/lit/ - Literature

Blood Meridian

Huckleberry Finn and Tom sawyers adventures are good ones.

>>6201430
Is that where I should start with him? As far as his books go I only really ever hear about The Road. Is his other work well regarded?

>>6201420

Personal Rankings:

1.) Tie-Blood Meridian, Suttree
2.) The Crossing
3.) Child of God
4.) All the Pretty Horses
5.) Cities of the Plains (Could be higher based on the ending alone)
6.) No Country for Old Men
7.) The Road
8.) Outer Dark
9.) The Orchard Keeper

>>6201456

Start with either The Road or All the Pretty Horses unless you've got a decent background in literature.

You should also probably read Moby-Dick, Faulkner, and Flannery O'Connor before reading McCarthy if you haven't already done so.

>>6201469
Mine aren't too far off yours at all:
I found the Crossing a little too lethargic in the middle, but Billy Parham crying on his knees at the end was as brutal an ending as any of his others.

1. Blood Meridian, of course
2. (tie) Suttree & All the Pretty Horses
3. Cities of the Plain (honestly, due to the ending)
4. (tie) Child of God
5. No Country for Old Men
6. (tie, I think) Outer Dark & The Crossing
7. The Gardener's Son (could be higher if you include the actual production along with the screenplay in the rating)
8. The Orchard Keeper

>>6201475
You're such a fucking loser.
Do you think McCarthy himself would say this about his own writing?
"You should" "you should" fuck you, man. If you're a loving, generous reader, you'll get something out of any of his books, even if you miss out on some of the erudite/ scriptural/ intertextual wankage.

>>6201503
wow faggot. I'm just given a subtle recommendation to OP as understanding Melville, Faulkner, and O'Connor will greatly enhance his reading experience of McCarthy. And I would venture to guess that McCarthy would recommend reading all three of the aforementioned writers to most people so you can fuck right off.

Sorry for triggering you m8.

Blood Meridian is always hailed as his masterpiece. Suttree, my personal favorite, is usually considered is second best book. After those two it doesn't matter as much, but I'd say All the Pretty Horses is next.

>>6201469
Aside from Outer Dark, it's astonishing how much I agree with your rankings. I'd Put Outer Dark at 6.
And the epilogue of Cities of the Plains is, imo, one of the best things McCarthy ever wrote.

>>6201564

I'm amazed that The Crossing isn't discussed more. It's clearly one of McCarthy's stronger works and the philosophical bits are God-tier (sometimes literally).

"What the priest saw at last was that a lesson of a life can never be its own. Only the witness has power to take its measure. It is lived for the other only. The priest therefore saw what the anchorite could not. That God needs no witness. Neither to Himself nor against. The truth is rather that if there were no God then there could be no witness for there could be no identity to the world but only each man's opinion of it. The priest saw that there is no man elect because there is no man who is not. To God every man is a heretic. The heretic's first act is to name his brother. So that he may step free of him. Every word we speak is a vanity. Every breath taken that does not bless is an affront. Bear closely with me now. There is another who will hear what you never spoke. Stones themselves are made of air. What they have the power to crush never lived. In the end we shall all of us be only what we have made of God. For nothing is real save his grace."

>>6201654
that makes no sense. garbage.

>>6201456
You only ever heard about The Road because it's his most popular (and also because it's genre fiction). Blood Meridian is considered his greatest work by most people who have actually read all of his stuff.

>>6201515
> You should probably x,y,z before reading McCarthy.

Not subtle. Hardly a recommendation. Just because McCarthy's part of a tradition doesn't mean you need to be a fucking American lit scholar to read his books.

McCarthy undoubtedly appreciates those writers, but calling them prerequisites for his work is just just not true. You were obviously just having a fucking jerk-off session because you like American lit, and it made you look like the little tryhard bitch you are.

>>6201654
> literally
The joke you made.
It didn't work.

>>6201750
Not even him, but goddammit, your plebbiness just gave me cancer. Do you even intertextuality, faggot?

>>6201761
> it's him

>>6201772
Got any actual arguments, pleb?

>>6201469
Child of God is way too high on your list but otherwise I agree

>>6201761
where is the intertextuality in mccarthy's books? give some examples? and also explain why they're important to understanding mccarthy.

>>6201654
"He said that that what men do not understand is that what the dead have quit is itself no world but is only the picture of the world in men's hearts. He said that the world cannot be quit for it is eternal in whatever form as are all things within it."

>>6201782
Intertextuality doesn't have to be explicit. It's not a matter of examples - Blood Meridian is a continuation of a tradition established by Faulkner and Melville, and only taken in that context can the book truly be appreciated. You would know if you had actually read all three authors.

>reading literature for "understanding"

>>6201782
>>6201774

Off the top of my head:
there's a line from BM. CM refers to a dustmote as a drunken djinn. "And out of that whirlwind no voice spake"
This is a subversion of the Book of Job, at the end. The drunken djinn supports this. It is a naturalistic subversion of scripture, replacing an indifferent God with an indifferent and warlike natural world.

However, the beauty of the language remains without particular knowledge of scripture, too. The reading is shallower, but McCarthy's message is still delivered.

>>6201697
>>6201494
>>6201469
>>6201456

Well I just bought Blood Meridian and it'll be here tomorrow. Anything I should keep in mind while reading it?

>>6201801
No. It's a fucking scriptural subversion first and foremost.

> You've spent this whole time thinking you know the book and you haven't caught the allusion to Wordsworth on the fucking first page which establishes the scripturally-enframed father-son relationship ("the child is the father of the man") which runs throughout the entire book to the very end where the Judge declare's he would have loved the kid "like a son".
> tfw when the entire time you had no idea about the implcations of McCarthy's subversion of Theodore Storm as: Sie müssen schlafen aber Ich muss tanzen, both its scriptural and German/mystical significations (re. the relationship between beauty, death and Godlessness).

BM is an act of biblical TRANSUMPTION, it's not simply a herp-derp-nice-style extension of Faulkner and Melville. You twat.

>>6201805
Yes, here's some advice: don't take this person seriously at all:
>>6201475
>>6201761
>>6201774
>>6201801

>>6201804

Not the same anon but another one I remember is in The Road where the Father's wife leaves him and he thinks to himself "Curse God and Die". It's a direct quote from Job 2:9 where Job's wife tells him to reject God and die peacefully.

It's pretty apparent what the connection is from the plot and setting of The Road. McCarthy is responding to Job and continuing the tradition of understanding through suffering.

>>6201819
>BM is an act of biblical TRANSUMPTION, it's not simply a herp-derp-nice-style extension of Faulkner and Melville
>implying it can't be both
>being unable to read one of the most important American novels of the past thirty years in the context of American literature because muh symbolism

>>6201469
>>6201494
>>6201526
Why did you guys like Suttree so much? I'm reading it, and yes, enjoying it, but not as much as I did All the Pretty Horses.

Was it the lingering sense of supernatural doom hiding over the ridge of the next hill? Or how the the main character has few redeemable characteristics aside from his asceticism and rejection of class boundaries? Maybe his language (which is almost ridiculously ornate, almost baroque when describing things like shit and used condoms)?

I'm just trying to stay with it.

>>6201825
You're welcome for showing you a new and huge thread of interpretation.
Good luck with your education going forward!

>>6201837
It's beautiful. Maybe one just needs a lot of love and coffee in their system. The language, descriptions, characters. I love good illustrations of poverty in/combined with beauty and Suttree was exactly that, wrapped up with some dark humor. I remember his fight with his exwife's mother being absolutely pitch-black hilarious, fleeting though it was.

is The Orchard Keeper worth reading?

>>6201860
Okay, I suppose you're right. I did laugh my ass off at the watermelon fucking incident

>>6201837
I thought it was funny. The funniest thing he ever wrote.

>>6201654
Hell yeah. I always recommend reading the Book of Job and then The Crossing.

>>6202020
0.8008135/10 troll

>>6201863
Yes. It's not my favorite by any stretch but there are some segments that are worth reading.

>>6201863
Yes, if you really like McCarthy. It's a first novel.

>>6201475
Faulkner and Flann are good fro reading his earlier Southern Gothic stuff and having Moby Dick under your belt undoubtedly makes Blood Meridian a richer experience. But they're not at all necessary.
But I'd add some of The Old Testament books to that list as well. Genesis, Exodus, Job, Ecclesiastes (especially for The Crossing), and the other wisdom books.
>>6201475
You're right, McCarthy is approachable without a degree in American literature, but understanding the tradition he's a part of will greatly contribute to anyone's experience of his writing. Hell, some of the major themes of Blood Meridian are originality in literature, cultural memory, and history.
>Do you think McCarthy himself would say this about his own writing?
He did say something along the lines of "the sad fact is, books are made from other books".

>>6201689

What, specifically, doesn't make sense to you?

It's pretty clear cut for anyone with any modicum of theological or philosophical understanding.

I did not understand The Crossing's epilogue at all. The conversation, or rather the monologue, went right over my head. Someone care to elaborate so I can appreciate it better?

>>6202551
>He did say something along the lines of "the sad fact is, books are made from other books".
I was just criticizing that other fool for his cocky and sloppy execution - you summed up what he was trying to say with his stupid imperatives quite clearly

1. Suttree (maybe not objectively #1 but I love it a lot)
2. Blood Meridian (probably his true "best")
3. The Road
4. Child of God
5. No Country For Old Men
6. All the Pretty Horses
7. The Crossing
8. Cities of the Plain
9. The Orchard Keeper
10. Outer Dark

>all these people putting Child of God way above Outer Dark
why?

>>6201697
>The Road is genre fiction
>Blood Meridian is his best work

Dude, Blood Meridian is a Western about a kid and a gang of killers travelling around with a giant supernatural albino. The Road won a Pulitzer prize for literature whereas Blood Meridian got into the top 100 20th century books for time magazine. I'm not saying The Road is better, it isn't, but having a post apocalyptic setting doesn't make something genre fiction.

>>6201469
actually agree that BM and suttree are tied for first. we disagree on some of the others...

not bad/10

>>6205815
.The simple fact is that The Road is one of his lesser works. Fite me.

>>6206175

I think in terms of sheer sincerity of emotion, it's actually one of his best. In The Road, McCarthy drops a lot of his tricks and stylistic bombast and delivers a pure meditation on the love of a father for his son and vice versa.

The sci-fi and the baby cannibalism is just window dressing for that pure core of emotion, and I think it works pretty well.

It's atypical in McCarthy's work, but not necessarily lesser.

>>6205815

Post apocalyptic is a genre.

>>6206230

"literary fiction" is a genre.

>>6201837
it's a simple fact that All the pretty horses is much easier and simpler. When I first read Suttree, i was 17, i didn't understand the main theme but I really liked the words. Then I thought about it for a year or so and it became my favorite book. I've read it again since then and it is safely my favorite book.

>>6203092
Just think about it over the next year and then read it again

>>6204208
dude, I hate it so much when people do this, and i know you just didn't know which word to use but, saying Suttree is his best is perfectly reasonable, and if you think that then saying Blood Meridian is his greatest or something is also reasonable but just because other people say a book is more literary or whatever shouldn't make it better to you.

why did you like child of god?

>>6206175
no, I agree

>tfw nobody has read the sunset limited
it shows that he really can write great dialogue. it's literally two people sitting at a table talking and I was enthralled. read it in like an hour

Why do people compare Cormac to Faulkner, when Faulkner has all these brilliant and fully realized characters while Cormac rarely does?

>>6201420
Outer Dark is criminally underrated

>>6201503

rekt!

>>6201515

tfw Mccarthy is better than those writers

>>6208100

Prose style, Southern Gothic, similar themes,

>>6208112

>Melville
Fucking Nope

>Faulkner
Faulkner produce more consistent quality work. I would probably say BM is better than anything Faulkner did (but not by much) but Faulkner's full body of work is far superior to McCarthy's. Cormac pretty much as two God-tier books (BM and Suttree), one really fantastic work (The Crossing) and the rest are above average but can't be really considered great (at least when compared to other significant works).

>O'Connor
Wrote primarily short stories with Catholic themes and concerns. The two are a lot closer than people may realize in terms of technique and themes but differ enough to make them each unique in their own right. I'd probably have to give the nod to Flan Flan though because I'm a shamelss papist.Hint: So is McCarthy

>>6208186

ughhhhh no.

>>6208186
>>Melville
>Fucking Nope


Yes, wayyyyyy better than boring ass Melville.

>>6206219
Absolutely agreed.

The Road was McCarthy evolving as a writer. Yes, Blood Meridian's got some beautiful language. But you can't deny it's incredibly self-indulgent.

No Country for Old Men and The Road are much simpler than McCarthy's earlier works, but I believe they are both much stronger for it.

>>6208343

>The only good books are the ones with guns and scalps and grimdark

Feel free to mosey on out of here whenever you like

>>6208611
McCarthy got all the years of pent up genius and poverty out of his system with Suttree and Blood Meridian, then he was free to evolve into an ineffectual success

>>6206230
So is Western, faggot.