/lit/ - Literature

Im Wesley

in the end they reach the bloody meridian.

>ay ol' boy, we finally did it! we finally made it to the bloody meridian!
>fuckin' 'ell man we right fuckin' 'id it 'nnt we?

it's a really good book.

>>5751549
>What should i expect?
Why don't you read it and find out, you assfaggot.

>>5751549
read book.

honestly i think it's massively overrated.

I'll tell you what you should not expect, which is quotation marks. In fact the book is basically just written like how you typed your post. If you're cool with that, it's a pretty wild ride, so have fun.

What does Blood Meridian mean? Is it like a the prime meridian, like does it try to evoke a meaning along the lines of "time for blood"? That time of the month for girls? Is that what they call it in the west these days, that menstrual period "blood meridian"? Clever, quite clever. Seriously, what does the title mean and how does the meaning have relevance to the story? I hope it isnt about PMS.

>>5751994
The height/climax/zenith of bloodshed
The events of the book are presented as the worst events of violence in the Old West - the book suggests that its events are preceded by a long history of violence in human history, and the epilogue suggests that the area becomes more civilised afterwards

>>5751997
I think McCarthy wasnt a big fan of the 20th century, as his message about war and the nature of man sorta held true

>>5751549
well sometimes i just wish cormac would write like a regular fucking writer

>>5752019

>I want mediocrity

>>5751549
>that cover

>>5752028
Don't put words in my mouth. I want decorum. Order. I want to read a book, not a dream sequence. just my opinion

>>5752032

go to bed Aristoteles, times have changed.

>>5752042
>but muh aristotle is still relevant

>Just bought this, What should i expect?
is this a meme or does /lit/ just have a propensity for retards?

>>5752085
Well, if I created a thread like this, my goal would be to get some discussion going about the book while I start working on it, so I can see what other people think compared to me. Then after I've made it a little ways in or even completed it, I'd come back and take part in the discussion.

>>5752032
He's right, though. It's an intrinsic part of his style. You can't take away his idiosyncrasies like minimal punctuation, run on sentences, flowing conversation and dreamlike descriptions and still preserve the things that are widely regarded as making McCarthy great. His work has an oral storytelling feel that distinguishes him from most other writers today.

Why did the Judge kill the puppies? What was the point of that?

>>5752540
Probably the same reason he killed people and raped children.

>>5752561
why dat doe?

>>5752540
for the lulz
he's basically just an edgy /b/tard, which accounts for the popularity of the book on 4chan

>>5752568
Because he's a personification of sadism, violence and the glorification of war.

>>5752583
ya but y doe?

>>5752623
I dunno lol

>>5752540
To display his dominance.

Remember the Suzerian speech?

>>5751549
and and and and and and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzQwrfCkGOI

>>5751549
Expect chapter 4 to have some of the most shocking stuff to ever have been put to paper IMO.
Good book, but would be better if McCarthy just used quotation marks.

>>5751549
The kid gets raped in the end by judge holden

>>5751549
overwrought prose that uses archaic vocabulary, virtually no plot or character development to speak of and the most childish underlying message possible for a "great work of lit"

>>5752869
And this, my friends, is how you write a top Goodreads review.

>>5752982
Should I post this on Goodreads? Would it net me some sweet, sweet upvotes or likes or whatever they use on Goodreads?

>>5751661
Why do you act like Blood Meridian is so distinct for the fact that it doesn't have quotation marks? McCarthy isn't the first author to have foregone quotation marks, and if the lack of them presents any difficulty for you in your reading of the book, I don't know what the fuck is wrong with you, because it's glaringly obvious literally every single time a character speaks a line of dialogue, just through the visual structure of the page and suggestions in the prose, that it is a line of dialogue and what character is speaking it. The addition of quotation marks would simply be redundant clarification in every instance in the book that a character speaks.

>>5752572
People who seem to be under the impression that authors like McCarthy and Pynchon are praised specifically by 4chan really need to fucking go outside and talk to other people, or at least google the books and authors so they'll realize how universally distinguished they usually are.

>>5753136
indeed m'sire, you are true literary scholar and gentleman, who said erudition was dead :)

Is this a book you are likely to reread or lone to friends? I usually just use the library but I like to buy books that I'm likely to get some use out of.

>>5751549
Holy shit, I've literally just finished this in the past 10 minutes. Good luck.

>>5751994
The name just means the same as the other title the Evening Redness in the West

>>5755095
I hit up some qt hispanic chicks with it to help me with the translations

>>5753192
This. I work with some dude in his 40's who got turned onto Delillo and Pynchon and McCarthy in college. I lent him some stuff by McElroy and Borges and he gave me some John Barth and George Saunders. I know a couple of art girls who recognized GR on my shelf and had read Ulysses. The people who think the authors here are just "le memes" probably don't get out very much. McCarthy has movies and was featured in a fucking adult swim cartoon.

Think Faulkner trying to write Moby Dick: Cowboys and Indians edition.

>What should i expect?
To question just how a sunset looks like a Holocaust.

>>5755163
I don't know why people always compare McCarthy to Faulkner. The two are nothing alike

>>5755275
Bloom compared them once regarding No Country, think everyone just latched on.

>>5752517
> distinguishes him from most other writers today.
but all of that just adds up to a bad faulkner impression

>>5755275
Are you serious? I haven't been around /lit/ very much, so I guess I am easier trolled than most, but McCarthy's style owes a great deal to southern Gothic as a whole and Faulkner particularly. If I weren't on my phone I'd grab some paragraphs for comparison, but honestly just open Blood Meridian to a page at random next to Absalom, Absalom!. It seems so immediately apparent how M is following the thematic, syntactical, and organizational flow of Faulkner. The manipulation of time, weaving between realities, hell even the idiomatic dialogue.

>>5755284
Dude just google "McCarthy and Faulkner" to prove yourself wrong. The comparison has been made since McCarthy's first published novel in 1965

>>5755301
yes I am serious. Ok so first, yes, they are both Southern writers. Obviously. But the difference ends there.

Faulkner was acutely concerned with characters. AILD, AA, S&F, these books were, above all else, about characters. The internal mechanisms of people--how they worked, how their brains functioned, how their personalities processed the outside world.

McCarthy has none of this. Granted I have not read All the Pretty Horses which I hear is one of his best works, but out of the extensive collection of McCarthy novels that I have read, McCarthy could care nothing less for characters.

To him they are vehicles to advance plot and prose, with stale Western-trope names like The Kid etc. etc.

As for the manipulation of time I am not really sure what McCarthy novel you have in mind. He certainly to my knowledge does nothing to the extent of AA or Benjy's section of S&F. As for their prose, Faulkner wrote prose of characters; stream of consciousness. What prose of McCarthy's focuses on enacting the personalities of his characters? I can think of none.

It has been a while since I have read AA but I really don't see the similarities you draw there. As another poster pointed out before me, McCarthy uses a shit-tier archaic vocabulary to lend his prose in BM a mystical quality. Aside from that the prose is fine but I cannot for the life of me see where you find similarities between that and Mrs. Coldfield's tireless rants in AA, or Mr. Compson's intelletual philosophizing, or Quentin and Shreve's enthusiastic hypotheses?

To me it seems like the only reason the two are compared is because they are both writers of the American South. If McCarthy was from anywhere else I highly doubt the two would ever be mentioned in the same sentence.

And sometime in writing this post I think I finally realized why I dislike McCarthy so much. His writing has no personality. His prose and characters lack the soul of Faulkner and that, I think, sets them worlds--universes--apart.

>>5751549
Biggest let down /lit/ ever recommended me.

Interminable ramblings about the desert. Nary a punctuation mark in THE ENTIRE book. M-muh evil judge so evil, the most overrated character I can think of. It was alright, but definitely doesn't deserve the praise it gets. 6/10.

>>5752572
/thread

>>5751549
I just started it myself and, I think it's pretty gud. I really like the vividness of the landscapes with the contrast of the gore.
That part with the judge and that Mexican sargent was badass. I'm looking forward to read on.

>>5755347
this is bait, ignore this post

>>5751997
To me, the epilogue implies that the violence is a symptom that will continue to express itself and will continue unabated, marking the passing of time

>>5755253
I get everything in that image except for "analogue nor precedent".

google gives me nothing. Any help?

>>5755663
what? In this context having no analogue means it's one-of-a-kind and precedent means... precedent. I don't think it's a reference

>>5755743
Alright thanks.The analogue part messed with me. I am an audio engineer.

>>5755253
He meant burnt offering when he used holocaust to describe a sunset you fucking retard

why not just read it?

>>5755343
They were edited by the same guy, you know.