/lit/ - Literature

The reason I know Cormac McCarthy is peak midwit-core is that he's the only author anyone on this board can actually be bothered to read.

>>21804831
>filtered

>>21804831
The priest wiped his fingers with bits of bread and rose. By candlelight he put away his effects in a little fitted case and left bearing the candle and followed by a nun and Suttree alone in the dark with his death and who will come to weep the grave of an alias? Or lay one flower down.

He dreamed of a race at the poles who rode on sleds of walrus hide and rucked up horn and ivory all drawn by dogs and bristling with lances and harpoon spears, the hunters shrouded in fur, slow caravans against the late noon winter sunset, against the rim of the world, whispering over the blue snow with their sledloads of piled meat and skins and viscera. Small bloodstained hunters drifting like spores above the frozen chlorine void, from flower to flower of bright vermilion gore across the vast boreal plain.

Down the night world of his starved mind cool scarves of fishes went veering, winnowing the salt shot that rose columnar toward rifts in the ice overhead. Sinking in a cold jade sea where bubbles shuttled toward the polar sun. Shoals of char ribboned off brightly and the ocean swell heaved with the world’s turning and he could see the sun go bleared and fade beyond the windswept panes of ice. Under a waste more mute than the moon’s face, where alabaster seabears cruise the salt and icegreen deeps.

This book is bleak. Pretty funny sometimes too.

>>21804856
>>21804864
Cool, do you have opinions on literally any other writer who's been published in the past ten years

>>21804912
Yeah houellbecq and pynchon

>>21804918
>Bleeding Edge was published ten years ago
fuk

>>21804938
haha i knew that would get you

>>21804692
Have you really read all novels of the last 50 years

>I'm bowhunting this here woods
>well now many bows have you caught today?
laughed harder than I should've

>>21804692
Have you read Outer Dark? I thought it was quite good

>>21804692
Which one of you has been fucking my melons?

>>21804692
amerimutt moment

>>21804864
There are several elements in this literary passage that could be improved. First, the language is overly ornate and, at times, difficult to understand. The use of obscure words and complex sentence structures can make it hard for the reader to fully engage with the text.

Additionally, the passage seems to lack clear direction or purpose. The description of the priest and his actions in the first sentence seems disconnected from the rest of the passage, which then moves on to describe a dream that Suttree has. The description of the dream is vivid and poetic, but it's not clear what purpose it serves in advancing the story or developing the characters.

Furthermore, the passage doesn't provide much context or background information for the reader. It's unclear who Suttree is, what he's doing, or what the overall narrative arc of the novel is. This lack of context can make it difficult for the reader to fully appreciate or engage with the text.

Finally, there are some passages in the text that could be seen as gratuitous or unnecessary. For example, the description of "bright vermilion gore" feels overly graphic and out of place, and the mention of "alabaster seabears" seems more like a distraction than a meaningful addition to the text.

Overall, while the writing in this passage is poetic and descriptive, it could benefit from clearer direction, more accessible language, and better integration into the broader narrative of the novel.

>>21804692
That isn’t Matthiessen or Vollman

>>21804912
>any other writer who's been published in the past ten years
There haven't been any other writers worth reading in the last ten years troon. Pynchon and McCarthy are the last decent living authors and we probably won't see any more for decades.

>>21805627

>>21804692
I can't read it because it reminds me how much of a fucking loser I am

>>21805627
>Waiting at work
>Ill check /lit/
>Some random stupid asshole trying to punch up Mcarthy's writing and some other retard calling him midwit core
>This place rules

Is it even the best book published in 1979? We've got The Executioners Song, The Ghost Writer, On A Winter's Night a Traveller, The Right Stuff. Top five for that year for sure

>>21805788
From that list it's only competition is Calvino desu.

The first two pages are arguably the greatest opening pages of the 20th century, imo. As a whole, it definitely could even be considered more so his magnum opus than even Blood Meridian.

>why yes, I am something of a connoisseur of contemporary fiction. McCarthy, Pynchon, Houlebecq, the list goes on

>>21804692
Make it 500. 500 years

Is there anything "cool" left? Any cities, people, movements, books, music? Or has everything been flattened out, part of the crowd, part of the norm?

The five already-written North American Landscape volumes by William T. Vollmann are extremely well-written (2 more to go).

Laura Warholic by Alexander Theroux (2007).

The Origin of the Brunists by Robert Coover (granted, it's 57 years old) and the sequel, The Brunist Day of Wrath (2014).

Novel Explosives by Jim Gauer (2016).

>>21805659
I hope, for your sake, that you're trolling. If not, I pity you.

>>21805801
>that calvino book is the only one i recognize
ftfy

>>21806107
Why don't you go out to a bar or performance venue where you live and find out, Anon? Buncha shut-in incels aren't going to give you an answer worth anything.

>>21806291
Name some other great living English authors then. Don't even bother listing female or black authors.

>>21805627
>complains about lack of context when the context missing is the rest of the book
uhhh who tf is suttree??

>>21804692
Nobody beats Melville.

>>21806192
This dude really wrote a book then wrote a sequel to it 48 fucking years later? I wonder if that's a world record of something damn

>>21804692
Nope. See pic.

>>21806954
Lol

>>21806902
Ofc a Melvillecuck can't read OP

What's everyones favorite lines?

"Japheth when you left your father's house the birds had flown. You were not prepared for such weathers. You'd spoke too lightly of the winter in your father's heart. We saw you in the streets. Sad."

Something about that one-word sentence at the end, especially when McCarthy is so prone to go ornate, is just extremely powerful in its simplicity.

>>21807127
I already read blood meridian and it was great. Plan to read suttree this year still not as good as MD most likely

>>21807943
Melvillecuck still can't read the OP

>>21804976
*should of

>>21808053
should've (should have) was correct, not should of.

>>21805627
The entire novel is stream of consciousness thus the lilted and jarring elements of the fantasy are due to Suttree being an alcoholic. I'm unsure which portion of the book this is drawn from since its been a while since I've read it, but I remember that one of the major themes through the work deals with the freedom and, at the same time, base violence that we lost with modernization to be replaced by a much more systematic violence of social strata and ideals. (a recurrent theme through most of McCarthy's work) The priesthood, an institution that Suttree is highly distrustful of, is here seen as the image of modernism with his graceful movements and decorum. Drunk Suttree launches into a reverie of pre-modernity with all of its lung-ripping freedom and gore. This is in direct opposition to his immediate surroundings (Nashville is portrayed in this book as the second Gomorrah) as well as his position on the church as a specifically pernicious violence that eats at the soul of humanity as opposed to the body. As far as advancing the story and developing characters goes it gives us a better understanding of Suttree's viewpoint on the world, the beliefs he holds, and his frame of mind in his current stifling environment. additionally, we learn later on that most of Suttree's misfortunes are not only his fault but he suffers the consequences of them intentionally as self-punishment when he could easily just leave Nashville and put it all behind him. Its a demented vision of Suttree's self-figuration as a noble bearer of horrors, a torchbearer in times of darkness, tinged with the base violence and debasement of his entire life as his only form of commonality or understanding of how such an alien world would function. The later portion is a portent for Suttree's later position where he adopts a more nihilistic (Nietzschean) point of view. This is more of the component reverie for his unconscious, developing viewpoint where he will see his current pre-modern fetishizations as barren of any kind of meaningful life as the stifling course of modernity. You, sir, are a retard

>>21808170
It is ambiguous Stream of Consciousness. It isn't always clear who the narrator is, which is I think the effect McCarthy is going for. It shuttles between surrealism and metafiction at times. The book you are thinking of is probably Durrell's Black book, which uses something called the Gnomic Aorist, first person ahistorical and McCarthy had written on one of the margins of Suttree's draft as being the inspiration for its narration. McCarthy takes it to extreme
of course. Because the narrator isn't clear, the plausability of events and a well laid out timeline isn't clear. The narration mimics Suttree's wish for stagnation. To avoid becoming part of any story or narrative, he drifts between the lives of various characters. Linear narration embodies linear time which always ends in death. Suttree's wish for stagnation and narration's plotlessness is way of counteracting this narrative death. Suttree is McCarthy at his most "optimistic pessimist", the last 3rd of the book is more chronologically linear and involves Suttree coming to terms with Death instead of trying to escape it wholly.

>>21807205
Mine is when he's talking to the rag picker. There is a million little scenes that stand out, but I love this one.

And what happens then?
When?
After you're dead.
Dont nothing happen. You're dead.
You told me once you believed in God.
The old man waved his hand. Maybe, he said. I got no reason to think he believes in me. Oh I'd like to see him for a minute if I could.
What would you say to him?
Well, I think I'd just tell him. I'd say: Wait a minute. Wait just one minute before you start in on me. Before you say anything, there's just one thing I'd like to know. And he'll say: what's that? And then I'm goin to ask him: What did you have me in that crapgame down there for anyway? I couldnt put any part of it together.
Suttree smiled. What do you think he'll say?
The ragpicker spat and wiped his mouth. I dont believe he can answer it. I dont believe there is an answer.

>>21808273
Here are two essays, one looking directly at the weird narration and one on the stagnant narrative from a Deleuzian sense:

1) http://spinelessbooks.com/theory/suttree/index.html

2) https://journals.openedition.org/ejas/12372

>>21804692
Just finished it. The most kino novel, I'll rank it just a little beneath Blood Meridian. It is good in every aspect you can think of. Fucking brilliant!

>>21808170
You were replying to an AI btw

>>21804692
It’s not even McCarthy’s best work. The chapter where Suttree goes walking in the woods is 11/10 though.

>>21810218
What chapter is it?

>>21810228
They’re not numbered. It begins on page 283 of my copy, with “In late October he pulled his lines.”

>>21810270
Thx

I only recently discovered Cormac McCarthy because I saw NCFOM in a bookstore and I had no idea the film was a book
Blood Meridian is now my favourite book of all time. I'm going to read the border trilogy, suttree, but also Moby Dick as many people name them as similarly themed and written, so I wanted to ask if there are more authors that are, not just in themes but also in writing style, similar to these?

>>21810674
Hemingway, Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Hawthorne (for Melville). If you love Blood Meridian so much, you'll enjoy the Homeric epics. Pynchon is somewhat similar thematically, but McCarthy is pretty idiosyncratic.

>>21805788
The Bloody Chamber

>>21810683
Thanks a lot! If you've read Paradise Lost, would you put John Milton next to the authors you mentioned?

>>21810799
I haven't, actually, not more than excerpts. I'm sure that's not a bad idea, if you're looking for influence, but it really is just the story of Eden + a wicked rad monologue from Lucifer.

>>21810811
>story of Eden + a wicked rad monologue from Lucifer.
that's enough for me :)
thanks for the info

>>21810674
I view Charles portises work to be similar to McCarthy, albeit more comedic and lighter in tone. The bible, if you want to see the man’s influences.

>>21805627
McCarthy filters AI

>>21807205

>>21811280
Fuck my sides

I would put money on Trump never having read a book

Where would one find these books you speak of?

>>21806435
>Don't even bother listing female or black authors
That's your problem moron. If youre so hung up on only white males being the only ones capable to write good literature. Then no shit there is only realy a couple good writers for your standard, the industry isnt standarized by fucking race. Stop being a fart sniffing racist retard and just explore shit that isnt jack offed on a fascist racist reading board, in which only 5% actually reads

>>21810674
Fenimoore Cooper, Sea Tales (Last Mohicans guy); sea stuff from Conrad

>>21810674
Bit of Hemingway in him, bit of Faulkner. But aesthetically and thematically there really isn't anyone like McCarthy. But there are some good gritty neo-western writers like Potis, if that was the aspect of BM you enjoyed. John Hawkes' beetle leg is another, as is Ron Hansen's Desperadoes.

Thematically the best bet is Melville, but their conceptions of the world are very different. I like to think of them as Husserl-Heidegger pair, except that McCarthy probably respects Melville more relatively.

Reading Butcher's Crossing and the Border Trilogy back to back soon, I can't wait. How does /lit/ like the All The Pretty Horses and such compared to his other work? Seems to me like Blood Meridian tends to overshadow them in people's estimation.

>>21811690
Blood Meridian is great but overrated by edge lords who take the wrong lessons from the judge.

All the pretty horses is fantastic. The Crossing is fantastic. Cities of the plain is great but overly melodramatic at times, with questionable character choices.

Imo McCarthy has a book for just about anyone. No one is right or wrong with what they like.

>>21811400
If I can't LARP as a white supremacist on-line, my whole fabricated personality is stripped away and I have to restart at square one to make a new personality that doesn't suck. Stop trying to make me put effort into who I am, dude.

>>21811400
> can't list any authors

>>21804692
Why are midwits easily impressed with miseryporn?

>>21805627
It tried

>>21807205
>Me and old crazy Bodine used to have some good times racin scorpions in the kitchen. That was after you'd done left
>Scorpions?
>Lizards I guess you call em.
>Lizards?
>Yeah. We'd get the yard man to get em for us. We'd race em on the kitchen floor. Get a bet up. Shit. I had me one named Legs Diamond that son of a bitch would stand straight up with them old legs just a churnin and quick as he'd get traction he was gone like striped assed ape. Never would touch down with his front feet.
>The city mouse shook his head, deep in the fondness of these recollections like a strange little old man there in the blue winter twilight under the bridge. Remembering the sunlight on the buffed floor and the broomhandles laid out and the chalk marks. Lying like the children they were on the cool floor with their fragile reptiles, the small hearts hammering in the palms of their hands. Holding them by their tiny pumping waists and releasing them at a signal. The lizards rearing onto their hind legs as their feet slipped on the smooth waxed concrete, strange little saurians. Harrogate has tacked the hinder toes of his with syrup and it scampers through the barry light to soundless victory.
>Old crazy Leithal King worked on the kitchen after that. I believe he was the biggest fuck-up in the workhouse. Shit. I got tired takin stuff off of him he was so dumb. I used to race lizards with him I'd let him take his pick, we'd have upwards of half a dozen in a kettle. I'd have me some chili pepper in my hand and when I got my lizard I'd rub a little of that in his ass. He'd go like he was on fire. Old Leithal'd get em and wouldnt know how to hold em or nothin, half the time he'd pull their tails off. He raced one one time that son of a bitch stood straight up and went right on over backards, feet just a churnin.
>They sat in blackness. Lights were coming on across the cut, blooming among the barren vines like winter fireflies there.

Something about that passage always gets me. Wickedly funny but so damn sad.

I thought Legs Diamond was some name Harrogate pulled out of his ass for the longest time. Turns out he was a famous bootlegger during Prohibition, notorious for repeatedly getting shot & surviving assassination attempts.

>>21812103
How is it misery porn you absolute waste of a life? Your dad should have cum in a sock instead of you mother.

>>21811400
Anon, he already told you he was racist. You calling him a racist after the fact is neither contributing to the conversation, nor hurting his feelings. If you wanted to prove him wrong or brush it off, your response would be to name some authors that prove his claim is false.

cormac writes genre trash
bm is not literature it's westernshit

>>21812298
Moby dick is garbage

>>21811095
>>21811526
>>21811616
saving all of these, thanks for the recommendations

>>21804692
no and you don't read. There's at least three or four european authors who mog him just with works published in the last 20 years, let it be 50. And no, I'm not going to tell you who they are. Go to a library, to a bookshop or wherever and fucking read
>>21804831
this

>>21812606
Go back to watching Survivor you brainlet.

>>21812606
Lol

>>21812606
The Eurangutan reveals itself

>>21812606
you faggots are all the same. I bet you have a kindle full of forgotten realms books.

>>21811903
>>21812273
>Friday is Black by Nana Kwame Adejei-Breyah
Dystopian Short stories, most about systematic oppression. Read the first story, really great. But if you dont like it, that fine, but if you cant appreciate what its doing than thats on you having bad taste. The rest of them are pretty well written as well
>Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu
Didnt quite finish due to my library loan was due. What I read was pretty fresh, very straight forward prose but fun prose. Nice apprach to its theme. Quite funny too
The Netanyahus by Joshua Cohen
>pretty much Jewish Stoner, whole story is like the part of the novel in which hes fighting Lomax. Its a Nobel prize winner
>Pachinko by Min Jee lee
Everything by her is great

There happy you cant do a basic google search on modern U.S literature

>>21813755
Ywnbaw

>>21812606
>And no, I'm not going to tell you who they are
Always the same with you retards, You can't even name one

>>21813809
Not trans lol, but nice shitty rebuttal that doesnt even make sense. Heres something that makes sense for the situation. You should truly go back and stay, with your home of retard /pol/ hivemind. So your pathetic life and brain can decay even faster all because of yourself. Your mom regrets being pro-life because of you. YMRBPLBOY remember that

Finished this book and i dont know what to make of it, its just make me feel melancholic afterwards, am i filtered?

What are you guys takes on the book as a whole and its meaning?

>>21813809
You will never fuck a woman so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

>>21812273
This isn't debate club you dumb fucking nerd, why do you insist on acting like this is some kind of battle of rhetoric with rules and shit?

>>21811762
Nice, I really enjoyed No Country for Old Men and Child of God too, but it'll definitely be a nice change of pace if they're a little lighter on the brutality.

>>21814585
Haven't read it but I think it illuminates the conditio humana

>>21804692
Nah not even close.

>>21814585
>literature has even an illusion of singular meaning
It's like gothic Ulysses minus the pretense. Every single page is poetry, the emotions explored are some of the most mature in literature about people on the edges, the philosophical musings feel incredibly real and rooted in Suttree/McCarthy's pain, each of the smaller stories are all either hilarious or heartbreaking, the sheer clarity of the descriptive passages is admirable. It argues against depression and addiction simply and effectively, without relying on cliches or unearned sincerity. Lots to love, quite obviously to me

>>21807205
Do you serve tortillas here? Suttree asked.
Ye.
He spat. OK then. Let me have some.
The proprietor spat and shook his head. We ain’t got no tortillas here, son.
Then why’d you say there was.
The proprietor chuckled. Because yer a nigger. Ever thought of that, son?
He leapt to his feet and put his hand to his pistolholster, drew the pistol out in a fluid motion and aimed it squarely at the center of the man’s forehead, finger on the pistoltrigger. In a flash, hardly before a soul could reckon what had happened before their bedazzled eyes, an abysm was punctured into the center of the man’s forehead, like a perverted demonic blasphemous and inverted statue of an oriental buddha with a third eye, blood leaking from the chasm in his skull like chrism.
I ain’t a nigger, Suttree said.

>>21815244
Try harder.