyone have comments about this quote at the beginning of the book?

i tried reading this. the opening was kino af but the middle is such a slog. just them wandering around with the judge saying something edgy every now and then. it’s actually pretty hilarious how edgy the guy is. what the fuck was his problem? I laughed when he drowned the puppies kek.

No way is this book Moby Dick level though

>>17713632
Everything with the wolf was heartbreaking. McCarthy goes out of his way not to anthropomorphize it or portray it as anything other than a wild animal, but when Billy has the vision of it as a lord of nature’s chaos after it dies makes it hit a hundred times harder than if dog sidekick had died. Everything about that book is pure misery.

>>17716675
i like how he talks about worlds in eyeballs. he understands that wolf has a whole inner life

Okay, who or what the fuck was the Judge exactly?

>>17715422
Isn't the judge naked here except for his hat?

>>17715463
Keyed

>>17716698
Embodied evil.
First reading the book I assumed he was the devil, but apparently he's like a lieutenant of the Gnostic god who made the material universe.

>>17716218
How do you know? You haven't read Moby dick yet.

>>17716675

I cried like a bitch

>>17716698
The cruel indifference of nature and fate personified

>>17717154

He did some pretty unnatural shit tho. Fate I’ll give you.

>>17717053
i read Moby Dick a couple years ago. hands down best book I read in my life. people compared it to Blood Meridian so i checked that out and was really disappointed

>>17717186
I find it hard to believe that somebody sat through Moby dick but found BM a slog in the middle, and these two are my favourite books. Great if you liked it, but BM is only superficially similar.

>>17716729
No he is described as wearing a patchwork or cut up and crudely patched coats and skins and furs and shit. he split Toadvine's hat down the middle to fit it on his lunar dome

>>17717689
He also has the retard on the leash with him. Somebody should OC an apu there.

>>17716698
>Whatever his antecedents he was something wholly other than their sum, nor was there system by which to divide him back into his origins for he would not go. Whoever would seek out his history through what unraveling of lois and ledgerbooks must stand at least darkened and dumb at the shore of a void without terminus or origin and whatever science he might bring to bear upon the dusty primal matter bliwing down out of the millenia will discover no trace of any ultimate atavistic egg.

Page 322. The judge is a mystery, he is not any one thing. He defies categorization, he mocks the human conceit of it. The judge mocks all human conceits throughout the book.

I hate this book I got memed into reading this by lit/ Never again. Smashing 2 baby Indian's into a rock how am I supposed to not laugh at this scene. The judge breaks horse knees then proceeds to cook it, again how am I supposed to not laugh at this.

>Spits into Fire
>Judge kills random Indian boy
>Spits into fire
>Judge plays flute while dancing
>Spits into fire
>The Kid
>The man
>Lets kill puppies for fun
>The Judge
>Best Character dies in bed with his pants down
>No Rape
>No cannibalism
>Intellectual speech's about War and Man
>Muh Violence
>Spits Into Fire

>>17717867
some parts are pretty hilarious desu, the whole piss bullets scene was excellent

>>17716698
Muh violence, he will be here forever.

>>17717867
There is rape though.

>>17715705
Be forewarned this is gay scatological garbage pretending to be an excerpt from the book

>>17717873
I found the Nigga part funny(He's thinks we're Nigga's") but the Judge was really boring in my opinion. Glanton the best character dies with his pants down and for me that killed anymore interest I had.

>>17717888
I don't remember I wanted Rape and ultra violence I got nothing i've seen mexican cartel videos. This was just tame.

>>17717891
Anon, most people read the thread from top down.

>>17717904
Or they read the reactions to long (deceptive) passages to see what others thought of it.

>>17717903
You said
>No rape

>>17717895
>Judge was really boring
This is a weird opinion. How did you find him edgy? The tone of the book never glorifies what they are doing unless you think all descriptions of violence is inherently edgy.

>>17718199
*are inherently edgy

>>17715422
I literally read this book because of this image

>>17713563
God I wish my English were better, I'm really struggling a lot with this one

>They watched him. They sat around the fire and they watched him. Those that watched him those that did not.

>>17717867
>forgets the lush descriptions of the geography, courtesy of Corncob's thesaurus

>>17719438
Is this your first Mccarthy? If so, read Outer dark or Child of God before it. They will help you go down the deep end where you'll be comfortable with the book then. Child of God is really short and it's written in a sparser style with regular flourishes ala BM.

>>17719493
I will, thanks!

>>17717891
It’s from book man

>>17714015
Prove it, you mean read nigger.

>>17714550
Why does a kid from the 1800s have fucking justin beiber hair.

>They rode on

>>17715705
This is from the special edetion, they added some things that were not in the origional as "improvements". Some people claime they love it, others just pretend it doesn't exist.

>>17720039
where do you suppose he could have gone for a haircut?

>>17717689
>>17717703
When he's against the kid in the barren of the dead sheep this is after he left the fool with the horses.

They pass David brown in the desert after the kid and the priest leave the judge and toadvine in the hole and when they see the judge again he's wearing David browns cloths with his horse and guns.

>>17713620
One of the things I always found interesting was how in the RL biography of Glanton there's a mention of him being trained in arms at a young age.

Thus, I always wondered if his connection with the Judge was because the Judge had served as a father figure to him in his youth much in the same way the Judge tries to become a father figure to the Kid. In one of the earlier drafts of Blood Meridian, the Judge is even present during the kid's birth, which I feel lends a bit more credence to the Judge trying to hook his favorite disciples early on in their lives.

Also notice how despite the Judge's reputation as the most brutal member of the gang, the only time he's explicitly mentioned as killing someone is when he crushed a dude's head with his hand, and even then I think that part was hearsay. He seems to love orchestrating violence in others more than perpetuating it himself.

>>17720366
The night of Kid's birth there is leonids shower. Reference to Satan's fall in paradise lost? Would that represent the coming of the Judge on earth if we assume him to be the Devil?

>>17716698
Idk but I always thought it was interesting that he's basically a giant infant in his description

>>17720419
I think it could be argued that there's a connection there. There's also the gnostic connection one could make; that the kid is an example of the 'divine spark' and the showers mark his being born, since the symbol of the divine spark in Gnosticism is often represented as fire. An interesting tidbit about that:

The falling of the leonids serves as an integral part of a Native American tribe's culture, it serving as a significant spiritually event, and I believe as foundation for their calendar system.

This same native American Tribe is the one who pursues the Judge and the boy into the desert, and the desert where the boy and the Judge have their showdown is apparently their burial ground, or had served as some sort of place where the spirits of the dead dwell.

I wish I could remember the names of everything involved. You can read more about this if you research the Native American lore that went into Blood Meridian. There's some lovely very googlable papers on the topic.

>>17720284
He lived with scalpers. He would not have to travel far.

>>17720413
He shoots the guy at the bar fight.

Read another book

>>17720667
Nah, he crushes that guy's head. Unless I am misremembering.

>>17720696
He shot the drunk mexxer who stabbed one of theirs and then crushed a different guy's head

>>17713563
Is Blood Meridian actually worth the read? I like western stuff, but the closest I’ve ever gotten to reading a western book was Steel Ball Run.

I hate this book simply because symbolism is stupid.

>>17721106
There's no symbolism in the book

>>17721489
There are a couple of baptist-like scenes in it.

>>17721533
You mean the scene where someone is actually baptized?

>>17720912
It's only a western in the sense that it is set in 1849-1850 in the North American Southwest. Read it if you have the patience and taste for stunningly beautiful prose and autistic levels of authenticity and historicity. Blood Meridian is a masterwork on almost every level, in my opinion it is nearly flawless. Your mileage may vary, if you read for plot or "character development" (whatever the hell that is), you might not like it.

>>17721589
Are you talking about the idiot? I don't recall him being baptized by a lettered man or anything, just washed by Big Bertha Butt or whatever her name was. Fat Susan. Something like that.

>>17721598
>plot
>character development

So the things that make a novel...Good.

>>17721611
They wash him but they also literally baptize him in that same scene. That's not symbolism, that's just describing characters performing an action. Are you ESL?

I love the scene where the Judge accuses the reverend of all the crimes then gets him killed. This book has a lot of funny moments.

>>17721617
Sounds like /sffg/ will be a much more interesting thread for you. Why don't you head over there?

>>17721667
Why don't you make me Mr. Will-to-Power? Oh right, you can't. :) Typical white man! All gas out the ass, but no velocity.

>>17721628
>They wash him but they also literally baptize him in that same scene.
From page 269:
>The Borginnis woman waded out with her dress ballooning about her and took him [the idiot, James Robert] deeper and swirled him about grown man that he was in her great stout arms. She held him up, she crooned to him. Her pale hair floated on the water.

This is the only time the Borginnis woman is described as taking the idiot into the water. No baptismal ritual is conducted here. No prayers were said, no indication that a christian religious ceremony was taking place here. The paragraph immediately after this described the idiot having his hair combed and having been dressed. The next time the idiot gets into the water, which is on page 270, it is in the middle of the night and he is naked again, and the idiot just walks into the water like the retard he is and starts drowning. The judge happens to be walking by and the judge rescues the idiot.

>Now the judge on his midnight rounds was passing along at just this place stark naked himself - such encounters being commoner than men suppose or who would survive any crossing by night - and he stepped into the river and seized up the drowning idiot snatching it aloft by the heels like a great midwife and slapping it on the back to let the water out.
Okay get ready, here is the next sentence:
>A birth scene or a baptism or some ritual not yet inaugurated into any canon.
This is the closest you'll get. The judge rescues him in a scene which is similar to a baptism but he is not literally baptized.

>>17721589
You mean the scene where someone is ACTUALLY BAPTIZED?
>>17721628
>They wash him but they also LITERALLY BAPTIZE him in that same scene
(Emphasis mine)

The idiot can only be described as having been literally baptized if you define baptism as being in the water and then pulled out, with no reference to any official religious rites, ceremonies, or tradition.

>>17716218
>>17717186
Care to explain why you found the middle of BM to be a slog? I legitimately cannot wrap my head around someone who liked MD to not enjoy the middle of BM.

>>17715422
Kek, that is absolutely perfect.

>>17721617
Some books (very few of them) work even without them. This is one of them, The Kid develops though, if that helps; and the Judge is a very memorable character.

>>17716738
i don't know what that means but at the mere sight of it i flew into a rage so it must be very effective

>>17721882
Then I stand corrected. I'm sorry for doubting you, but the local standards demand I still insist you're a retarded faggot.

>>17718199
He randomly starts to kill puppies then an Indian child which is fine, but then he has his long winded speech's about war and man, Glanton was a ruthless barstard who gave no fucks I preferred him. Judge felt too cartoony for me he's a tall albino with no hair not even eyelashes' and he seems to pop up throughout the country causing trouble everywhere he goes. He's speaks multiple different languages, he's the best hunter, gunslinger, he's also charismatic most likely has a big horse dick. Every scene he took me out.

Billy Zane would have played a good judge.

>>17719438
Not missing out on much mate. Watch Bone tomahawk same shit.

>>17723207
Glanton is human, but The Judge apparently is not. Wasn't he based on a historical account?

>>17720413
He's kill a Indian kid, puppies, he also kills a couple of Mexicans at the bar. He most likely got Toadvine and Brown killed.

>>17720413
Bro did you read the book?

>>17723239
The puppies were shot by Bathcat, Judge only threw them in the water.

>>17723207
He walks around naked a fair bit, if he had a big dick, I think we would have been told. No mention would insinuate it is normal.

Bump

>>17715705
This post is proof that McCarthy's prose is really hard to emulate, and trying to recreate it always seems a bit off

>>17725141
Dude, it's a parody.

>>17725348
There is a pretty funny BBQ grill review which is written in McCarthy's style. A well done parody. Look it up, it's worth a read.

>>17725358
I have read it. I don't think it was very well done beyond a few chuckles.

>>17725363
My favorite line was "gut shot with the devil's own blunderbuss."

>>17720912
Like >>17721598 said it's a Western in setting only (like how Apocalypse Now is a Vietnam film in setting only). Personally I didn't like it as much as The Road or No Country for Old Men. Every part with the Judge felt ridiculous, constantly like the Gravity's Rainbow concentration camp orgy.

If you want a true Western novel I recommend Lonesome Dove. It's twice as long as BM but I think much easier to read. McMurtry's prose is straightforward but he is adept at description with winding on, and excellent at dialogue. I don't think I've ever read a book with such a degree of verisimilitude in tone, theme, and story to it's setting. I'm biased because I have connections to most of the places in LD but it's my favorite novel and I consider it a masterpiece of storytelling. It's understatingly strong thematically.

>>17726112
Mcmurty is a master and apparently he knew McCarthy personally as well.

>>17716675
>. Everything about that book is pure misery.
I felt empty when I read the final page
>He started crying and didn't know why

>>17716129
Sounds like something Kierkegaard would say about the people living the aesthetic life, or maybe something similar that I've seen in Pensees.

>>17717867
>Best Character dies in bed with his pants down
It isn't known exactly how Bathcat died though?

>>17716129
>>17726152
It's Paul Valéry

>>17721489
Dancing is a mentioned frequently, surely it's symbolic, especially in relation to Judge Holden

>>17717867
>Davvy! The coin Davvy! War! The orchestration thereof!

Far out on the desert to the north dustspouts rose wobbling and augered the earth and some said they'd heard of pilgrims borne aloft like dervishes in those mindless coils to be dropped broken and bleeding upon the desert again and there perhaps to watch the thing that had destroyed them lurch onward like some drunken djinn and resolve itself once more into the elements from which it sprang.

>>17723226
People assume the Judge is some sort of anthropomorphic something, but CM followed the historical record pretty closely. There was such a man, he was very tall, he was bald, he spoke many languages, he was supposedly by far the most erudite man any of them had ever met, and he was a sadistic killer and pedophile.

One fact about him that I don't remember coming up much in the book (if at all) — he was in many ways a total coward. He loved mass slaughter, and in the heat of action he was extremely competent, and if a risk absolutely had to be taken he could take it very coolly, but he went out of his way to avoid the chance of personal injury.

I guess that's logical since he didn't believe in anything except himself so he wanted to preserve himself at all costs.

>>17727441
There was some speculation that Chamberlain himself might have invented the character. In any case, McCarthy did stick somewhat to the historical account, which is funny considering that some people here found him over the top.

>>17727441
The judge in BM is still very different from the one in the memoirs. He wasn't bald, he just didn't have a beard, Chamberlain painted a picture of him and he has long hair like a metalhead. He's also not as menacing close to the end were he pretty much begs for his life as chamberlain and his friends are about to leave him in the desert, but Chamberlain shows him mercy and rides back to release him. They meet him once again by chance in an indian camp but don't exchange any words. BM judge is much more otherwordly than the real one.

>>17727472
Pic rel is the Judge giving a lecture on geology. No cool oil jacket though

>>17720356
Such a good fucking book. I'm gonna start it again

>>17720413
Why are you pretending to have read the book?

>>17719381
Same here anon

>>17723239
He's never mentioned as having killed the Indian kid.

>>17728180
He still did. Holden talks about the importance of witnesses otherwise he claims an event may as well never have happened.

>>17728884
I think that's why the Judge wanted to kill everyone in their group and why he tracked down the kid (by then the man) in the end. By destroying all witnesses to their actions he exercised the fullest power over all the events.

>>17713563
This book has a scene about a fucking volcano? What??

>>17730458
Yeah dude chapter ten, perhaps the most kino chapter. the following chapter is also kino. The whole book is great, though in my opinion the weakest part is the freebooter army.

>>17721657
a lot of McCarthy's stuff is actually pretty funny. you should read Child of God,. its full of goofy shit like that

>>17713563
Test

>>17716698
if you ask this question you are a psuede of the highest order

>The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.

The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.

>>17731931
>Spits in fire

>>17732327
>where is the coin Anon?

>>17731931
One of my favourite passages
>>17731037
Seen this before. Never gets old.

>>17715422
KEK, I never saw that one before.
>>17715463
This is my favorite illustration associated with the novel. I think it captures the look I had for him almost perfectly.
>>17720039
Looks sort of straight and unkempt to me.

>>17732928
I'll notify you where to put the coin.

>>17731931
>Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work...
I think about this line often when I'm at work.

>Moral law is an invention of mankind for the disenfranchisement of the powerful in favor of the weak. Historical law subverts it at every turn. A moral view can never be proven right or wring by any ultimate test.
Can this be fairly described as Nietzschean? Neetch was only 6 years old in 1850. I haven't read Nietzsche's works myself, I assume this attitude which is commonly attributed to Neetch was latent in a less refined or different form in writers before Neetch.

>A man falling dead in a duel is not thought thereby to be proven in error as to his views. His very involvement in such a trial gives evidence of a new and broader view. The willingness of the principals to forgo further argument as the triviality which it in fat is and to petition directly the chambers of the historical absolute clearly indicates of how little moment are the opinions and of what great moment the divergences thereof.
This monologue is interesting because the judge is shown to often resort to argument to get what he wants (he frequently lectures the gang, he argues with the military dude after black Jackson murders the eatery house owner, he talks down the military dude early in the book when Glanton shoots up a bunch of shit while trying the pistols, etc). But the judge also just goes ahead and kills people when that is more convenient as well. You could say that at least in this respect, the judge is not a hypocrite.

>>17713563
The one part I didn't get in this book was the epilogue. What was that about? I didn't even quite understand what they were doing making holes.

>>17716218
I think it's better than Moby Dick. Quite a lot better actually. I love Moby Dick too btw.

>>17717867
>Smashing 2 baby Indian's into a rock how am I supposed to not laugh at this scene

Grow up.

>>17717903
wow you're so cool

>>17733260
According to an essay in Notes on Blood Meridian (a must read if you are an enjoyer of Blood Meridian) says that the hole making was to set posts in the ground because cheap barbed wire fence had been developed and popularized in the late 1800s, and the erection of barbed wire fence to keep cattle in was the beginning of the end of the truly wild west. As Toadvine had "run plumb out of country", now all the outlaws had. The wild west was being tamed, it would no longer be possible to live the way they lived and do the things they did.

>>17733279
>>17733289
Just accept the bumps and don't reply to the retards. Pearls before swine etc.

>>17726120

Yeah, they did. McCarthy is an artistic western, I think it would be cool to do a spy novel, or maybe a Blood Meridian in Afghanistan type book. There are similarities.

>>17730752

>its full of goofy shit like that

in the country where all the boy have large feet and big cocks.

>>17733292

Ah ok, I thought it was a border with Mexico being made.

>>17733359
It is entirely possible that that is the case as well. The whole book is dripping with meaning and mystery.

>>17732928
I Ain't afraid of you Judge

>>17721657
>I got consumption. I came out here for my health.
>joins the freebooter army and gets seriously wounded, gets infected and dies in agony after wandering through the desert starving

>>17733292
I like to think it was the laying down of rail road. Wherever there is a frontier there is bloodshed and barbarism, the man is digging holes for the railroad which will bring an end to the frontier and the old west. It's an allegory for searching for the promethean fire of wisdom to bring an end to the barbarism.

>>17730798
no

>>17733869
I like the barbed wire better.
Seems to associate better with themes of violence by taming and domesticating man/beast through creating boundaries of static mechanical violence.

i just finished child of god and it was pretty fucking good. Do i go to blood meridian next or the road.

>>17734623
Read Outer dark too, then feel free to jump into Blood Meridian.

i love how the kid carried a bible with him even though he couldnt read it

>>17720413
uhhhh he molested and killed several children anon

>>17734623
The Road is a mediocre cash grab so feel free to skip it. Outer Dark is fine but not even close to being the masterpiece that Blood Meridian is.

>>17736128
Outer dark may not be a masterpiece but it is still a damn good and McCarthy's first signature novel. It complements Blood Meridian well.

>>17713695
He's ears like a fox.

Favorite quotes from a character?

What d'ye reckon we can get for old Brassteeth's teeth?

>>17736911
Ah shit.

-Toadvine

>>17716698
He is a great favorite.

>>17736911
Aw, kick him honey

>>17734623
>>17734776
>>17736128
>>17736190
Thoughts on 'No Country For Old Men' is it worth reading?

>>17737733
i still think of that from time to time and get a good chuckle out of it

>>17737950
Yeah it's worth reading. Really fast paced and a page turner. Philosophy is dumbed down Cormac but suits the book well enough; some people might disagree on that.

>>17736911
not blood meridian, but

"Cain’t find it?

No.

Well shit fire.

I’ll hunt some more later on. I think I was drunk when I hid it.

Where’d ye hide it at?

I don’t know. I thought I could go straight to it but I must not of put it where I thought it was.

Well goddamn."

>>17737733
Love that one.

Need a little tinder here

>>17737971
>>17736911
Not BM either:

"June reached for the cigarettes riding in the visor. Goddamn she’s ugly, he said. You know what she told me?
What’s that, said Sylder, grinning. That I was the nicest boy ever needled her. Needled, for God’s sake."

"How are you? Holme said.
I ain’t worth a shit. You?
Tolerable thank ye. I taken you to be the bossman.
No, I work for these niggers."

>>17715422
Where’s the retard?

>>17716698
Fallen angel
“Night of your birth. Thirty three. God how the stars did fall.”

>>17720413
Molested and killed the Indian boy.

Can we all agree that the Delaware’s smashing those infants heads against the rocks was the most disgusting death in the book? Where the White Jackson’s death is the most badass.

>>17737733
I read that character as JoeJack from King of the Hill.

>>17734623
Read The Crossing dude. Like you can read Blood Meridian first. But don't sleep on the Crossing. It's his fullest novel. I think it is better in many regards than Blood Meridian. The characters are better for one, and the prose captures a fleeting pastoral beauty. It's also very thematically rich. That being said nothing is as surreal as BM. BM is his most unique work.

>>17715705
Extended canon, special features edition, unreleased Easter egg.

>>17720424
The judge is bald, so he cannot be scalped. But he's also pale, so the Sun's (God's) light burns him.

>>17727486
Cool!

>>17713695
>>17713915
The Judge tells the story after one of the scalpers refuses to have the Judge draw him in his journal. This is what prompts the Judge to tell the story of the Harness Maker, who made his living disguising himself as an Indian to con people. When the Traveler sees through the Harness maker's Disguise, he's seeing the harness maker's true visage, which horrifies the Harness Maker. Just like how the scalper was horrified by the thought of his true visage being drawn and preserved in the Judge's journal.

The Harness Maker killing the Traveler destroys all knowledge of the Harness Maker's visage (earlier in the chapter we see the Judge destroying art pieces), and framing the murder as a mugging with the Harness Maker as an innocent victim lets him create a new, false identity. The Harness Maker can once again hide his true visage from the world and himself (Glanton also has this need to create a false identity, hiding his acts of violence behind a façade of legitimacy. First as a scalper and bounty hunter, later as a ferry operator). The Traveler's murder ultimately wrecks the legacy of both men. The Harness Maker's son eventually learns that his father was, in fact, a murderer, and becomes disgusted with his father. The Traveler's son, meanwhile, grows up without ever knowing his father and instead grows up with an idealized image of him.

While one son's vision of his father is a falsehood, and the other's vision is grimly accurate, both sons become emotionally stunted go on to live a life of violence. One of the gang member's asks the Judge what the best way to raise a son is, and he responds that children should be abandoned in the desert and forced to make their own way in the world. A close approximation to how the Kid grew up.

>>17739002
>so he cannot be scalped
He can be scalped. It'll just be a bald scalp. Wouldn't be worth any money to turn in, though.

>>17739261
Based analysis thank you anon

>>17714550
I coomin 4 u

>>17739575
Brendan Fraser would play a perfect judge

>>17713563
>>17713620
>>17713695
Am I the only one that imagines this playing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWqVSIxUBc0 during the Volcano Peepee Injun Chase?

>>17740043
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l86anOz0HCE
better version

>>17735404
Care to elaborate, like to hear your thoughts on it.

>>17736128
No way. The Road is great. He really pares down his style, very minimalist. Great book, one of his best.

>>17736190
agreed, very good book

>They were watching, out there past men's knowing, where stars are drowning and whales ferry their vast souls through the black and seamless sea.

I felt that this was a great shoutout to Moby Dick. The Kid gets to California after pushing and conquering the frontier of the American west. When he sees the pacific ocean for the first time he's taken by its seeming vastness, where it's even larger than the night sky, and thinking that it's too large a frontier for even man to conquer. However, we see with Moby Dick that even the ocean isn't beyond man's madness to conquer, Glanton with the natives, and Ahab with the white whale.

>>17740247
>They were watching, out there past men's knowing, where stars are drowning

dat prose - where stars are drowning is why I read this guy

>>17739656
That would be the greatest comeback of all time if he could pull it off.

>>17740299
>God how the stars did fall. I looked for blackness, holes in the heavens.
>They were watching, out there past men's knowing, where stars are drowning
I love McCarthy's echoing the imagery of stars falling and then stars drowning, at the beginning when the child becomes the kid, and near the end when the kid becomes the man, respectively.

>>17721667
rekt

>>17713563
The truth about the seed, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from fucking and thereby seeded it of its suckness it would appear to you for what it is, a chuck trick in a sneed show, a gummy bear, a german car with loafers having neither PH nor soil, an old farm, a fuck and suck joint whose ultimate lay after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unsneedable and chuckalamitous beyond reckoning

>>17713620
This, I always thought that everyone died because they made some kind of deal with the devil. The end where Toadvine and Brown are hanged after selling their stuff to the Judge is a metaphor for selling you soul to the devil for me.

>>17733292
The Book takes place from 1849-50ish, and the Wild West period is often considered post civil way to 1890’s. The west wasn’t even really a thing yet, there’s no way it was already being civilized in the book.

>>17740908
Well well, look at the scalper riding up on his fancy little indian war pony.
This horse was bred in Nacogdoches.
Well pardon us mister kid skin riding boots.
I took these boots from a dead gambler.
Well lah dee dah mister San Francisco bathhouse patron.
I just believe in good grooming.

>>17740908
Whatever seeds he said. Whatever in creation seeds without my feed seeds without my consent...
These anonymous gummy bears may seem little or nothing in the world yet the smallest soil PH can devour us. Any smallest feed beneath yon rock out of mens knowing. Only Sneed can enslave Chuck and only when each last city slicker is routed out and made to stand manicured before him will he be properly suckerain of the Chuck

>>17741471
What do you think of the jannies? he said.
The newfag looked at the anon in the thread next to him. I don't know nothin about it, he said.
I'm afraid that's the case with a lot of anons, said the sneedposter. Where are you from, son?
/tv/.
You werent with the Volunteers at the battle of /reylo/ were you?
No sir.
Bravest bunch of shitposters under fire I believe I ever saw. I suppose more sneedposters from /tv/ got banned and had to post with mobile data than from any other board. Did you know that?

>>17741708
shit

>>17742156
I aim to!

>>17716218
>judge saying something edgy
Can someone tell me what is so edgy about his philosophy? Maybe his Nietzschean ideals of muh violence and war don’t hold so well in society, but in nature they surely do, and even in our daily lives there’s a great deal of conflict and imbalance that slips under the radar. Capitalism an obvious example. And sports—why do people enjoy them so much? Maybe because they appeal to the part of us that recognizes the competitive streak that runs through the world at large?
If anything I’ve come to the conclusion (and feel free to refute this) that people demean his ideas and dismiss them as “edgy” because they’re afraid of what they suggest—a brutal, violent nature that preceded us and will outlast us. I don’t think might is right or that violence is good or should define humanity, but even the morality that makes people abhor violence is a kind of violence. It’s a socially trained, benign psychological deterrent that culls certain actions from the realm of possibility—so by restricting individual freedom isn’t that a kind of violence too?

>>17731931
This is a really good passage

>>17736911
I do believe someone's been fuckin' my melons

>>17742344
It is called edgy by people who don't even bother to read the whole book. They couldn't tell you what part of the judge's lectures were true or false. They hardly even know the contents.

>>17713563
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.