/lit/ - Literature

>>20664543
Classic postmodernism. Tears everything pure down while being too fucking lazy to build anything back up.

>>20664543
He didn’t say the old west was bad. Real art doesn’t make a moral statement, it scientifically portrays a subject as it is felt through the structure of a mind, which is what this book does. You are the one who reads morality into the book; ideas of morality may result from viewing art, but the art merely is, and no message is intrinsic to it. The Judge is also more than just a “villain”

>>20664543
What struck me is how there's no depth to the characters. There seems to be no interiority. He doesn't write about their thoughts or psychology. It's just dialogue or descriptive prose.

Would you prefer it if the book were set in the modern day and the Glanton gang were a pack of rogue cops scalping niggers in LA?

>>20664562
Thanks. Op should read more books

>>20664572
>Old west is... LE BAD!
>oh and there's an invincible villain

>>20664589
Would you prefer it if it were set in 2100 and Chigurh was a robot?

>>20664570
That’s his style. You have to learn to read closely and learn about the characters through their actions. The first time I read it I thought the Kid had no personality, but the more you read the more you see why the novel is about him. Think of it as the ultimate show, don’t tell.

>>20664543
I know this is bait, but an actual answer is he’s only using the west as a setting to explore the man’s relationship with war. As critic Scott Yarsborough said, it could’ve just as easily taken place during another time in history.

>>20664562
>Real art doesn’t make a moral statement,
Demoralized retard.

>>20664570
It's all about their actions.
That and McCarthy owes his writing style here to the Bible, which is, mostly, disjointed dialogue and descriptive prose and descriptions of actions.

>>20664558
The ending of the book is about how civilization is worth protecting and preserving

>>20664543
Never really read him, but when I randomly open a page of Blood Meridian I get the feeling that this guy is sometimes a bit juvenile. Like reading that monologue about the nature of war, "War is God", it reads like a more simplistic imitation of Nietzsche trying to impress the reader with being deep

why does /tv/ have better threads on Blood Meridian than /lit/?

>>20664600
It’s not a tactical choice. The guy clearly has some aesthetic preference for it. It’s the primary reason I don’t love this novel.I just don’t care for cowboy stories. I think they’re overdone. I think the prose is also just awful. It really makes me wonder why it’s so treasured.

>>20666944
1) it’s been discussed to death here (check Warosu) and I don’t think anyone has much to add anymore
2) lots of posters here don’t read. When and if they do, it’s usually compartmentalised into their autistic, specialised worldviews—to the point all art must complement or be sublated by it. Blood Meridian isn’t a comfortable book for those who are dogmatic about a lot of things, including philosophy, science, or religion.

>>20666944
>>20666961
Yes, people fail to appreciate the intricacy of "War is God"

>>20666950
I can understand the setting being a turnoff if you don't care for westerns. I'm not a huge ship guy so that may have explained why I didn't get as much out of Moby Dick.
Personally, westerns are my favorite genre which partially explains my love for it. Besides that, though, I think the prose is some of the most incredible in all of English literature.

>>20664562
>scientifically

Yeah fuck off.

to me, one of the major themes is "don't be weak because the weak get used."

The book is what it is and McCarthy is a wildly successful professional publisher writer. Now tell me, who are you and what have you written?

>>20667292
>It's the "only a successful published writer has the right to criticize the work of a successful published writer" fallacy again

>>20666950
I know it's pointless to ask, since anyone can reply and that's no doubt what will happen - but what do you consider to be good or even great prose?

>>20664570
>interiority

great book.

>>20664570
YO DIS NIGGA JUST LEARNED ABOUT CORMAC MCCARTHY LMAOOOOOOOO

>>20664562
>Real art doesn’t make a moral statement
Art doesn't HAVE to make a moral statement. Doesn't mean it CAN'T.

>>20664572
oh damn anon. I think you just gave me an idea for my first novel

>>20665979
its literally making fun of how that character is a retard.

>>20667469
>just discovered a new word

>>20667460
I’m not a prose autist and I don’t think technique is the most important thing, but in the case of McCarthy, the way he writes is actually off-putting so that’s why I said that.

>>20667623

Hell Yeah! show us some of your prose anon I’m sure it puts that chump McCarthy to shame

>>20667662
Pathetic reply

>>20667662
>I don't really find that chair comfortable to sit on
>Hell Yeah! show us some of your own self-made chairs

>>20666961
Thread over, Ty

>>20664562
>>20664581
of art merely is, then its as worthless or worthful as a rock, because it simply is another object.
People however usually have a motive for making objects, so art inherently has a meaning, because that is what it came from.

>>20667515
youre a retard

>>20669109
War on 4chan is God.

>>20664600
this is one of the gayest book covers i've witnessed

>>20667460
This is only my belief but prose should match the setting or theme, an example being the way Hemingway's prose reflects the fisherman's numb desperation in The Old Man and the Sea. Anyways, if you read to appreciate beautiful or artful writing rather than storytelling, you really ought to read poetry instead of novels.

>>20669295
i think that's fan art

>>20664543
>>oh and there's an invincible villain
wtf you realise that The Judge is the Demiurge

>>20664562
based
pseuds will never understand this

>>20664600
The old west was chosen specifically for it's barbarism. Corncob straight up says it's the closest chronological setting to now where we can test the main questions of the book
>not again in all the world's turning will there be terrains so wild and barbarous to try whether the stuff of creation may be shaped to man's will or whether his own heart is not another kind of clay

>>20664543
it's aging badly, like most McCarthy. Christian morality as a subtext for complex (albeit beautiful) prose is stale. He tries to summon poetry but he is not observant, which is why he was never able to face the real trial of a good writer, i.e. writing a good character of the opposite sex.

>>20671369
>He tries to summon poetry but he is not observant
kek are you just fkn parroting those nabokov posts you seen recently

lmao

>>20664543
I hate this reddit way of thinking where you reduce a complex work of art into something simple so you can readily dismiss it.

>>20671575
Me too. Sometimes it is just that people are intimidated by anything that does not yield itself instantaneously to the reader. The notion that some art requires a little bit of effort, or background knowledge, by the audience to be fully appreciated seems to be increasingly unpopular, yet ironically people will put effort into making or watching a 5 hour video about Easter eggs in a comic book movie. People want to be spoonfed a kind of bland complexity, an endless labyrinth of narrative and lore that demands nothing.

The other issue I think is that unfortunately works of art get associated with groups of people, and so simple off hand ways of dismissing a work becomes a proxy for dismissing some group of people.

>>20664600
>could’ve just as easily taken place during another time in history.
it's literally a true story about real guys who existed irl, he spent tons of time researching that

>>20669088
>he can't appreciate the beauty of a rock
yikes
>People however usually have a motive for making objects, so art inherently has a meaning, because that is what it came from.
the motive of Chopin in composing his Nocturnes is to portray how he feels. Art takes the world and describes it not objectively but how it is perceived by the mind. It is a science that describes the universe as it really is for humans rather than as it is objectively. The only pure motive for an artist, then, is a true portrayal of what they see and feel, that can be understood by others and assimilated into their own universe

>>20664570
He stripped most of the characterization out of the story in his later drafts. It was evidently a stylistic choice. The Kid was originally meant to disagree eith the judge openly but now it's only implied.

>>20671575
That's not reddit. It may be common there, but it's pure fucking 4chan mentality too. It's almost how a lot of people here choose to argue

>>20667623
You should read Suttree, it mogs BM to death

>>20671885
You are saying "Removing most of the characterization was his intention". Okay, but does it work? Do the characters have depth? Do they come to life like in the great works of literature, with their own personalties and psychological struggles? If not, was it his intention to have flat characters?

>>20664570
>their thoughts or psychology
Gay liberal crap, no good story has ever included such things.

>>20671656
>The other issue I think is that unfortunately works of art get associated with groups of people, and so simple off hand ways of dismissing a work becomes a proxy for dismissing some group of people.
This is too common here and a big reason for the board’s decline

>>20672097
So no Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Proust, Joyce, Henry James, Salinger? Yeah, I guess you didn't think that through

>>20664543
Real effort bait thread right here

/lit/ is shit. Jannies do your fucking job

>>20672090
I think he meant the characterisation to be subtle
there is a difference between a character with depth that is purposely obscured by author's stylistic choices and character who wasn't meant to have depth and only exists as a symbol of an idea

>>20671369
You sound like a homosexual. Are you a homosexual? You really sound like a homosexual. Anyway, your post is stupid and so are you, homo or not.

>>20664562
based,
americans will never understand this

>>20664570
In that sense it actually reads more like an Icelandic Saga. Which may be one of the reasons I like it so much.

>>20672638
I feel it also, the saga vibe, McCarthy tried to give the southwest a foundational myth, lore. The judge speaks forgotten tongues and knows chemistry, geology and history, shaman mistique arquetipe, the Kid beign the fucked up heroe's journey archetype, Toadvine the relatable hustler and Glanton beign Agamemnon, the rest of the gang just notes like Pullo and Vorenus from Caesar's Gallic Wars (black jackson white jackson). Don't know what the fuck guys here talk about or complain, ain't even american and loved the book

>>20672638
I can see this absolutely but that’s confusing to me because I really do not love this book but enjoy Icelandic sagas.

>>20664562
>Real art doesn’t make a moral statement, it scientifically portrays a subject as it is felt through the structure of a mind
I didn't realize that art had guidelines to follow and that it wasn't subject to the interpreter. Thanks anon. I've been misinterpreting not only other art, but my own for my entire life. I didn't know what I was creating wasn't real art.

>>20672742
As an American, I am just very not into the Southwest or the Old Western mythology or aesthetic. There is something actually repelling about its but I am a Yankee.

>>20672774
no interpretation is "wrong" and therefore no interpretation is correct because, like i said, the art merely is. you're welcome.

>>20672788
My interpretation is correct. Your interpretation is wrong. After all, the art merely exists for my enjoyment.

Best parts:
>hermit in the woods
>weapons made out of human waste and volcano discharge

>>20672777
by Yankee you mean Pennsylvania or something? Did the Confederates conquered Utah, California or was it the Union? the Badlands are beautiful once you get to them, even so that if were not for the water I would search for rocks all day, anasazi saw, Abbey saw, McCarthy saw

>>20673658
Yeah, Pennsylvania. It’s not about opposition to the confederacy so much as indicating where I’m from and that place is very far away, the other end of the continent actually, from the setting.

>>20669295
>>20669438
Like that other anon said it is fan art. I quite like it.
>>20671669
True he did a ton of research, but in a conversation he had with his publisher about the book before it was published he mentioned that he mostly included all the historical background to enhance the writing. He didn’t consider it necessitous to the book or it’s message.
>>20670954
I didn’t read that quite so literally. I understood it more as a flavorful way of saying that it was one of the most violent periods of time, but I don’t know maybe that’s a midwit take. I just think the scope of the book is too big to narrow it down to a commentary on one specific time period.

>>20673687
Is not just about the place, it's about giving badlands and desert some dignity, maybe in America in this particural novel, but same as the bible, I've got in my country, specifically in my region, both forest, sea, badlands and desert, the desert is where you are the most free, can't even think of america, you should appreciate what you've got there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE6dWdQfFvM

>>20673818
I’m just not interested in very much, never have been. I think the high desert can be kind of cool, but the cowboy epic is something that is just not very interesting to me, the contemporary southwest even less so. Seeing all the new age woo woo and nonsense floating around places like Sedona disabused me of whatever interest I did have.